"So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." Romans 6:11, ESV

Last night in our Wednesday night prayer meeting, we reflected on the story of Elena who grew up in a Christian home but in her young adult years had become very hardened against God.  Her resistance to spiritual things was rooted in an unbelief that God could change her.  The addictions Elena failed to overcome were, in her mind, evidence that the gospel was powerless and change impossible.  Her previous failures told her a story that bound her to the past and didn't allow her to see anything different for her future.  What Elena needed is what we need anytime we feel like our sinful past absolutely defines our future:  we need to hear the gospel story.

SIN IS MORE THAN BEHAVIOR

The apostle Paul is someone who could testify firsthand to the gospel's power to save and transform our lives. Throughout his epistles, he articulates beauty of the gospel story in ways that are truly inspired.  In Ephesians 2, for example, Paul first paints a serious portrait of human sin before he shines a spotlight on God's salvation.  He describes sin not only in terms of misconduct and disobedience but as a state of death (v. 1).  In other words, sin not just certain behaviors to be rid of but a death to be resurrected from!  Paul knows that sin is more than an external reality but an internal one.  And the gospel story begins with acknowledging the depth of our need.  As long as we minimize sin as something to do or not do, we’ll minimize salvation as something we merely need to do/don’t do.  

SALVATION IS MORE THAN BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION

BUT if sin is death, then what we really need is to be born again and resurrected.  Here's the hopeful side of the gospel story:  The salvation God offers is not just a change of behavior, but a transformation of nature!  And that new nature inwardly produces a new life outwardly.  Praise the Lord that what was dead in trespasses can be made alive in Christ (Eph. 2:4-5)!  As the late Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias once said, "Jesus came not to make bad people good but to make dead people alive" (The Grand Weaver).  He is the One through whom the story of what we were can be re-written to the story of what we are.  Our past does not have to define our present.  

So how do we experience this rebirth in our own lives?  The same way Elena eventually did -- by faith.  Trusting that God's work of heart resurrection isn't based on our works or our feelings, but based on HIS faithfulness to His Word.  Again, in Ephesians 2, Paul describes with breathless awe what God does for us in Christ, assuring us that when we trust Jesus we become sharers in all that Christ has experienced -- His death, resurrection, ascension, and coronation (vv. 5-7).  By faith, Jesus' story becomes our story.  And the daily challenge (and privilege!) we have as Christians is "to lay claim to this alternate identity" (Andrews Study Bible notes).  This is who we are, not because we feel it to be so but because we trust Him to make it so.

The same freedom Elena experienced, the same freedom the apostle Paul found, that same freedom is available to us today.  May God grant us faith to lay claim to the alternate identity proclaimed by the gospel story.  May it be our daily experience to consider ourselves "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:11).