Believing a Subtle Lie

Several months ago I heard a sermon reminding me of my position in Christ. As I sat there listening I began to realize that somewhere along the line I had slowly forgotten the truth. It was a subtle change. A slight twisting of the truth. But it had so permeated my mind that it began to affect my thinking and the way I lived out my life. Our enemy, Satan, is good at that isn’t he? Just a slight change here or there, a subtle lie. He has been doing it since he deceived Eve in the Garden. Why? Because it works. Satan knows that God’s children typically can’t be fooled by an outright lie so he often uses a slight twist of the truth.

I could write a whole blog on the above paragraph, and perhaps one day I will. But today I want to write a bit about the subtle lie God brought to my attention because I believe it’s one that many struggle with.

The lie? “I need to bury the old me”. Now many of you will read that and say, “but it's true.” The lie is subtle, hardly even noticeable.

So let’s talk about what the truth is, I think then the lie will become clear. Once we become followers of Christ and accept Him as The Son of God who died for our sins we become a new person. The old passes away and new things have come. We are new creatures. When we come to Christ we place our old sin nature at the foot of the cross and replace it with the perfect nature of Christ. (2 Cor 5:17-21) Our old self is dead. We have been buried with Christ. We (our flesh) no longer live. (Gal 3:20) Christ now lives in you. He has taken up residence in this flesh of ours through the Holy spirit. (John 14:16-17; Gal 2:20; Eph 3:17) Positionally I am in Christ. The old me is gone, she was buried with Christ never to rise again. (Col 3:3; Eph 1:3-14) To be in Christ means God no longer sees my sins, He sees the righteousness of His own Son, Jesus Christ. (Romans 6:1-7; Eph 2:13)

That is the truth, but, we still live in these bodies of flesh, don’t we? It’s a constant struggle. A battle between our flesh, sin and what the Spirit calls us to do.

We Sometimes fail to live in the truth we know. In that failure, we often feel like we have to start all over again. We can feel condemned.The emotion called Shame often rises up in us when we fail and the enemy uses shame to beat us down and make us doubt whether we were ever really dead, buried and brought to newness of life. But we do not need to bury ourselves again. No, rather, we pick ourselves up and walk in the new life that Christ purchased for us. We choose to live with a whole new mindset of daily putting on and taking off. We choose to put on the new life and take off the old life. We choose to walk in accordance to what the Spirit tells us and not what our flash desires.

 Oh, the enemy wants to send our minds back to the grave. He wants us to stay buried, to continue to live as if we are not alive! And it’s a battle of continued renewal. We can not do it on our own but, in Christ, we do have the power to shout “the old me is dead and buried, I am forgiven. I am new IN Christ!” 

 God wants us to renew our mind with the truth of His word. He wants us to live out our position that He purchased for us. Why not go back a look up and meditate on some of the verses I referenced including Ephesians 4:22-24. When we know the truth it’s easier to stop those subtle (and not so subtle) lies that our flesh, our enemy and our world shouts to us on a daily basis.