You started a brand new life in Christ when you received Him into your life. One man said, “When you find Jesus Christ, life finds you!”
The living Bible puts it this way: “When someone becomes a Christian he becomes a brand new person inside. He is not the same anymore. A new life has begun!” (2Corinthians 5:17-20)
Today’s Bible studies are about how does it mean to start a new life in Christ after you have believed.
A new life in Christ: The key to be saved.
Salvation is not something you do but something Jesus does when you receive Him. No way can you save yourself, any more than a drowning man can. He needs the help of someone else. He’s saved when he puts his total trust in the lifesaver.
That’s what Jesus has done for us. He has rescued us from a life that was overwhelmed by sin, under the control of Satan. And heading for the well-deserved judgment of God. He’s planted our feet on the firm ground of God’s domain, taking us off our old ways and giving us a new life in Him.
“God has rescued us out of the darkness and gloom of Satan’s kingdom and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son, who bought our freedom with his blood and forgave us all our sins” (Colossians 1:13-14)
Are You In Christ Or In Adam?
The first man sinned, but not just once; Adam sinned many times. Before he sinned the first time, he was righteous. His righteousness was of his own doing, as a created being.
It was the righteousness of a man. However, Adam never had the righteousness of Jesus Christ upon him. What he lost was his self-righteousness.
When you and I put our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are not merely given back human righteousness that Adam had before the fall. We are given the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
God gives us “much more” in abundance, a superabundance of grace. He gives us the full weight of His perfect character.
Adam did not stand in his righteousness. He fell. If we attempt to stand in our righteousness, we, too, shall fall.
The gift of God in Christ far surpasses the effects of Adam’s sin and all other transgressions we have committed.
The humbling fact is, we were all in Adam once, and we fell in him. He brought sin and death to the human race by his sin.
How can you and I escape the effects of the fall of Adam on us?
We can stand in divine righteousness provided by the divine substitute that will never be taken from us.
It is God’s gift to us in His grace.
The poet expressed it beautifully: Jesus thy Blood and righteousness. My beauty is my glorious dress.
The apostle Paul wrote that we have received “God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).
We “reign in life” even now through Jesus Christ. We have been elevated to a position far above what Adam had before his fall. We not only have been “recovered from the fall, but has been given a new life in Christ.”
The righteousness of Jesus Christ has been put to our account, put upon us, and righteousness in abundance, ever superabundance.
Because it is of divine grace, all of the glory belongs to God alone. Adam stood at the head of the human race and brought death upon all, so our Lord Jesus stood for man and brought life to all who believe in Him.
Every one of us is in Adam. However, the most crucial question is, are you in Christ? We have Christ only through faith.
We are under grace because we stand before God as justified men. Grace is the state of justification. Because we have been justified, we remain justified, and we can never be condemned.
We have been justified by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. There is no other way to have a right standing with a just and holy God. “Oh to grace how great a debtor.”
God was under no duress or compulsion to save us. Nothing made Jesus Christ die for our sins on the cross.
Nothing made God credit the perfect righteousness of Christ to our account. God did it because He chose to do so out of grace.
If you are protesting to God’s revealed word saying, how can I be saved by something someone else has done for me, then it’s because you are not saved.
Jesus took the penalty of death for our sins upon Himself and died on our behalf. Now those sins have been punished, and God imputes the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ to our account.