The caterpillar, a worm, goes into the cocoon — a chrysallis, in which the root word, appropriately, is “Christ.” And it emerges a butterfly, completely transformed. The old has passed. The new has arrived. It was once weighed down by gravity; now it can fly. Christians are once under the reign of sin, but now we can live in freedom. And you can also see why it’s so painful to me that so many Christians don’t understand this? When I hear a Christian say, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace,” I want to say, “that makes as much as a butterfly saying, “I’m just a worm with wings.”
New Creation
William Temple
No one who is not a Christian in spirit can perform the Christian act; and the Sermon on the Mount is not a code of rules to be mechanically followed; it is the description of the life which any man will spontaneously lead when once the Spirit of Christ has taken complete possession of his heart.
Dan McCollam
In terms of your heavenly identity, alignment is simply defined as positioning yourself to agree and ally with what God says about you. It’s taking off anything that doesn’t look like the person heaven describes and putting on the things that do.
Winnie Banov
In union with Christ, we can be consciously aware that the person we used to be – our old man, our former nature, our old sinful self – was co-crucified with Christ so that the tyranny of sin has been broken over us once and for all. We are no longer slaves to sin. One nail pierced two hands!
N.T. Wright
The Word through whom all things were made is now the Word through whom all things are remade.
Rob Coscia
When present circumstances trigger old ways of coping—with anger, fear, or hopelessness, take a step back. Give Jesus some room to remind you how much he loves you, who you really are, and that you’re more than able to deal with everything in front of you peacefully, joyfully, and powerfully.
“Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone, and a new life has truly begun” (2 Cor. 5:17).
T.D. Jakes
Come hell or high water you will never take me back to the place I was before. I have been through too much to let life whoop me again. My faith is stronger than it’s ever been, my mind is more tenacious than it’s ever been, my soul is more absolute.
Kathryn Kuhlman
The spiritual birth gives man a new nature, new desires; the things he once loved, he now hates; and the things he once hated, he now loves, for he is a new creature in Christ Jesus.
Kathryn Kuhlman
God does not patch up the old life, or make certain repairs on the old life; He gives a new life, through the new birth.
Samuel Logan Brengle
Some objector says, “I don’t believe that we can be holy till the hour of death. The Christian life is a warfare, and we must fight the good fight of faith until we die, and then I believe God will give us a dying grace.” A great many honest Christians told exactly this view and hence put forth no real effort to stand perfect and complete and all the (present) will of God. (Colossians 4:12) for them. And so they pray daily, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven,” Matthew 6:10 yet they do not believe it is possible for them to do the will of God, and so they really make Jesus the author of a vain prayer which is only idle mockery to repeat.