You’ve probably heard a person, after having a really profound and life-altering experience, or maybe a really great nap, describing themselves as feeling like a new person. This is because we, as people, tend to exaggerate. But despite our being prone to exaggeration, there really is one experience that makes us a new person.
When a person places faith in Christ, that person undergoes a fundamental change of identity. He or she goes from being an enemy under God’s wrath (Eph. 2:1-3) to being welcomed into God’s family as a beloved child (Eph. 2:19).
Not only that, the believer in Christ is declared righteous on account of Christ’s perfect life and substitutionary death and resurrection. No longer is the person a slave to sin, defined by past failures or present struggles. The person has been delivered from the realm of darkness and now belongs to the kingdom of light (Col. 1:13).
In other words, when anyone puts their faith in Jesus, everything about them is different, even if they still feel exactly the same as they did the moment before they were saved. They are a “new creation” in whom the old, sinful self is passed away and the new, redeemed self is alive and progressing, becoming more and more like Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).
It seems to me that we readily hear that we are still sinners than that we have been delivered from the dominion of the power of sin. We are sinful but we are no longer slaves to Sin. Even now we are more than conquerors through Christ who strengthens us. We can only deny self, resist the devil, yield our members as instruments of righteousness, speak the truth and love one another as Christ as loved us by acknowledging these truths and praying God to work them out in our experiences.