In good times and hard times, in season and out of season, you are always the same new creation in Christ designed to flourish in a relationship with God.
This new life in Christ is a supernatural living that is grounded in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Nothing can change your true identity in Christ. When you walk in Christ, you live out of your new identity. Your life will be characterized by God’s freedom, God’s peace and joy, and God’s victory.
God’s Freedom
In Christ, you have been set free from the bondage of sin and guilt, the spirit of rejection and condemnation, the yoke of demonic deception, worry and anxiety, and all fear – including the fear of men, evil, death, and hell.
Above all, you are been set free from your old self – your old way of living, thinking, feeling, reacting, everything! You have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you (Galatians 2:20).
God expects you to enjoy the freedom that you have been given in Christ regardless of the world around us. Imagine a life free from the bondage of sin and deception. A life where feelings of guilt and rejection are quickly handled as you apply God’s truth. Imagine being so secure in your relationship with God and in your dependence on His promises that your life is virtually free of worry and fear! No longer external circumstances will have control over you.
Most people spend all of their earthly existence trying to structure a life that offers these benefits. And yet it is completely impossible apart from God. It is only as we believe God for what we’ve been given in Christ and follow Him in obedience that this kind of lifestyle can become reality.
God’s Peace and Joy
One of the results of your freedom in Christ is his peace and joy. They, too, transcend our circumstances. God is even more committed to our happiness and well-being than we are because the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). When we live from the perspective of God’s kingdom, we live free from the worldly influence. The result is a life of peace and joy.
God’s peace is more than absence of disturbance or discord. It also refers to being whole and complete. God alone can make you whole. Your new self is complete in Christ. Its source is God, and it begins with your restored (harmonious and complete) relationship with God.
God’s joy is the joy of Jesus (John 15:11). It is in asking and receiving in His name that your joy may be full (John 16:24). Jesus’ heart was fully aligned to the Father’s heart. As our hearts become more like the heart of Jesus, we ask according to His will and receive what God has for us. In His goodness and grace, we rejoice.
God’s Victory
In Christ, you have overcome the evil one (1 John 4:4) and will overcome adversity. A supernatural lifestyle is not free of misery, pain, and suffering because we live in a fallen world and the spiritual enemy of God is determined to destroy His creation. Why does God allow adversity in the life of His children? Adverse circumstances like today’s pandemic are life’s training ground in which God forms Christ in us. With the right perspective, in adverse situations, we finally grasp the truth of the exchanged life that our old self is dead with Christ and that our new life is Christ in us.
Adverse circumstances also provide a showcase to demonstrate the quality of God’s workmanship in us to the watching hosts of the both physical and spiritual universes. In other words, both human beings and spiritual beings are watching you closely during this crisis to see if your God is who you say he is.
Finally, adversity comes because we live in the universe at spiritual war. The doomed forces of evil are doing their worst to damage the unshakable kingdom of the invincible King.
God doesn’t expect us to endure evil. He expects us to triumph over it. Against evil, we are commanded to resist and stand firm. Adversity can be brought about by natural causes such as pandemic, drought, earthquakes and tsunami. Spiritual enemies will take advantage of these natural disasters to spread fear and panic, stirring up in our hearts hatred or selfishness. Even in adversity that is caused by humans, people are not our enemy. The Word of God gives us a different (God’s) perspective. “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:1). So, our weapons of righteousness (2 Corinthians 6:7) against adversity are spiritual and wielded in genuine love (2 Corinthians 6:6).
