2 Cor. 5:17, Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
The Christian life is not a renovation, or an upgrade from how you were living before you embraced Jesus as your savior. The Christian life is a death to what you once were, and a resurrection to a whole new life. The word “new” there is a wonderful word that carries the idea of something totally new; something that never existed before. Again, you are not the improved, or patched up old you. You have been Born Again. Let that literally sink in. You, through the finished work of Jesus are a whole, brand new person. You still have the same unique personality that was wonderfully made by God to uniquely express the life of Christ as only you can, but you get a new shot at life as a totally new person. Please don’t dummy down the truth, to fit your experience, instead let’s renew our minds to come into agreement to who God says we are so that the truth can lift us up to fit our new identity as Christ-bearers. There has never been another like you in all of history, and all of history has been waiting for you, but it’s the New redeemed you that is the true self that the world has been waiting for to show up. The whole world longs to see the manifestation of those conformed to His image. Let me talk a little grammar with you. Hang in there with me in this and you will be blessed, for God chose words that have grammatical nuances to communicate truth to us. That phrase “old things passed away,” is “aorist” tense, and aorist tense is the tense of summary action. In other words, God says that the old person you once were is totally gone. The phrase “behold new things have come,” is “perfect tense. Perfect tense speaks of completed action in the past with continual present tense results. What that all means is that your “Old Self” has been already completely taken care of, and your “new self” started off Complete in Christ, and you are continually discovering, enjoying and manifesting all that your new self in Christ is. Wow! Walking with God is meant to be a wonderful moment by moment celebration of discovering all that I am in Christ. At my new birth I got all that Jesus is, and everyday I get to take that life out for a spin, and manifests the wonders of it all.