Latest / Reformed Thinking / If Anyone Is in Christ: The New Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)

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If Anyone Is in Christ: The New Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  So imagine you break your arm. Oh yeah, not.
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  Fun. No, not at all.
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  But, you know, you go to the doctor, they take an X-ray, and
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  you get to look at that lid screen and right there there's
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  this jagged white line. The doctor just points at it
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  with a pen and says, well, broken right?
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  It's totally binary. Yeah, binary.
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  The bone is intact or the bone is snapped in half.
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  And I mean, there's something incredibly comforting about that
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  kind of visibility. You know, we just love things to
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  be easily categorized. We love to see things with the
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  naked eye. We.
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  Want obvious mechanical solutions?
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  You know, put a cast on it, wait six weeks and the machine is
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  fixed. Spot on.
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  But what happens when you try to take an X-ray of human nature?
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  Well, that's where it gets messy.
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  Yeah, you step into the realm of spiritual reality and suddenly
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  that precision just vanishes. We are looking at a diagnostic
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  landscape that is entirely muddy.
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  We want the clean break in the quick fix.
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  But human souls, well, they do not operate like a fractured
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  radius. They really don't.
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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. Today we're taking a deep dive
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  into a text that totally shatters our desire for quick
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  fixes. Because, you know, society looks
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  at the human condition and consistently tries to offer
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  solutions that basically amount to behavior modification, right?
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  Like life hacks? Yeah, an endless parade of self
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  help strategies, habit trackers and psychological tricks aimed
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  at discovering a better version of yourself.
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  And it all relies on sheer willpower.
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  You see people treating their identity like they are
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  remodeling a kitchen. You know you throw a fresh coat
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  of paint on the walls. You start waking up at 5:00 AM
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  to drink a green smoothie. Maybe you swap out the old
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  cabinets by deleting a few toxic apps from your phone.
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  But you are still dealing with the exact same house.
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  Yes. The foundation has not moved an
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  inch and we tend to take massive theological realities and reduce
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  them down to that level of self improvement.
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  We turn them into bumper stickers.
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  Which is such a tragedy. It is and that brings us to our
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  focus today, which is Second Corinthians chapter 12 verse 17.
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  It says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
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  The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.
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  Our goal for this deep dive is to rescue this specific verse
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  from those superficial behavior modification interpretations.
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  We really need to. We do.
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  We are going to look at the divine recreation the Apostle
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  Paul intended for the Corinthian church, and by extension for
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  you, the person listening right now, because the gospel as
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  presented here does not offer a moral patch for an old garment.
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  It raises the dead. So if you're listening to this
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  right now and feeling exhausted because you keep trying to track
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  your habits to become a completely different person,
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  this text is essentially telling you to stop.
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  Right, the behavioral app is not going to raise the dead.
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  You have to evaluate your own baseline right now.
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  Are you attempting to decorate your old self with better
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  manners and better routines, or have you experienced a total
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  transfer of realms from death to life?
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  Because the Apostle Paul is not writing a manual on how to
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  become 10% more efficient, he is announcing a change in the
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  fundamental nature of a human being.
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  It's an announcement. Yeah, the Christian Message is
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  not a program for self improvement.
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  It is an announcement of an accomplished divine recreation.
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  To grasp the shock of a phrase like new creation, we really
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  cannot read these words in a vacuum, can we?
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  No, not at all. We have to step into the
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  chaotic, status obsessed world of the church receiving this
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  letter. We need to look at the
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  historical reality of Corinth around the years 8055 or 56.
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  Set the scene for us, what was it like?
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  Well, Corinth was a massive hub of wealth and commerce.
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  It was strategically located on an isthmus with two major
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  seaports, making it a bustling center of global trade.
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  So lots of money flowing through.
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  A staggering amount of money. And with that sudden influx of
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  wealth came intense moral corruption.
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  It was a city thoroughly saturated in Greek philosophy,
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  rampant Pagan worship, and his cutthroat Roman social ladder.
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  It honestly sounds like a modern hyper capitalist city mixed with
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  a heavy dose of influence or vanity.
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  That is a brilliant way to put it.
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  You have all these people who are suddenly up mobile, making a
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  ton of money through trade, and they are trying to prove they
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  belong in high society. They are measuring their worth
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  by visible achievement, by who their patrons are, and by their
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  public image. It is all about climbing the
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  social ladder. And the church in Corinth
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  carried those exact habits of thought right into their
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  congregation. They were heavily shaped by the
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  surrounding culture. Which caused massive issues.
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  Oh, huge issues. Tensions had escalated
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  dramatically between the Apostle Paul and this congregation he
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  had planted. The congregation was being
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  swayed by figures Paul sarcastically refers to as super
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  apostles. Super apostles?
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  That just sounds arrogant. It was these individuals were
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  boasting in their rhetorical skills, their letters of
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  recommendation, and their outward impressiveness.
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  They evaluated ministry and evaluated other people based on
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  worldly metrics. Paul calls this judging
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  according to the flesh. So to judge someone according to
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  the flesh is basically to run them through the world's
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  algorithm. Evaluate a person based on their
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  bank account, their speaking skills, their societal rank, or
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  how polished their aesthetic looks.
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  I picture these super apostles like modern social media gurus.
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  You know they have the perfect lighting, the high subscriber
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  counts, the projected image of absolute triumph and unshakable
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  confidence. But it is all surface level.
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  The actual substance is completely absent.
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  And then you have Paul. Right.
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  Paul comes into town. He does not speak with towering
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  philosophical rhetoric. He works a manual labor job
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  making tents and he suffers constantly.
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  He gets beaten up, run out of town, thrown in prison.
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  So why does Paul's insistence on weakness and suffering offend
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  them so much? Why is human nature so repulsed
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  by that? Well, people naturally want a
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  leader who reflects their own aspirations for glory and
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  comfort. If your entire worldview is
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  built on acquiring status and avoiding pain, a man who boasts
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  in his sufferings is a massive threat to your value system.
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  That makes sense. Paul does this intentionally,
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  though, to point them to the true nature of authentic
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  ministry which takes the shape of the cross.
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  The cross of Christ was, to the worldly eye, a scene of ultimate
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  weakness, shame and defeat. The ultimate failure in Roman
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  eyes. Right.
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  Yet it was the instrument of divine salvation.
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  The true gospel routinely looks unimpressive to worldly eyes.
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  So by evaluating Paul according to his sufferings and rejecting
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  him because he lacked Polish, they were completely missing the
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  reality that God works through weakness to shame the strong
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  and. We're running a worldly software
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  program in a spiritual Kingdom. Wow.
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  Yeah, when Paul says from now on we regard no one according to
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  the flesh, he is basically telling them that their entire
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  operating system is broken. If you judge people by their
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  outward credentials, you are operating under the rules of the
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  old creation. And you know this.
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  Ancient texts directly refute so many modern errors we see today.
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  Oh, absolutely. We have social movements and
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  even liberal theological frameworks that attempt to
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  define human identity strictly through categories of class,
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  race or social standing. And if we strip away the
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  politics of those modern movements and just look at the
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  mechanics of what they are doing, they are taking
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  individuals and putting them into rigid boxes based entirely
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  on outward fleshly categories. Right, they define you by your
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  demographic data. Which is wild when you compare
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  it to what Paul is saying. It really is.
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  The text we are looking at insists that in the Kingdom of
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  God those categories are obsolete.
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  The decisive line in human existence is not defined by
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  class, race, or worldly force. The decisive line is whether a
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  person is in Christ or outside of Christ.
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  Those fleshly categories belong to the Old World.
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  That is a staggering paradigm shift, and Paul is directly
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  combating this obsession with our status.
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  So he's not just dropping a random proverb into his letter
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  to make them feel good. He is building a tight logical
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  argument. He is building a case.
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  Right. People love to quote verse 17.
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  If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, completely in
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  isolation. They put it on coffee mugs, but
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  it is the hinge of a massive reconciliation argument spanning
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  from verse 11 all the way through verse 21.
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  Yes. If you lift the verse out of
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  that flow, you strip it of its mechanical logic.
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  Tracing that flow is just crucial.
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  It is in verses 14 through 16 Paul establishes that Christ
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  died as a substitute for his people.
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  He says one has died for all, therefore all have died.
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  OK, let's break that down. The logic moves from the
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  historical death of Christ to the spiritual death of the
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  believers old life. Because Christ died and rose,
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  and because believers are united to Him, that old mode of
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  evaluation is finished. That argument leads directly
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  into verse 17. And verse 17 begins with a very
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  specific conjunction. Therefore, in Greek I believe
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  the word is host. If I am reading a complex real
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  estate agreement, there are pages and pages of where as
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  clauses, whereas the buyer has provided the funds and whereas
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  the title has cleared when I finally hit the word.
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  Therefore I know the binding conclusion has arrived.
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  Therefore is the hammer dropping.
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  How does tying this verse to the preceding sentences shift the
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  message from a nice motivational quote to an objective legal
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  verdict for you? Well, the therefore dictates
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  that the new creation is a direct, unavoidable consequence
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  of what Christ has already achieved.
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  It shifts the focus completely away from subjective feelings
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  and places it onto an objective historical reality.
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  It takes the weight off of our feelings.
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  Completely. Theologians call this the Great
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  Exchange. The argument moves from the
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  objective work of Christ on the cross to the subjective reality
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  of the believer's identity, and finally to the Church's mission
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  in the world. That means the new creation is
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  not something I conjure up by trying really hard to be a good
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  person. This week I do not read the
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  therefore and conclude that I need to start a new diet.
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  You do not generate it at all. To prove that, we have to look
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  ahead. Just a few sentences to verse
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  21. Paul writes that God made
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  Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us so that in him we
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  might become the righteousness of God.
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  That is a heavy verse. It is.
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  If you isolate verse 17 from verse 21, you create a system of
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  legalistic moralism. You start believing you have to
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  make yourself new. But the text insists that the
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  newness only exists because the penalty of sin was completely
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  exhausted by the Savior. The debt is paid, the contract
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  is signed, and therefore the new reality is legally binding.
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  Christianity is not first a program of change, it is a
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  position of grace. Yes, a position.
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  You are placed into a new position and the change flows
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  out of that reality. That brings us right into the
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  anatomy of the verse itself. Paul sets a very explicit
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  condition for this new reality. The text says if anyone is in
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  Christ. The Greek phrasing here is AI
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  TS. This is known as a first class
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  conditional clause in Greek syntax.
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  Wait, hold on. A first class conditional sounds
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  like the seating chart on an international flight.
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  What does that actually mean for the person listening right now?
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  It means the condition is assumed to be true.
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  For the sake of the argument, Paul is not expressing doubt
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  like saying if it rains tomorrow, which it might not.
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  So it's not a hypothetical. Right.
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  He is setting forth the absolute sphere in which this new reality
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  exists. He is saying since this is true,
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  it applies universally to every single believer.
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  It is not just for an elite tier of super Christians who pray 6
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  hours a day and never lose their temper.
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  No, it is for anyone who meets the condition.
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  But the condition is highly specific.
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  It is not if anyone is religious, or if anyone is
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  trying their best, or if anyone was born into a respectable
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  family. The condition is exclusively in
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  Christ. The phrase is in Christo.
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  This is the supreme theological phrasing for union with the
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  Savior. Let's look at how this mechanism
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  actually works. I like to think of this concept
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  like being legally adopted into a royal family.
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  Oh, that's a good analogy. Right.
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  Imagine an orphan living on the streets, buried in unpayable
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  debts to various creditors. Suddenly the king decrees that
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  this specific orphan is adopted. In an instant, the child's name
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  changes. The debts are wiped out because
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  they are transferred to the King's account.
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  Stroke of a pen. Exactly.
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  The future inheritance is secured by royal decree.
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  The child did not earn the royal bloodline by scrubbing the
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  cobblestone streets better than the other orphans.
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  The status changed by a legal act of the king.
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  That adoption analogy perfectly illustrates the difference
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  between the legal or forensic reality and the vital or organic
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  reality of this Union. Let's unpack those terms, legal
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  versus vital. Legally, just like the adopted
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  orphan, your sins and debts are imputed to Christ.
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  They are placed onto His account, and His perfect
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  righteousness is imputed to you. You are declared righteous in
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  the courtroom of God because of His legal decree.
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  So if my spiritual that is legally wiped out in that
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  courtroom, what actually happens to the me sitting in the
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  defendant's chair? Do I just walk out with a clean
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  record but the same broken, rebellious brain?
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  That covers the forensic side, but what about the actual
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  person? That is where the vital side
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  comes in. The vital side is that the Holy
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  Spirit organically unites you to Christ, granting you spiritual
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  life. You are grafted into Him like a
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  branch into a vine. Oh, you do not just get a clean
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  record, you get a new nature. Understanding this dual reality
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  refutes any system that relies on human effort.
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  Theologians use the term monarchism, mono meaning one,
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  ergon meaning work. It is A1 sided work of God.
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  Right, because a dead man cannot choose to come alive.
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  You cannot walk into a morgue, look at a corpse and tell it to
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  try harder. You really can't.
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  You cannot give a corpse a checklist of five highly
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  effective habits. The corpse must be acted upon by
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  the Creator to receive breath. This also refutes the idea of a
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  gradual infusion of merit. Some traditions teach that grace
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  is infused into you over time, like an IV drip, making you
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  gradually more worthy of your status.
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  Like you're earning it bit by bit.
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  Right, but the phrase in Christ establishes that the status is
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  an objective fact. From the exact moment of union
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  with the Savior. You are entirely in Him, or you
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  are entirely outside of Him. And once you are firmly placed
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  in Christ, the immediate result is something totally
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  unparalleled in human experience.
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  We get to the actual words new creation.
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  The Greek phrase here is Cain cotisis.
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  What is remarkable is the grammar.
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  It is elliptical. There is no verb in the original
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  text. It literally reads in Christ's
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  new creation. Just the sudden lightning
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  strike, no build up the. Abruptness acts as a divine
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  Fiat. It is an announcement of a
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  reality. We have to look at the specific
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  words chosen. Paul uses the word cane for new.
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  In Greek there is another word NIA which just means new in
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  time. OK, what's the difference there?
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  For example, if a new calendar year begins, that is NIA, it is
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  the same kind of year, just the next one in sequence.
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  But Kane means new in quality or kind.
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  It's something entirely unprecedented.
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  Let. Me make sure I'm grasping this
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  distinction. If I go to a dealership and
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  trade in my old sedan for the exact same model that just
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  rolled off the assembly line this morning, that is NIA.
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  It is new in time, but it is the same machine.
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  But Kane would be trading in my sedan and suddenly being handed
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  the keys to a telecordation device.
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  It is a completely different mode of existence.
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  That is precisely it. And then we have the word
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  detisis, which means creation. This specific word invokes the
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  language of the Book of Genesis. Creation itself.
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  Yes, just as God spoke light into the original darkness, He
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  is speaking new life into the darkness of the human heart.
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  This is creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.
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  Paul bypassed all the common Greek words for renewal or
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  improvement to highlight a total unprecedented recreation.
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  I am going to push back here because I know this is a massive
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  struggle for people listening. OK, let's hear it.
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  We hear creation out of nothing and entirely new quality of
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  life. If I have an entirely new
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  creation created out of nothing by divine decree, why do I still
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  lose my temper in traffic? Yeah, that's the big question.
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  Why do I wake up feeling selfish?
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  Why do I scroll through social media and feel intense envy?
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  Doesn't the word new imply instant perfection?
• 16:22
  Going into the medical analogy of the X-ray shows the bone is
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  miraculously healed. Why does the arm still throb
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  with pain? That tension is one of the most
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  common points of despair for believers.
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  We have to clarify the distinction between definitive
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  sanctification and progressive daily warfare.
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  Break those terms down. What is the difference between
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  definitive and progressive? Definitive sanctification is the
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  once for all break from the dominion of sin.
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  When you are placed in Christ, sin is no longer your master.
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  You have changed kingdoms. That is definitive.
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  It is a completed fact. OK, but that does not mean the
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  complete eradication of sins presence in your daily
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  experience. We are still engaged in
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  progressive daily warfare against the remnants of the old
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  flesh. So the war is definitively one,
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  but there are still violent skirmishes happening on the
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  ground every single day. Here is the pastoral comfort in
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  this doctrine. A dead man does not fight sin.
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  A corpse does not struggle against decay.
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  Right. The very fact that you
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  experience grief over your sin, the fact that you feel the
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  bitter battle against your own flesh, and the fact that you
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  possess A genuine longing for holiness, those are absolute
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  proofs that a new principle of life has been planted within
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  you. That completely flips the
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  script. The struggle itself is the proof
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  of life. If I were a corpse, I wouldn't
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  care that I was lying in the dirt.
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  The warfare validates the new creation.
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  If you were still entirely of the old creation, you would sin
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  without any true internal conflict or godly sorrow.
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  You might just be annoyed at the consequences.
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  Yeah, you might regret getting caught or regret the fines, but
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  you would not hate the sin itself.
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  The friction you feel is the new creation rubbing up against the
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  remnants of the old world. That is incredibly helpful.
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  It takes the very thing that causes us to spare our
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  frustrating daily struggle with sin and reframes it as the
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  evidence of God's work in us. To prove that this new creation
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  is not just an abstract theory, Paul points to a completed
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  historical transition. We move to the contrasting
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  halves of the verse. The old has passed away.
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  Behold, the new has come. The grammar in this section is
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  deeply intentional. The old has passed away in Greek
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  to Archaea. Peril thin is written in the
• 18:30
  aorist tense. OK, if aorist means a completed
• 18:33
  action in the past, it is like closing a toxic bank account.
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  Yeah, good parallel. You go to the teller, you
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  withdraw the last few pennies and you sign the paper to close
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  it. The account is done.
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  You can no longer make a withdrawal from it.
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  You cannot write a check from it.
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  It is a closed chapter. Paul is saying that the old
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  realm, the realm of the law, the Adamic lineage, the realm of
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  condemnation and spiritual death, has definitively ended
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  for the person in Christ. The account is closed, and he
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  contrasts that with the next phrase.
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  Behold, the new has come, Edu, gigon, and kanina.
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  This verb is written in the perfect tense.
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  How does the perfect tense function differently than the a
• 19:14
  rest in this context? The perfect tense denotes a past
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  action that has permanent abiding results in the present.
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  The old has passed away as a completed event in the past, but
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  the new has arrived and it continues to exist right now
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  with lasting effects. It is a permanent state of
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  affairs. Keeping with the banking
• 19:31
  analogy, the toxic account was closed in the past.
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  That is the Aoris tense. But the perfect tense is like
• 19:36
  the king opening a massive trust fund in your name yesterday and
• 19:40
  it is currently yielding permanent daily dividends today
• 19:42
  and forever. That's spot on.
• 19:44
  I want to zero in on that word. Behold, or I do.
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  It is such a dramatic, arresting word.
• 19:50
  It is like a curator pulling the velvet sheet off a priceless
• 19:53
  masterpiece in a crowded gallery.
• 19:56
  The sheer beauty of the painting demands that everyone stop
• 19:58
  talking and just look. How does understanding the
• 20:01
  different uses of God's law clarify what exactly has passed
• 20:05
  away and what has arrived in this unveiling?
• 20:07
  To understand what has passed away, we have to look at what
• 20:10
  theologians call the pedagogical use of the law, pedagogical
• 20:13
  meaning acting like a strict teacher or a tutor.
• 20:16
  What does that tutor actually do?
• 20:18
  The old realm, the law, functioned as a mirror.
• 20:21
  It crushed the center by exposing total depravity.
• 20:23
  It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you cannot self
• 20:27
  generate a clean heart. It showed you your failure.
• 20:29
  That condemning function of the law, the old realm of guilt and
• 20:33
  fear, that is what has passed away in Christ.
• 20:35
  Looking in a mirror can show you that your face is covered in
• 20:38
  dirt, but the mirror itself has no soap or water to wash you.
• 20:41
  It can only condemn the state you are in.
• 20:44
  So if the condemning power of the law has passed away, does
• 20:46
  the law just vanish? Do we just live without any
• 20:48
  rules? Not at all.
• 20:50
  That is where the rule of life comes in.
• 20:53
  In the new realm, the believer's relationship to the law
• 20:56
  completely changes. Because you have a new heart,
• 20:59
  you now delight in God's commands according to your inner
• 21:02
  man. You do not view the law as a
• 21:04
  condemning pirate holding a whip.
• 21:06
  You view it as a guide for how to please the God you love.
• 21:10
  The rule is simple. You do not keep the rules to
• 21:12
  become new. That is the old realm.
• 21:14
  You keep the rules because you already are new.
• 21:16
  The old motivation was terror of punishment.
• 21:19
  The new motivation is the gratitude of a recreated heart.
• 21:22
  And this massive shift from old to new is not just a personal
• 21:25
  psychological transition, It is the climax of all biblical
• 21:29
  history converging on one specific person.
• 21:31
  We have to look at the crystal objects fulfillment.
• 21:34
  This brings us to the concept of the last Adam.
• 21:36
  Yes. The Bible sets up a framework of
• 21:38
  two covenantal heads for humanity, the first Adam and the
• 21:42
  last Adam, who is Jesus Christ. The first Adam in the Garden of
• 21:45
  Eden acted as the federal representative for all of
• 21:47
  mankind. When he fell, He brought death,
• 21:49
  corruption, and the old order of sin into the world.
• 21:52
  Every person is born into that old order by nature.
• 21:55
  We inherit the broken X-ray. We are born with a fracture
• 21:59
  already there. Christ steps into history as the
• 22:01
  second Adam or the last Adam. He succeeds where the first Adam
• 22:05
  failed. He's tempted in the wilderness
• 22:08
  and remains obedient. He lives a life of perfect
• 22:11
  obedience, and through his cross and resurrection He brings life
• 22:14
  and the new order of grace. When Paul talks about the old
• 22:18
  passing away and the new arriving, he is talking about a
• 22:20
  transfer from the headship of the first Adam to the headship
• 22:23
  of the last Adam. This was not a sudden pivot by
• 22:26
  God. If we look back at the Old
• 22:28
  Testament, the prophets were constantly pointing to this
• 22:31
  structural change. Oh, repeatedly.
• 22:34
  Isaiah promised that God would do a new thing.
• 22:36
  Ezekiel prophesied that God would remove the heart of stone
• 22:39
  and give his people a new heart and a new spirit.
• 22:42
  Jeremiah spoke the new covenant where the law would be written
• 22:44
  on people's inward parts. Christ is the fulfillment of all
• 22:48
  those promises. Every single one of those
• 22:50
  prophetic hopes converges in the person of Jesus.
• 22:53
  He is the mediator of the New Covenant.
• 22:56
  When Paul says the believer is a new creation, he is declaring
• 23:00
  that the prophetic promises of the Old Testament have actually
• 23:03
  entered human history through the Messiah.
• 23:05
  If Christ is the first fruits of this new creation, meaning He is
• 23:09
  the first one to breakthrough death into this new reality, how
• 23:12
  does His physical bodily resurrection guarantee both our
• 23:15
  present spiritual renewal and our future physical reality?
• 23:19
  This brings us to inaugurated eschatology.
• 23:22
  Eschatology is the study of the final things.
• 23:25
  Inaugurated means it has already started the age to come.
• 23:28
  The future Kingdom of God has already invaded the present age.
• 23:31
  The beach head of that invasion was the empty tomb.
• 23:34
  When Jesus rose from the dead in a glorified physical body, He
• 23:37
  brought the life of the future age into the present timeline.
• 23:40
  I think of this like the timeline of World War Two.
• 23:42
  You have D-Day. On June 6th, 1944, the Allied
• 23:45
  forces stormed the beaches of Normandy.
• 23:47
  They secure the beach head. The decisive blow has been
• 23:50
  struck and the outcome of the war is absolutely guaranteed.
• 23:52
  From that moment on. That is the inaugurated reality.
• 23:56
  But VE Day, victory in Europe Day does not happen until May
• 23:59
  8th, 1945. In between D-Day and VE Day, you
• 24:02
  have months of brutal, freezing, miserable warfare.
• 24:06
  The war is won, but the soldiers are still fighting in the mud.
• 24:09
  That analogy perfectly captures the tension.
• 24:12
  The physical resurrection of Christ guarantees that the
• 24:14
  believers newness is a real present possession.
• 24:17
  Spiritually, the beach head is secured because He lives.
• 24:21
  Your spirit has been made alive today, but it also acts as an
• 24:24
  absolute guarantee of a future physical certainty.
• 24:26
  At the final consummation, when Christ returns, our physical
• 24:29
  bodies will be resurrected and the entire cosmos will be
• 24:32
  renewed. That is VE Day.
• 24:34
  The new creation is a present reality in our souls and a
• 24:37
  future certainty for our bodies in the world.
• 24:39
  We are walking around right now as citizens of a future age that
• 24:44
  has already arrived in our hearts, even while our bodies
• 24:48
  are still living in the old age. We possess the new creation, but
• 24:52
  we have not yet seen its final physical consummation.
• 24:56
  So what does this all mean for us today?
• 24:59
  Well. Let's tie it together.
• 25:00
  Let's synthesize the realities we have unpacked.
• 25:02
  We started by looking at the absolute necessity of union with
• 25:05
  Christ. You cannot manufacture this
• 25:07
  change. The behavioral app will not save
• 25:10
  you. We looked at the objective
• 25:12
  reality of true divine change. It is a creation out of nothing.
• 25:16
  We discussed the transfer from the Kingdom of Adam, which is
• 25:19
  death, to the Kingdom of the Son, which is life.
• 25:21
  And we saw the resulting mandate to abandon worldly metrics,
• 25:24
  those fleshly judgement when viewing ourselves and others.
• 25:27
  The application of this is incredibly urgent.
• 25:30
  If you are examining your life and you realize you are outside
• 25:33
  of Christ, you need to hear this clearly.
• 25:35
  Moral behavior management will fail you.
• 25:37
  Trying to fix yourself from the outside in is a futile effort.
• 25:40
  You must flee to the sin bearing substitute.
• 25:42
  You need a resurrection, not a renovation.
• 25:44
  That's a huge point. And if you you are a believer,
• 25:47
  the mandate is just as urgent. You must stop defining yourself
• 25:51
  by your past failures. The old has passed away.
• 25:54
  Do not look at your daily struggles and conclude that you
• 25:56
  are still a citizen of the Kingdom of Darkness.
• 25:59
  The struggle proves you are alive.
• 26:01
  You must rest entirely in the finished work of the Mediator.
• 26:04
  Your identity is legally, vitally and permanently secured
• 26:08
  in Him. It changes everything.
• 26:10
  It means that when we look at the diagnostic X-ray of our own
• 26:13
  souls, we do not have to rely on a broken machine that only
• 26:16
  highlights our flaws and our decay.
• 26:18
  We can look at the objective reality of what God has declared
• 26:21
  over us. The decree of the king overrides
• 26:23
  the decay of the flesh. It truly does.
• 26:25
  I want to leave you with an unexamined question to ponder
• 26:27
  long. After this, audio stops.
• 26:29
  We have established that this new creation is an eternal
• 26:32
  reality that has already permanently begun inside of you.
• 26:36
  If that is. True.
• 26:37
  How should that alter the way you look at the physical,
• 26:39
  decaying world around you today? If the new age is already alive
• 26:43
  in your chest, how does that change the way you walk through
• 26:46
  a dying world? Keep searching, keep resting in
• 26:49
  the finished work, and we will see you next time on reformed
• 26:51
  thinking.