If God Is For Us: Seven Days Of Celebrating The Power Of God’s GraceSample

LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

I became a Christian at the age of twenty-two, which gave me a bit of time to do some sinning. Actually, I would have been considered a “good girl” even before that, although I struggled with various temptations. When I became a Christian, however, I was radically changed. My motives, ambitions, ideology, even desires were transformed. The Spirit was in me—changing my old self into a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). This was nothing but miraculous!

Before becoming a Christian, I did not have the Spirit of Christ. (Christ was not in me, and I was not in Christ.) I did not belong to Him. Spiritually speaking, I was dead (Eph. 2:1)—dead in my sin. But God, who is rich in mercy, brought me to life. He gave me His Spirit and Christ’s righteousness.

This is the experience of everyone who trusts in the finished work of Jesus Christ on their behalf. But something can happen after our conversion. It can happen after a few months or ten years down the road. We can be tempted to forget about the miracle work of grace and begin to notice all the things we do wrong. We can begin to confuse ourselves with our sin. We can even become more aware of sin than we do of God’s grace.

It’s good to be aware of our sin as long as that awareness leads us back to the cross. Knowing how deeply sinful we are should allow us to focus all the more on Jesus and produce in us a grateful heart. But it shouldn’t allow us to forget that we are in Christ and that we have the Spirit dwelling in us, that we are a new creation. The flesh may be dead because of sin, but the Spirit is alive!

The Holy Spirit living in us testifies to a new and transformed life. Miraculously, God looks on us and sees the righteousness of Christ (Col. 3:3, 2 Cor. 5:21). And that can be hard to understand. How can a God who knows everything in our hearts—even the bad stuff—still see us as righteous?

The answer is grace—merciful, amazing, stunning, incomprehensible grace. God freely chooses to see Christ’s righteousness in us when we choose to come to Him. And then we have the pleasure of fighting sin by the Spirit, secure in the grace that comes with our salvation.