4) NOT A MIXTURE OF OLD & NEW

The Christian life is not a mixture of old and new. It feels as though that our Christian life is a mixture of the old and the new self. However, this is not what the Bible teaches.

Luke 5: 36-39

He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.”

John 3:3–7

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

Nicodemus, in this passage, represents a religious person. He embodied everything that is religious in his society. Nicodemus was a religious scholar, a teacher of the law, and he was also a religious leader. He is our modern-day pastor of pastors, a bishop in some Christian circle. What do religious teachers teach? They teach that to please God, we must study God’s law and try to live it out to the best of our ability. And if we have trouble living out God’s law, then we need to be more devout. We need to try harder, go to more conferences, read more religious books, join a certain Bible study group, etc. What was Jesus’ reaction to religious devotion? He didn’t endorsed Nicodemus. Instead, Jesus presented him a truth that sounded so strange to him: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Through being born again we are given a new wineskin, a new life. The old has gone, the new has come. This new life is made to contain the new wine, the new truth. The solution is not a mixture of the old and the new. It is not battling the flesh so that your spirit will thrive. However, it is realizing that the old has passed away and the new life is here.

2 Corinthians 5:17-18

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

Here is where the confusion resides. We don’t FEEL like a new creation and so it SEEMS as though we have an old self and a new self all wrapped up in one. However, the Bible teaches us that the old has passed away. It has died. We are now new creations. Paul’s letter to the Galatians says this in a more vivid way.

Galatians 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Ephesians 4:21–24

…assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

We have died and we no longer live. We still have a physical body, but it is Christ who lives in that body. We now live by faith in Christ. This is difficult to understand and therefore, does not seem logical. Jesus Christ living in this broken body of ours is a mystery unto our minds, but it is not unfamiliar to the Scripture. In Corinthians the Bible teaches that our “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.”

1 Corinthians 6:19–20

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Romans 6:4-5

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Romans 6:11

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Our life is more than what we perceive through our physical senses and more than what our wisdom or knowledge tells us. Our senses and minds cannot understand that we have been buried with Christ and we no longer live. Yet this is the truth taught in the Bible. This is who we are.

The body is physical and it is subject to time and corruption just as all of creation. The Scripture teaches us that our mind is being renewed by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…“

Eph. 4:22-23 “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds…“

While our bodies are subject to corruption, it does take part in the regeneration.

Titus 3:4-6 “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior…”

Romans 8:10-11 “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

Philippians 3:20-21 “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

The completion of this transformation comes when we are clothes with the imperishable, but in the meantime, it is being transformed as it is bearing the life of Christ. The physical body that we have lived in for decades have been imprinted by the old nature. The body’s regeneration is not instantaneous like our spirit. Take jet lag as an example. Jet lag happened because our bodies’ internal clock has not yet caught up with our present time zone. It will take time to adjust to the new time zone. It is the same with our bodies and our new Christ’s identity. The body still retain the old way of life. It is still set in it’s old ways. The body needs time to re-adjust to the Christ identity that is inside of us. We need to teach it to live Christ’s identity, just as we need to teach it to live our human identity to which we were physically born into. Picture in your mind an image of an infant. That’s who you are in Christ. When a baby is born, he doesn’t know to do anything except cry. He cries when he wakes up, when he is cold, when he is hungry, when his bottom is wet. But as he grows into his human identity, he begins to understand that crying is not always the best solution. As a parent you teach him to ask to be held, to be fed, etc., Instead of crying. As a new Christ-person, we don’t know any better, so we will follow our old, imprinted ways, which is sin. We sin because we don’t know any better, just like an infant cry because he doesn’t know any better. But as we grow into our new Christ’s identity, we began to see that sin doesn’t bring us the satisfaction that we desire. We began to walk according to the Spirit and then gradually, we began to cry less, and less. As we grow into the Christ’s identity, we began to not gratify the desire of the flesh. Galatians 5:16 “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” God did not intend for us to live this life on our own, so stop trying. Stop fighting the flesh. It is pointless because it’s dead. Stop thinking that we need to put Christ on the throne of our lives. He is already there. Who has the power to bring Him off His throne? Do we really have that power? That model of the Christian life that we have been taught is not what the New Testament teaches. Embrace your Christ’s identity. See yourself as an infant in Christ. Explore this new identity. Grow in it.