Our new life in Christ frees us from the guilt and shame of our past. And we should resist any effort to condemn ourselves for what God has forgiven. All the same, humility is required. And all too often we want to embrace our new life in Christ without recognizing what has been put to death, and perhaps what we must still die to daily. In short, we want to bypass the cross and skip immediately to the resurrection. But this is not how the pattern works.
On the one hand, many continue to live under the burden of shame – allowing themselves to be defined only by their past sins. While this seems like an appropriate way to acknowledge the depths of our depravity, it’s a false guilt when we don’t embrace the freedom and new identity God has given us.
On the other hand are those who seem to want to just embrace their new identity without a second thought to their past. And again there are levels of truth here in that we don’t want to hold on to an identity that’s no longer ours. What we did is no longer who we are. We’ve been washed and made new by the blood of Christ.
But true humility requires us to recognize that new life comes after the cross, and not before. And this means we cannot claim our new identity without also putting to death our old man. We must die with Christ to also live with him. As such, we must confess our sins and bear the fruit of repentance. And others are rightly skeptical of our new identity when this is not evident.
To be sure, this is not to win the approval of others when God has justified us through the work of Christ. But it is to consider if we’re attempting to simply claim the new life of the resurrection while bypassing the cross.
In the end, refuse to be defined by your past. But don’t pretend you can skip the cross and just celebrate your new life in Christ. Our new life requires us to put to death the old, and this cannot be bypassed.
Photo by Duncan Sanchez on Unsplash
