Day 6 God Creates Me in Christ

Posted on: March 14, 2025

Every day, pray aloud worshipfully this golden thread that weaves through the entire tapestry of God’s intent for us.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD,

when I will make a new covenant with the

house of Israel. . . .

I will put my law within them,

and I will write it on their hearts.

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

They shall all know me, from the least of them

to the greatest. . . .

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will

remember their sin no more.

(Jeremiah 31:31, 33-34)

Daily Scripture

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Ephesians 2:4, 8-10

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. . . . For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 4:21-24

You . . . were taught . . . to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Picking Up the Thread

This week we have been meditating on the triune God who created the heavens and the earth. Today we consider that God continues to create. And we know why. Creation has been marred by the rebellion of the LORD’s image bearers. From our first parents onward, we in a myriad ways try to be our own gods. We want to do life our way, mistakenly believing we can create for ourselves more fulfillment than comes through following the will of our Creator. From such choices decay, dysfunction and death enter God’s good creation. In short, humans have made a mess of it. We require more than an improvement plan. We need to be created anew.

That’s a wonderful theme in the New Testament. The old creation can be remade through Christ. By his faithful life, his atoning death and his triumphant resurrection, Jesus became the new Adam. He is the man the Father always planned humanity would be. In Christ, a man lived out oneness with the Father. Now we can get in on that harmony by being joined to Jesus. How? He sends his Spirit into our hearts, and we become a new creation. In faith, we bow the knee of our hearts and call upon the name of the Lord to be saved. This transformation is dramatic. In Ephesians 2, Paul puts it starkly. We were dead in sin. But we become joined to the spiritual power of Jesus’ physical resurrection so that together with Jesus, we come alive.

This new life is wonderful. Some have said it’s like going from black and white to full-color vision. We become more ourselves than we ever knew we could be. Our hearts open to God’s reality. Purpose propels us. Joy flows even in sorrow. Peace pervades in trial. Hope springs anew that all is well and all shall be well in Christ. As we read, “The old has passed away and the new has come.”

We also discover that being a new creation in Christ is not just for ourselves. Paul says to the Corinthians, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation . . . entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20). We were made new in order to offer that new life of Christ to the world. We are now emissaries from our King. We have a message of reconciliation to share.

In Ephesians, Paul reminds us that being Jesus’ representatives means we live out the character of new creation. We were “created in Christ Jesus for good works.” Good works don’t recreate us. But good works are the way God wants us to express the new life he has wrought in us through Christ’s death and resurrection.

This gets very graphic. Don’t ever pick up that stinky dead carcass of a life without Christ! We know now that the impulse toward revenge leads to shame, not satisfaction. We know now that pursuing pleasure, power or prestige over the glory of God leaves us with baskets full of nothingness. We know that undermining, gossiping and lying ruin love. That dead stuff is so yesterday!

Now we have been given the power of the Spirit to live out of the new creation Christ has already made us. We’ve been created in the image of the new Adam, Jesus. Now we can live following this pattern: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

Stitching It In

The television series The Chosen beautifully depicts the re-creating power Jesus exercised in his days among us. Early on, we meet the character of Mary Magdalene, driven to despair over the darkness she cannot escape. But then Jesus calls her name. He sees her as one who knows her, and he knows her as one who loves her. She becomes one of his earliest followers. When someone notices the change in her, Mary replies, “I was one way and now I am completely different. And the thing that happened in between was him.” (The Chosen, season 1, episode 2, Netflix, 2019.)

This line has resonated with thousands of people. Jesus’ power to make us new did not cease when he stepped out of our time and space. By his Spirit, millions have become recreated all across the world. The story of Jesus gets told. Yearning awakes in our hearts. I want to know more about that man. I want to hear him call my name and free me from all these strangling entanglements. I’ll follow him forever if he would just see me, if I could just see love in his eyes, just feel him look me out of my old life and into his new creation humanity.

Perhaps you need to remember the feeling of being made new in Christ. Revisit what it was like to yield your heart to his great heart for you. Recall when you cried out for him to save you from all that you cannot save yourself from. And he did!

As the pace and routine of daily existence overwhelms us, we can lose awareness of that new life. We can slip back into the habits of the old life and lose the freshness of the new life. But in reality, it is not far from us. Not far at all. His Spirit is in your heart. Jesus looks upon you this moment in the love that brings life. Just go to him there. Ask him to awaken you.

Wait upon his gaze. Attend to his Spirit’s breeze upon you. You’re not what you once were. What happened is him.

Praying Along the Pattern

Apart from you, I have no good.

But in you is life, abundant life.

You came to be the new Adam

And to share that recreated life with me.

By your Spirit you are fruitful and multiplying,

Bringing multitudes to vivid faith.

You rescue us from darkness

And bring us into your light.

You change us from children of wrath

To beloved daughters and sons.