Galatians 3:27 NASB. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
Ephesians 4:22-24 NASB [22] in reference to your former manner of life, you laid aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, [23] and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, [24] having put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and true holiness. (I adjusted translation to represent the grammar of the original text better)
Romans 12:2 says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. I believe at the heart of a renewed mind is a continual remembering that we are a new self because we have closed ourselves with Jesus. In Ephesians 4:23 it says that we are to be renewed in the spirit of our mind. In other words, we are to cultivate a mindset that sees ourselves and everything that impacts our lives through the grid of being in Christ. We’ve all been given a new heart and a new identity in Christ, but it is our heads that have to be cleared to think differently. Proverbs says that as a person thinks, so are they; therefore, our perception, our mindset, or our self-consciousness about ourselves, will determine whether or not we live as the new creation or live in the deception of thinking like the old man used to think. I am sure you have all heard the analogy of renewing your mind through the story of the baby eagle raised as a turkey. The little eagle had fallen out of its nest, and a group of turkeys raised it. The eagle grew up thinking it was a turkey. One day, as it was walking along the ground, an adult eagle confronted it, asking why, as an eagle, it was walking around on the ground instead of flying. The young, now fully feathered eagle answered that it was walking around on the ground because it was a turkey. The other eagle walked the young eagle to the edge of a pond and had the young eagle look at itself in the reflection of the water and then turn around and look at all the turkeys. The young eagle discovered that it was different from all the other turkeys and after a few moments of discussion with the more mature eagle, the young eagle came to realize the truth about its identity. It was an eagle, created to fly and soar the heights, but because it thought it was a turkey, it had spent all of his life, up to that point, bound to the earth. The older eagle then walked the young eagle to the edge of a cliff, gave him instructions about flying, and pushed him off the cliff, and the young eagle discovered and manifested the glory of its true identity.
As our minds are renewed in believing and discovering all that it means to be in Christ and for Christ to be in us as our very life, we will soar the heights, manifesting the glory of our true identity. Jesus is what God believes about you. I did not say that you were Jesus, but I am saying that when God sees you, He sees you in union with Christ, and He sees all that Jesus is in you and all that Jesus is capable of doing through you. It is imperative, as new creations, that you refuse to believe anything about yourself that God doesn’t believe about you. It is so imperative that we are renewed in the spirit of our minds to constantly remember that it is Christ, in union with me, living out his life by his ability through my humanity moment by moment. Simply, restfully, joyfully acknowledging Him, in whom I live, and move, and have my being is what it means to have a renewed mind as a new creation in Christ. Paul says about himself that he was “a man in Christ” (2 Cor. 12:2). That was Paul’s self-consciousness. He had a renewed mind. Do you?