Forever Changed
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Who
hasn’t wished for a new chance and a fresh start?
The
moment you asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, your sins were forgiven, and
your slate was wiped clean. God is no longer holding your sins against you. When
Jesus died on the Cross, He paid the penalty so you could go free.
Being
forgiven for the past is wonderful, but it is not the only thing that has
happened to you. The Bible tells us that when you believed in Jesus, and
received Him as your Savior, you received eternal life:
And
this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his
Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not
have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God
so that you may know that you have eternal life.
— 1 John 5:11-13
Having
eternal life qualifies you to escape hell and to spend eternity in heaven with
God the Father. It is wonderful to know for sure that your future in heaven is
secure.
One
evening, a religious leader named Nicodemus came to see Jesus. Jesus told him,
“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Then Jesus
said, “You must be born again.”
“Must”
means there is no alternative. There are not many roads that lead to heaven.
There is only one way: through Jesus Christ.
Later
in His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus makes a statement that has become one
of the best-known verses of the Bible: “For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life” (John 3:16 nkjv).
It
is by believing in Jesus that you are born again and receive eternal life. Acts
4:12 tells us, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name
under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
But
saving faith is more than a mental agreement. In fact, most people believe that
Jesus lived, that He was a perfect man who sincerely believed Himself to be the
Son of God, and that He died on the cross to save sinners. But this sort of
mental agreement with the facts is not enough — you must believe with your
heart.
If
you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that
you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and
are saved.
As
the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”
...The same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for,
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
— Romans 10:9-13
Have
you called upon the name of Jesus? Have you believed with your heart and
confessed with your mouth that Jesus is your Lord? If so, according to the Bible
you are born again. If you are not sure, there is a prayer included on the back,
inside cover of this book. Take a moment right now: find it, read it, make it
your heart’s prayer to God. He will hear you as you call out to Him — and
you will be saved.
A
person is much more than just their body or flesh. Their real self is their
spirit. When you prayed, God worked a miracle in your life, and your spirit was
born again. Jesus told Nicodemus, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit
gives birth to spirit.”
When
God first created mankind, He said, “Let us make man in our image, in our
likeness” (Genesis 1:26). “Image” here refers to a person’s spirit,
while “likeness” refers to their body. When we are born again, our spirit is
recreated back into the image of God Himself, as it was in the Garden of Eden.
God
recreates every person’s spirit individually — and with great care — just
as He created Adam in the beginning. One at a time, as each person receives
Jesus as Savior and Lord, they are born again by the power of God. They become a
new creation. Each time this happens, there’s great rejoicing in heaven (Luke
15:7,10).
In
the miracle of new birth, we are forever changed. Christ is now in us and we are
now in Christ. We are eternally joined with Him, and He has promised never to
leave us. Now, when God looks inside of us, He does not see our sin anymore.
Instead, He sees Jesus.
God
has freed us from the power of darkness, and he brought us into the kingdom of
his dear Son. The Son paid for our sins, and in him we have forgiveness.
— Colossians 1:13,14 ncv
“You
have been born again. Your new life did not come from your earthly parents
because the life they gave you will end in death. But this new life will last
forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.”
— 1 Peter 1:23 nlt
God
has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
—
Hebrews 13:5 niv
For
God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we
could be made right with God through Christ.
— 2 Corinthians 5:21 nlt
According
to God’s Word, if you are born again, you are completely forgiven. God is no
longer holding your sins against you because Jesus died on the Cross and paid
the penalty so you could go free.
Often,
when a person is born again, they experience the weight of guilt being lifted
from them. They actually “feel forgiven.” Perhaps you, too, have experienced
God’s wonderful forgiveness. It is important to take the next step and find
out what the Bible says about forgiveness, so your faith can be based on the
sure foundation of God’s Word and not on feelings alone.
To
most people, Christ’s sacrificial death does not make sense at all. They ask,
“How can someone dying 2000 years ago make a difference in my life today?”
To
understand this, we must go even further back in time and see how Adam’s sin
in the Garden of Eden made a difference in the life of everyone on this planet.
God
told Adam:
“You
may freely eat from every tree in the garden except for the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. In the day that you eat from that tree you shall
surely die.”
— Genesis 2:16,17 nkjv
In
the original Hebrew, the word “die” appears twice. It actually reads: “In
the day that you eat from that tree, dying (present tense) you shall die (future
tense).” That covers both aspects of man — his spirit and his body. The
moment Adam ate, his spirit died. At the same moment, death entered into
Adam’s body, causing his body to eventually die as well. His spirit died
instantly; his body died many years later.
Adam
and Eve had no children until after the fall. After Adam had lived a hundred and
thirty years, the Bible tells us, “he had a son in his own likeness, in his
image; and he named him Seth” (Genesis 5:3).
Do
you see what happened? Adam was made in God’s image, but Seth was made in
Adam’s image. The same process goes on every time someone has a child on this
earth: the child is born in their parents’ image, and that image goes all the
way back to Adam himself.
When
Adam disobeyed God, he opened the door to sin and death in the life of every
human being ever to be born. The Bible tells us:
Sin
came into the world through one man and death as the result of sin, so death
spread to all men, [no one being able to stop it or to escape its power] because
all men sinned.
— Romans 5:12 amp
The
good news is, God had a plan. Even though Adam fathered children who were born
with the nature of sin, God made a way for us to escape the power of sin and
death. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, who completely obeyed His Father and lived
a sinless life. Adam brought us death, but Jesus brought us life:
Just
as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death,
another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us
out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people
in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
If
death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the
breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both
hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right,
that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
— Romans 5:18,19 the message
For
as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s
obedience many will be made righteous.
— Romans 5:19 nkjv
We
had no choice about being “in Adam.” We are born in Adam. The results of
Adam’s disobedience are a part of every person who is born on the earth. When
Adam disobeyed, we disobeyed, just as if we were there with him. When he fell,
we fell. The whole race was put in jeopardy and on trial. We were ruined as
thoroughly as if we had eaten the fruit ourselves.
Being
in Adam was not our choice, but getting out of Adam and into Christ is our
choice. We had no control at physical birth, but we do have a choice at the new
birth. We can walk away from sin and spiritual death by accepting Jesus as our
Savior.
We
used to be in Adam, now we are in Christ. When Jesus obeyed, we obeyed. When
Jesus died, we died with Him. When He was buried, we were buried also. When
Jesus was made alive again at the Resurrection, we too were made alive.
And
this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his
Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not
have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God
so that you may know that you have eternal life.
— 1 John 5:11-13
The
world has the idea that when they stand before God in judgment, they will be
allowed to argue their case individually. When asked, “If you died now, would
you go to heaven?” most people answer, “Yes, I believe I would.” They
reason that God will look at their good deeds and compare them to their bad
deeds. If the good outweighs the bad, they will go to heaven. If the bad
outweighs the good, they will end up in hell.
But
their reasoning is wrong. They don’t understand God’s plan.
God
does not deal with us as a field of corn, all standing independently, each with
our own roots. Rather, He sees two trees, each with limbs and branches coming
from one trunk and root system. When the roots or trunk are severed, the whole
tree dies.
In
Adam, you are a part of a dead tree. In Christ, you are a part of a living tree.
First Corinthians 15:22 tells us, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all
will be made alive.” People will not go to hell because of sin, they will go
to hell because they are in Adam. People will not go to heaven because of any
good thing they have done. They will go to heaven because they have chosen to be
in Christ.
My
dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does
sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence — Jesus Christ, the
Righteous One.
— 1 John 2:1 niv
If
we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
—
1 John 1:9 nkjv
Everyone
has failed from time to time. The Bible says a righteous man falls seven times
and gets right back up. When we slip, we confess our sin and God cleanses us
from all unrighteousness. The grace of God helps us get right back up.
The
word translated “confess” in this verse means “to say the same thing.”
When we do something wrong, we admit to God what we have done. (He is not
surprised. He already knows!) The next step is to agree with Him that it is
wrong, that it hurts you or others. He promises that every time we confess our
sin, He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Your heart will be as clean as
it was the day you were born again.
Find
a church that teaches from the Bible. Go to church and hear the Word. When you
leave church, take your notes and read them, study them, look up the verses in
your Bible, meditate on them, confess them, and then become a doer of the Word.
That way it actually becomes a part of you.
In
Psalm 1, God promises blessings to those who hear and obey His Word:
Blessed
is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of
sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
But
his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and
night.
He
is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and
whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
— Psalm 1:1-3
Dear
Heavenly Father,
You
said in your Word, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and
believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, YOU WILL BE SAVED”
(Romans 10:9).
I
believe in my heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
I believe He died on the cross for my sins, and that He was raised from
the dead. I now confess Jesus as my
Lord, so I know, Father, that according to your Word, I am now saved!
Thank
You, Father, for forgiving me and for giving me the gift of the new birth.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Welcome to the Family!
BYM
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