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Part 2 of 7
Identity Theft Series
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We believe there are three ways you can live your life. In the book of Acts, Christianity is called the way—not just a religious title or affiliation, but a way of life that changes everything about how you live.
You can live culture's way: the value systems and patterns of the world. You can live church's way: religion, which should serve relationship but sometimes replaces it. Or you can live the king's way: the way of the rabbi Jesus, who teaches us not just how to die, but how to live.
We call the Bible the blueprint to that elevated life. We don't believe you're deep if you can't apply it to your everyday life. We take the truth of scripture and build a bridge to how you actually live.
Jesus used one designation over 80 times to describe himself in the New Testament: son of man. Others called him son of God, but he called himself son of man.
This matters. The son of God became the son of man so that the sons of men could become sons of God. He came to teach us how to live a different life—an elevated life. Not just things in life, but a life itself: abundant, superior in quality and quantity, eternal.
Just because you're tempted to do some things you used to do doesn't mean you are who you used to be.
Every believer has to manage a specific tension: being a new person with some old passions, and being a new creature with some old cravings. Salvation changes your nature, but it doesn't erase your memory.
Life after salvation is not just about behavior modification—it's about memory management. It's the wisdom to know what to remember and what to release.
The Bible speaks to both. It says, "Forget not the former things," and also "Forgetting those things which are behind me, I press toward the mark." There are some things we need to forget, and other things we must not forget. Psalm 103:2 says, "Forget not all his benefits."
When God speaks of forgetting our sins, He's not saying He loses the ability to recall who we were. He's making a decision not to allow our past to influence how He handles and relates to us. When Paul says he's forgetting the things behind him, he's saying, I'm not going to allow my past to influence the way I see myself and the way I relate to my heavenly Father.
Some people conflate forgetting and forgiveness. They're not the same. A trigger can make you remember something you thought you forgot. The issue isn't whether the memory exists—it's whether you allow it to influence how you see yourself, how you see others, and how you relate to God.
First: A new nature but an old memory. God has made you new on the inside, but your mind still holds the receipts of who you used to be. The enemy, the accuser of the brethren, will try to pull those receipts out and weaponize your memory against you, impacting how you see yourself and your ability to receive from the Father.
Second: New affection but old appetite. God has changed what your spirit loves, but that doesn't change what your flesh likes. The new you loves what God loves, but the old you still craves what God hates.
Third: New direction with an old default. God has reoriented your life toward Him, but the muscle memory of where you used to go, who you used to be, what you used to reach for when stressed or lonely—that doesn't disappear at the altar. It has to be retrained. Sometimes it's not a desire that's retrained; it's restrained.
The proof that you are a new creature is not the absence of the old struggle. It's the presence of a new fight. Paul said in Romans, "The thing now that I'm doing, I hate." The fact that hate is present in the struggle is an indication of growth. You now have a conviction about things you did not have a conviction about before.
Paul writes to the Ephesians: "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and in your sins."
The Greek word for dead here is necross—the word used to describe a corpse. A corpse is present but not functioning. Death doesn't mean non-existence or absence; it means something that is present but not working the way God intended.
When Paul says you were dead, he means: You have a spirit, soul, conscience, and capacity for worship, for relationship with God, for right relationship with others, for righteousness—but none of it was functioning the way God intended. It's spiritual death: alive enough to breathe, but dead enough to miss the reason you're breathing.
Trespasses and sins are two different words. Trespasses refer to a deliberate deviation from God's ways—a willful, premeditated violation of God's law. I didn't stumble; I ran to it. Even after God tried to stop it, I did it anyway. It's not a stumble in the dark; it's a step we took in the light.
Sin is an archery term meaning to miss the mark. I tried to hit the target, but I missed it. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The target is God's glory, and everyone's arrow has fallen short.
When Paul writes to Rome, he's addressing tension between Jewish and Gentile Christians. He wants people to see: whether you're ten feet from the target or one inch away, God doesn't grade on a curve. You still miss it. The one who didn't hit the target at all needs grace, and the one who just missed the bullseye needs grace. All of us need God and grace.
Paul is saying: You were dead because of this condition. He's not saying your sin and trespasses made you dead; he's saying because you were spiritually dead, there are sin and trespasses. The dead nature produced dead behavior. We didn't miss the mark because we sinned enough to die. We missed the mark because the part of us designed to aim at the mark was no longer working.
In verses 2-3, Paul describes three influences on believers: the world, the devil, and the flesh.
The World: "You followed the ways of this world." The world didn't just surround you; it set your pace. It gave you a script for how to live. The way you approach manhood, marriage, resources, conflict, pain, and stress—all came from the world's script.
This is why spiritual death is hard to detect. When everybody around you walks in the same direction, you don't feel lost. When everybody does it the same way, you don't feel wrong—you feel normal. Some people think because they changed their morals, they changed their ways. But you may have just changed your morals; you didn't change your ways.
There are ways we have that go beyond just moral living. The world's influence is deeper than morals alone.
The Devil: Paul calls Satan "the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient." The word now at work is present tense—the enemy is not retired; he's still working. It's the Greek word energeo, the same word used when Paul says God works in us the will to do His good pleasure.
The devil doesn't just tempt from outside; he energizes from inside. Disobedience isn't just a choice; it's an electrical, energetic current, with the devil's power in the grid. Think about the energy that messiness takes, the energy that gossip takes, the energy that betrayal takes. The enemy energizes people to disobedience.
The Flesh: All of us lived among them, gratifying the cravings of the flesh. The flesh is a nature that exists within your humanity—not your physical body, but a nature oriented away from God.
When you don't have a healthy, biblical view of sanctification, you miss that spiritual growth is progressive. You don't include incremental evolution in your expectation of growth.
What happens is we have growth spurts and overestimate how much we've grown. We look at the gap between where we were and where we are and get satisfied. But you should be looking at the gap between where you are and where Jesus is.
If you just look backward at how far you've come, you might settle for where you are instead of being motivated to keep going to close the gap between yourself and Christ. Just because I'm not who I used to be doesn't mean I'm closer to who Christ is.
We assume postures of superiority in part because we can't see ourselves, and the Christian community is not often a truthful community in love. We don't become mirrors to each other. We talk about each other instead of to each other. So you can't see you, and nobody tells you about you.
Using Johari's window: people walk around with a blind self—you can't see something about yourself, but everybody else can, yet nobody says anything to you. This creates false superiority. We're on moral high horses we're not actually on.
We're dying on hills we're not even standing on yet. And the world sees the inconsistency. You can't tell the difference between the church's way and the world's way because we're not living differently. When the world looks at us, they see the hypocrisy. We're uninfluential because we're not actually the salt and light we claim to be.
Jesus said in John 13:34-35: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples."
That should be our distinction. Not morality or superiority, but love. If we could exercise real love, we'd have real influence.
Instead, many of us proclaim: I'm right. I'm better than you. I'm more right. But Jesus told a parable of two people praying. One said, "Lord, I thank you that I'm not like this person, that person, this person." The other said, "God, forgive me. I'm a sinner." The Father responded favorably to the second prayer.
Many Christians operate with the energy of the Pharisee—assuming the posture of an expert they're not on. We testify about our victories on social media, then go silent. We don't hear the sixth-month testimony, the seventh-month testimony, the eighth-month testimony. We disappear. The world sees that and wonders why we have no influence. They wouldn't let that influence them either.
The world doesn't have a problem with our flaws; they have a problem with our fakeness. One thing is to have a flaw; another is to be fake about your flaws.
What Paul models is authenticity with everybody, transparency with a few. Paul said, "I have a thorn in the flesh," but he didn't tell us what it was. In Romans, he says, "The thing I do, I hate," but he doesn't tell us what that thing is. He was smart enough to say, I'm struggling, but you don't need to know all the details. He models authenticity without oversharing.
The problem comes when we want to give the picture that we don't have a thorn, that we're not struggling. But you've got a thorn, I've got a thorn. I don't have to tell you what mine is, but don't act like you don't have one and try to crucify me for mine. You're crucifying me because my arrow is in the ground and yours is on the target—but it's still not center. You're closer, but we both still need grace.
The only thing God accepts is the target. That's what pleases the Father. But you can't hit it. So Jesus hit it for you, and God treats your life like it was His.
"Because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ. Even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved."
First, we see the motive of mercy: Because of His great love. There was nothing lovable about verses 1-3. But His love is not a response to our worth; it's a revelation of His character.
Second, we see the means of mercy: God who is rich in mercy. Grace and mercy swim in the same stream but are different. Grace is God giving you what you don't deserve. Mercy is God not giving you what you do deserve. Mercy is God interrupting His own law of sowing and reaping. He's not saying you don't reap—reaping is a universal law. Mercy says you don't reap what you could have reaped.
God's goodness is a better motivator for spiritual growth than wrath. Romans 2:4 says the goodness of God leads us to repentance. Paul isn't using mercy to encourage abuse of grace; he's using it as a motivator: Look how rich He's been in mercy to you. That should motivate you not to exploit grace or mercy, not to insult the spirit of grace.
Third, the moment of mercy: "Even when we were dead. Not after. Not once we were cleaned up." Grace didn't wait for the corpse to twitch. Grace came and got us while we were in the grave. It met us in the tomb, not in the hallway.
"For it is by grace you are saved." This isn't just saved from—it's saved for. If all you know is what you were saved from, you'll be grateful but aimless. But when you discover what you were saved for, you'll live grateful and on assignment.
The struggle is real. You will be tempted to do things you used to do. You will have old cravings and old passions. You will miss the mark. But God is real, and so is grace.
Grace goes into the grass when your arrow falls short. Grace retrieves the arrow that didn't hit the target, walks it back to you, puts it in your quiver, gives you another chance. Grace whispers in your ear: "Try again. Try again."
Maybe today didn't go the way you wanted. Maybe there are areas where you fell short. Grace is going to retrieve that arrow. Pull it out of the ground or off the target. Walk it back. Put it in your quiver. Whisper in your ear: "Try it again. Try again. Let me help you aim a little to the left next time. Pull back a little further. Let me help you."
The struggle is real, but so is God, and so is grace.
The enemy wants to use your misses in a way that names you. He wants you to identify yourself based on your misses, not your Maker.
Just because you're tempted to do some of the things you used to do doesn't mean you are who you used to be. May the words of the Apostle Paul land richly in the soil of your heart:
The struggle is real. But so is God. And so is grace.
You are blessed, chosen, peculiar, anointed, selected, predestined to be conformed into the image of God's Son. Rest in the revelation that the Son of God became the son of man so that the sons of men could become the sons of God.
