believe

Imagine when I arrive home one night, the neighbor kids playing in the yard with my children have been perfect angels. They have not thrown rocks, fought or used bad language. Yet suppose my children did all those bad things. At suppertime, who will be invited to my table to eat- the neighbor children, or my children? Mine, of course!
But the neighbor children who acted better, why are they not invited in? Because they have the wrong last name and are not my children.
One day there will be a great feast in heaven, and those who attend will not be there on the basis of their works but on the basis of their second birth. They must have the appropriate last name “Child of God”. Only our co-crucifixion and experience of His life in us PRESENTLY affords us this privilege.
All that is true about Christ’s life is true of the NEW YOU. Do you see the importance of this? Each person has taken it’s own peculiar form of events, temptations, and sins of the past. One has become a gossip, one a homosexual, another an alcoholic, one filled with arrogance, the other a loner, and the list goes on. But each one has the opportunity of exchanging what he has for what Christ is.
Example: Once a Christian man introduced himself as a recovering alcoholic. He was then asked, “Which would you rather be, a recovering alcoholic or a child of God?” There are 2 ways to be controlled by alcohol, one is needing it, and the other is having to stay away from it. Either way, one’s identity remains the same- an alcoholic.
Jesus did not come so we could remain the same and merely be sinners who don’t sin. He takes away the life in us that desires sin and replaces it with a heavenly one - His very LIFE. We possess a new identity. No person can live for God without it. If you try on your own you will always be aware of personal failure. But since Jesus Christ is alive, not just in heaven, but inside of you, HE lives and acts through you. There is nothing for you to do but rest in that and stay aware. This is what the Bible means when it says “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”