Articles

Our New Person

As Christians, we possess the greatest prize of all. We can be made new people.

We can put on a new person, which is not just different from our former self, but precisely the opposite.

The old person, impelled by self-grasping, is stripped away and replaced by the impulse of God, self-emptying love.

Put succinctly, we are renewed according to the image of our Creator.

The new person is not drawn along the lines normally used to shape our identity as human beings. It is not drawn along ethnic or national lines (Gentile or Jew), or religious lines (circumcised or uncircumcised), or geopolitical lines (barbarian or Scythian), or socioeconomic lines (slave or free).

Instead, it is drawn according to the utterly unique profile of Jesus Christ, in whom dwells all the fullness of God (Colossians 1:19).

Jesus Christ could scarcely be more full. That is why Paul exclaims triumphantly: ‘Christ is all’ (Colossians 3:11). He is all anyone could ever be.

And amazingly, we are just as full as he!

Why?

Because Christ, indwelled by God (Colossians 2:9), now indwells us (Colossians 2:10), filling us with all the fullness of God himself (Ephesians 3:19). We are thus filled by an infinite fullness.

It may be the most amazing revelation of the Scriptures. And it causes Paul to explode in wonder: ‘Christ in us, the hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:27).

What could bring more hope than the assurance of being filled by God’s glory?

And it’s a hope already being realized: because of indwelling Christ, we are being transformed into people who mirror in increasing increments the glory of God (2 Corinthians 3:18).