Christ KillersSample

Day 4: The Hope of Christ Killers

So many of us spend our lives trying to earn an identity—trying to prove our worth, shake off our past, or become someone we can be proud of. We think if we clean up enough, serve enough, or believe hard enough, then maybe God will accept us.

But the gospel doesn’t tell you to earn anything. It tells you to receive everything.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV)

That’s not a metaphor. It’s a reality. In Christ, you are not a slightly improved version of who you were—you are someone entirely new. Your failures don’t define you. Your past doesn’t imprison you. Your identity isn’t attached to what you’ve done but to what Jesus has done for you.

“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, NIV).

No condemnation. Not now. Not ever. God isn’t keeping a record of your wrongs, waiting for you to mess up again. If you’re in Christ, your record has been wiped clean, your guilt removed, your shame covered.

That means you don’t have to keep trying to earn back God’s approval. You already have it. You don’t have to live like someone on spiritual probation, anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. You are secure, accepted, and loved—not because of what you’ve done, but because of what Jesus did on your behalf.

How? Through the cross.

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (Ephesians 1:7, NIV).

Redemption isn’t just a spiritual word—it’s your new reality. The blood of Jesus didn’t just cover your sin—it forgave it fully and forever. You’re not working your way back to God. He came all the way to you.

This grace is not shallow. It is rich. Lavish. Abundant. It meets you at your worst and still calls you beloved. You don’t have to downplay your brokenness or pretend you’ve got it all together. Grace meets you in truth and transforms you with love. God meant it when He said:

“Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions. But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him” (Colossians 1:21-22, CSB).

That’s your identity now: holy. Faultless. Blameless. Not because you’ve been perfect, but because Jesus was. And His perfection now covers you.

This is more than a change in behavior. It’s a change in position. You’ve gone from enemy to family, from outsider to insider, from stained to spotless. You don’t belong to your past anymore—you belong to Christ.

You don’t have to live stuck in who you were. You’ve been made new. You’ve been brought near. You’ve been renamed.

So today, stop striving and start receiving. Let go of the guilt you were never meant to carry. Reject the shame that no longer has a voice. And walk forward in the freedom of your true identity: forgiven, free, and fully loved in Christ.

Let that truth echo louder than your regrets. Let it define how you live, how you see yourself, and how you relate to others. You are His—and that changes everything.