Here’s The Only Way Your Identity Will Be Made Complete!
As you read or hear the Good News of Jesus Christ, which tells about the ‘greatest life ever lived and what He has done for you,‘ the Holy Spirit submits “sufficient light” to draw you to Himself, unblinds your eyes, “tugs on” and softens your hardened heart, opens your mind and “convicts you about the guilt of sin, the punishment for it, your need for a Savior and about righteousness and judgment.” (adapted from John 16:8; emphasis added). God releases you from the bondage of your sin and enables you to come to Christ through genuine repentance and saving faith.
“Because of your faith, the belief, trust and complete confidence in who Jesus is and what He has done for you through His death and resurrection, God graciously credits the righteousness of Christ to you, the believer, and declares you to be acquitted (absolved, declared not guilty, freed of all charges, no longer an enemy, right and whole with God, pardoned and just), and then designates you to be brought into right standing before Him.” (adapted from Acts 13:39)
It is God who justifies you by faith alone, apart from works. You did nothing to deserve it. You did not die for your sins. Jesus paid the penalty of your sin for you. God sees you in Christ and in His eyes, it is “just” as if you had never sinned.
“(We, you are) justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24 NKJV; emphasis added)
Regeneration is next as the Holy Spirit transforms you though a spiritual rebirth, born again, for a second time, as a new creation in Christ making you complete and whole for the first time and for all time with a new heart, a new way of thinking, a new attitude, a new way of acting and reacting, a new character, a new identity and a new way of living your life. The old you no longer exists, everything about you is “new,” so you simply cannot be “saved” and remain the same. You no longer are identified by who you are, but by whose you are in Jesus Christ. It’s no longer you who lives, but Christ who lives in you.
Saved by God’s grace through genuine repentance and saving faith in Jesus Christ, justified by God through the righteousness of Jesus and regenerated through a spiritual rebirth by the Holy Spirit, born again as a new creation in Christ!
When you are “saved” it means you are a Christian, a born-again believer, a follower of Jesus Christ, an adopted child of the one true and only living, Creator God and an heir to eternal life.
That is quite an identity!
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