Let us Not Go Back to Our Old Ways
We Have Been Made New
Published by Deborah Negron M.A.
December 28, 2019
Galatians 2:15-16, 18
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.
Isaiah 43:5-8, 10-11, 15-16, 18-19 ESV
Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Bring out the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears! “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord , “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord , and besides me there is no savior. I am the Lord , your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.” Thus says the Lord , who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Isaiah wrote,
“For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.”
Paul wrote,
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old….” Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Scripture tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21,
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, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We have been reconciled. We have been rescued from the stupor of our old ways. The traditions that held us bound, the cultural biases and the norms we followed as sinners have been made null. Christ has set us free from the law. The law was our jail master. It pointed to our every old deed. Every sin, every stain was made plain and gave evidence of our wayward hearts.
Yet through faith in Jesus the traditions and the things imposed outwardly through the law were now no longer necessary to hold us captive.
Jesus came and fulfilled the law perfectly. His perfect life was then placed on our account. The payment for our freedom was paid in full on the cross.
The law no longer had to be imposed. For through faith in Jesus we were given a clean slate. A brand new canvas. We were afforded a new page to begin a new story.
The forgiveness of sin and the newness of life makes null and void that accusation.
The past has been erased. The stain of our sin has been washed away through the blood shed on that cross of Calvary. Jesus paid it all.
Isaiah, writing in way of a prophecy wrote that the Messiah would come. Isaiah 9 speaks of the child that would be born in Bethlehem.
He spoke of the fact that we would be freed from our oppressor. The Law was our oppressor. It constantly pointed out our wrong doing. It magnified our wayward hearts publically. Yet Christ exposed, rejected, in shame and naked bore the weight of our sins on the cross. Jesus was made to become sin for us. The penalty of our sin, was placed on Him. This was the point in human history where God took upon himself the body of a man, suffered as a man, hungered and thirsts as a man, felt every pain possible as a man. Then had the punishment for the sins of all mankind as his own.
This point in human history changed everything. The old traditions of circumcision were made null and void.
Just as Adam sinned and tried to cover his own shame witha temporary fix, the aprons of leaves; an insufficient covering. inadequate and temporary for the leaves would become dry and fall off. Then once again he would stand naked and exposed, shamed and lost needing again to be covered.
So God in a shadow of what was to come, made a sacrifice of animals and clothed Adam with a more resilient covering of animal skins.
Yet on the cross, Jesus became that spotless, perfect lamb for us. He made forever a permanent covering. He shed his own blood to clothe us in righteousness. No longer do we need to sacrifice animals to cover our wayward nakedness. No longer are we to live with the heaviness of our own sin.
Jesus has come to make a new thing. In the barrenness of our desert, in the desperate thirst we had. He came to be the living water. He came to restore us. He came to become our covering. The traditions of the law and the punishment required by the law were paid in full.
So, if then, I begin again to practice and partake of the old sin nature. If I look back as did Lot’s wife in Genesis 19.
If I longingly remember the former lifestyle and desire the past as if it was somehow better, I make the sacrifice of Jesus null and void in my life.
If I recall the sins of my past over and over…
If I continue to put myself down and act as if though somehow through my actions I will be made right, I fail to grasp the gift of Salvation.
Salvation is for the whosoever. But not all truly desire it. Not everyone will be saved. Some are more rooted in their old ways than in desiring a newness of life.
Some are more Interested in recalling the past as something worth remmebering.
When the people of Israel were in the desert. They had left Egypt. They were no longer slaves of Pharoah. Yet they began to complain and murmur against Moses and Aaron. They began remembering their lives as better in Egypt. The stupor of their thoughts was great.
They forgot the brick making, the whips, the scorching heat and their opression.
They looked back with a false idea of the past. This kept many out of the promised land. (Exodus 16).
Today, as you and I live our lives in Christ, we have to do without the tradtions of our day. The practices that are common to all who do not believe. We are not called to hild on to a past, to our pagan cultural traditions and to our former lives.
Jesus made a way for us to receive the opportunity to be reconciled with God the Father. He made a clear path. It is not convoluted with old ways, and old fables. It is a clear path.
Paul writing to the church in Rome says, in Roman’s 10:1-4, Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Galatians 3:26-29, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Romans 13:12,14
The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Let us desire to please God. He has become our covering. He has become our code of ehtics, as it were. His standard supercedes our traditions, our cultural divisions, our pagan ideologies. His truth is the Only Truth.
We cannot serve two Masters. We must serve Him and him alone. He is the one who became sin for us. He is the God of heaven made flesh, coming to the Manger for our Freedom. He was the one who grew in stature and in wisdom as a young boy. He is the one who was hung on a tree. He shed his blood to pay for our sin debt. He is the one who Rose Again from the grave. He has made a way in the desert. He is the one who made a way in the wilderness for us. He tells us to not rebuild what has been torn down. But walk on in his truth.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Ephesians 2:5-21
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
Let us live without the cumbersome weight of the past and move forward as witnesses of His Gospel, so others may hear these Good News.
Life and Faith By Deb 
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