On Easter Sunday, a young man sang a song that repeated a phrase that has stayed with me all week: Everything must die, to rise again. Not sure if that’s the exact wording, but that’s the idea.

We celebrated resurrection on that day–have you been celebrating it this week, all week, every day? We can do that! Our old lives are dead; Christ has given each of us a new life.

The amazing truth is that in this new life, we are to become like Christ himself, like God, created again, born again, given new life by the Holy Spirit.

Peter gives us a glimpse of what God has planned for His children. (Remember him? the one who ran away in cowardice when someone suggested he was a friend of Jesus’?)—

May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.

By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.

And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

There’s so much in this passage: knowing God and Jesus brings grace and peace, His power gives us everything we need to live as He wants us to live.

And none of those things are promises for some far-off, eternal day. They are promises for now.

But the real zinger for me is … Wow… did you catch this? You have God’s promises that you can share His divine nature! The corrupt, worldly nature that you inherited can be put to death, and you are reborn to a new life.

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

And Hebrews 12:10 talks about us sharing in His holiness. Wow.

Will you believe that, beloved child of God? Will you believe that the old you is dead, that you’ve been given a new life to share in our Lord’s divine nature and holiness? Do you believe that the Spirit is changing you into the image of Christ?

And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

The Greek word used here that we translate “changed” means “to change fundamentally and completely from one state to another.” Wow. Changed from ME to HIM.

I know exactly what some of you are thinking… I know, because I’ve thought or said it myself. “I am so far from being God’s masterpiece … I’d like to be, but those old, ugly habits still rise up sometimes … I have those days when I am everything but holy … I am so far from what God wants me to be … ”

Yet God says that your old self can be put to death and you can have a new nature and new life. I believe it’s all part of His plan to redeem and reclaim us. He created us in His image to have a relationship with Him. We corrupted and ruined that. But whatever we have been in the past, is now being created anew and changed into his glorious image.

God says this is what He is doing in your life.

Will you believe Him?

Spirit, help our unbelief!

　*

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:2-4, Ephesians 2:10, 2 Corinthians 3:18b (all NLT)