Romans 6:1-14

God does not work like the U.S. witness protection program.  Witness protection erases your history, gives you a new past, you get a new name, a new city, a new job and you begin over with a clean start.  When we have faith in Jesus, He promises us that we may live a new life.  However, he does not erase our past and he does not cancel out all of the consequences of our history.  What he does do is give us the opportunity to begin living in a new way, with a new focus and a new direction.  He does give us the freedom, along with his help to begin changing ourselves into new people.  He gives us the strength and the wisdom to begin making restitution for our failures and our sins of the past.  Our new life is not completed in an instant, but it does begin in the very instant we are reconciled to God by faith.

Because we died with Christ, we now live with Christ.  Because we no longer live alone, we no longer face the temptations and challenges of life in our own strength.  Christ and the Holy Spirit are always with us.  We built our old life around survival, and selfish desires.  We build our new life around our relationship with God, and a desire to please him.  We have a new purpose.  Our old purpose was unrighteous, but our new purpose is all about right relationships and being God’s instrument to love the world and save the lost.  We have our new life only because somebody loved us enough to share with us the gospel.  Now our purpose is to love others in the same way.

We will build our new life one day at a time, one choice at a time.  We are still human, and we will still make mistakes.  God’s mercy covers our mistakes, and His grace empowers us to grow.  We start each day with the blessed assurance; God is not through with us yet.