New

 2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV 

 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  
 

We are in Christ when we come to trust in him as our Lord and Saviour. When I first did that aged eight, cosmetically, nothing changed. I didn't start walking around with a halo.

 Paul insists that in Christ we're new creations. In case the amazingness of this is lost on us, he was writing to a church that had initially tolerated a case of incest. Then they went to the other extreme of refusing to restore the repentant brother who renounced his sin. If the Corinthian church were new creations, all of us are in Christ.

There's not two tiers of Christians. There's not the superspiritual ones and the mediocre ones. Each and every one of us are new creations in Christ.

Having trusted in Christ, the old has passed away. So we're not to go around digging up our past and attempting to revive it. We're to live in the newness of all that Christ has called us into.

'Our heavenly Father, help us to live in the reality of our newness. Forgive us for times we act like we're still in our old ways. In the name of Jesus, amen'.   

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