If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away… all things have become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV

A few years ago, I attended a seminar on helping foster children recover from abuse. The speaker talked about a technique where children draw self portraits throughout the therapy process. As he flipped through the pictures, my eyes filled with tears. There were stick figures missing arms, legs, and eyes. The missing pieces on the screen reflected the missing pieces inside of the little artists who’d drawn them.

Suddenly my heart stopped. There, staring back at me from the screen, was a crudely drawn little monster. Some precious little boy had drawn himself with horns and claws and fangs because that’s how he saw himself: as an ugly monster unworthy of love. After the lecture, I went out to my car and sobbed. Maybe you know what that feels like,  too… a deep shame that lives in the core of your being. The truth was I recognized myself in that little boy’s self portrait.

Not long after that, during my quiet time on a Sunday morning before church, 2 Corinthians 5:17 jumped off the page: If anyone is in Christ, he IS a new creation. Old things HAVE PASSED away… all things HAVE become new. I’d probably read that scripture a hundred times before, but I’d never truly seen it until that moment. I wasn’t going through life slowly earning my new identity as a child of God. God had ALREADY given me my new identity. All I had to do was act like it.

Maybe you’ve found yourself in the same trap I’d fallen into. I’d confused identity with behavior. I thought what I did would slowly change who I was, when it was really the other way around. Because of Jesus… behavior no longer determines a child of God’s identity. Because of Jesus… our new identity in Christ determines our behavior (Romans 6:1-14). Because of Jesus… you and I are both a new creation.

H.C.