pattip2000 said:
There is a park near my house where I like to go and listen to music, walk, read, watch ducks, people watch and think. I went there today and brought my little pocket Bible with me. Being New Years Day and all I decided I wanted to read about new life, starting fresh, beginning again. So, I totally don’t know the Bible like I used to, you know when I actually went to church and read the Bible regularly , the Bible I had with me was no help either, non of the helps in the back applied to what I was looking for. So can you guys help?
Do any of y’all have favorite passages on beginning again?
I can tell you about "starting fresh", "beginning again" and "new life" as it relates to Christianity.
Every person was born with a sin nature (the urge/drive/compulsion to sin). If a person sins just one time, he is seperated from God, because God cannot abide in the presence of sin.
nperfect holiness. Since humans can't meet that standard by their own good works, we need a Savior to forgive those sins and "make all things new/wipe the slate clean".
That's where Christ comes in. He is the Son of God, yet in his brief time on earth, he was 100% percent human as well as 100% God. He was capable of sin, but never sinned. When he died on the cross and rose again, his perfect life was a substitute in death for our imperfect lives. He paid the debt we could never pay.
There is new life in Christ. When someone becomes a Christian (puts his faith and trust in Christ and what he has done for us and follows Christ), Christ's blood washes away all sin, and the righteousness of Christ is put upon that person. He is now acceptable for Heaven because his spirit is perfectly clean, not a spot of sin left. God has made the person into "a new creation":
“Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; all things are made new” (2 cor. 5:17)
A new creation. A brand new creation. What exactly does this mean? Well first, it means that in a Christian, the sin nature (the wicked spirit that lives in people that drives them to commit sin, and to rebel against God - Eph. 2:1 and 3) has been crucified. It is dead, dead, dead:
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
“Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. (Romans 6:6)
“Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old evil nature and all its wicked deeds.” (Colossians 3:9)
Because the sin nature is dead for a Christian, Christians are not slaves to sin, nor under the power of sin:
“We are no longer slaves to sin, for when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin.” (Romans 6:6-7)
So, when the sin nature is crucified, the Holy Spirit moves in. He is our new nature; the nature of Christ. He is who we really are now. Just as our sin nature had driven and urged us to rebel against God, our new nature, the Holy Spirit, drives us and urges us to “walk in the Spirit”, to do what is right in God’s sight, and to live for him.
“In its place you have clothed yourselves with a brand-new nature that is continually being renewed as you learn more and more about Christ, who created this new nature within you.” (Colossians 3:10)