Your mighty arm shall bring you victory, and your right hand may conquer all. ♪ The people's hope to you I'll never know ♪ ♪ Your throne of hope shall stand forevermore ♪ ♪ Your strength of faith will outright stand the truth ♪ ♪ God sees your love and weakness abhorred ♪ ♪ Therefore has God your God anointed you ♪ ♪ With God of yore, no other head may share your robes of gold ♪ Thank you. Please be seated. And as you do so, do turn with me to 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Those of you who are regulars will immediately realize that this is not part of a series that we are going through. This is just a unique message that I am giving because it is the beginning of the year. Now, I must admit, I'm coming from leave, I wasn't expecting so many people in here because the students are supposed to be on holiday. Are any of the campuses already open? I might be a little out of touch. Lusaka campuses. So all of you are non-students except those that have stuck around. Okay. I was thinking we're all on leave. But it's good to see so many of you. But that also is a message we should send to the deacons. Deacons, if this is the way it is without the students, we may need to do a little bit more to extend this building. Okay, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and we'll read the paragraph that ends this section. So from verse 16 of 2 Corinthians and chapter 5. The Bible reads there, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God who, through Christ, reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, We are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be seen, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Oh brethren, as I've already said, this is our first Sunday of the year, and in many ways we can speak in the words of the Apostle Paul here, that the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. There's a lot that obviously continues from 2024 into 2025. Hopefully our marriages have continued. If any have ended over the New Year's Day, let us know as elders, we'll try and help. But our families have obviously continued. School, for many of us, we haven't graduated. We will still be continuing. Work is also continuing. Hopefully none of you ended up being laid off while you were enjoying Christmas or New Year. There's a lot that no doubt continues from last year into this year. But also, We can say of a truth that the old is gone. 2024 finished and we entered into 2025. Some of you may have gone to churches, sneaked into churches that were doing crossovers. Kabwata Baptist Church normally doesn't do that, but every so often you see on social media a stray church member who went somewhere and, yeah, was going through activities into the new year. And nobody gets excommunicated because of that. But there obviously were fireworks that were going into the sky people shouting 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and I'm not exactly sure whether they said Hallelujah after that or whatever it was, but there was the recognition that the old has gone, has passed away. The new has certainly come. And for some people, a new year also means new year resolutions. Something that says to you that, okay, I had my difficulties, I made wrong decisions, and so on. I fell back in terms of energy and activity, let me now put down three, four, five things that I want to make decisions about that will then take me into this new year. The old is over. I need to make resolutions about this new year that has come. Well, I want to use this same concept of the old being gone and the new coming in with respect to the nature of salvation. That's what I want to do this morning as we look at verse 17 of the passage that I have just read. Verse 17 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. It has gone. The new has come. Now why am I doing so? Well, for two reasons. First of all, we live in Zambia, where the Christian faith is fairly popular. People will quite easily make some kind of decision to be numbered among Christians. and therefore they immediately conclude that they have truly become Christians, but over time it becomes fairly evident that they have never known what it means to be a true child of God. And sadly, when that happens and they backslide, they give up their profession of faith, we tend to say that they have lost their salvation, when really the truth is they never experienced the true nature of salvation. They never did. So all that has happened is like a dog going back to its vomit, they have simply gone back to that which they never really abandoned. They never went from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. They never went from death to life. They simply took on a profession and in the midst of the difficulties of life, they've abandoned that profession. That's all that has happened. But also because we've engineered various ways of making people to arrive at decisions that make them conclude that they've therefore become Christians. The Otakot system, for instance, that makes people come forward. The signing somewhere on the dotted line at the end of a tract or evangelistic booklet. The repetition of a sinner's prayer at the end of an evangelistic activity, like maybe one-on-one evangelism. and speaking in that sense about the gospel. And someone then says, OK, what should I do in the light of what you have shared with me? And the tendency is to say, well, repeat this prayer after me. Repeat this prayer after me. And the person, having repeated the prayer, will even say to that individual, praise the Lord. You've now become a Christian. You've now become a child of God, and so forth. Now, it is possible for a person walking up to the front at the end of an evangelistic message or signing on a dotted line or repeating a sinner's prayer. It is possible for a person to genuinely, from their hearts, cry to the Savior that they might be saved. but it is also possible. And sadly, so often is the case that people do that and they don't experience real salvation, but they go on in their lives based on the fact that they did what we told them to do. Therefore, surely they must be Christians and yet they are not. How does a person know that they have become Christians? Well, it is this kind of transformation that is spoken about in our text. The old passes away. The new comes in. More or less what has happened in the last one week, when we can speak in terms of 2024 is gone. None of us has remained in it. It's over. It's history. 2025 has come in. It is new. We have entered into it. The old is gone. The new has come. Let's look at this text for a moment and learn from it what it is that is going on here that the Apostle Paul refers to as salvation. First of all, he says there in verse 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. In other words, a person becoming a Christian, he or she gets united to Christ. It is the way in which a person who wants to plant, say, a certain variety of oranges or lemons will graft that variety into an older stem that is very much natural to our immediate environment. They realize that this foreign one may not necessarily survive in the kind of weather or climate that is in the immediate context. splice the new one into the old one, and you now have a new shoot that is coming from there, a new variety that is blossoming and producing new fruit. Why? Because it is in union with the old one. Well, that's what it means to become a Christian. It is that your life is now growing out of the life of God in Jesus Christ. It is that you have been united to Christ. You are in union with Him. And therefore, this new life you are living is a life that is in Christ. You've been removed from the old stock. the stock that would have been in this natural context, you've been added to a new one. And it is from that new one that new life is beginning to flow. Well, the Bible speaks about us being in Christ in at least three ways. The first is in terms of by covenant. by covenant. In other words, when we are born, we are in Adam. Adam, not simply that we are his posterity, but that God entered a covenant with Adam and said to him that if you do this, you will surely die. Well, because he was our federal head and he did that, We who are his children have been paying for it ever since. It's the fruit of an agreement that was there between God and Adam. Well, thankfully, in that same eternity, God entered a covenant with his son, Jesus Christ. to whom he gave a people, what we call an elect people. And they entered into an agreement that if Christ was to come and Christ was to die, the fruit of that death would come to his elect people. We know that pretty well, don't we? From the famous passage in Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter one. Verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Listen to verse four. Even as he chose us in him, there it is, in union with him, when? Before the foundation of the world. So that's the first sense in which the Bible speaks about us being in Christ. There's a second sense in which the Bible speaks about us being in Christ, and it is with respect to the time when Christ paid the price for our sin. that something that took place in the life of Christ was also made ours at that same time. Let me quickly take you to Romans chapter 6. We won't spend too much time because I need to move on to the third sense in which this is true concerning us. The third sense. Romans chapter 6 and verse 5, for if we have been united with him in a death like his, We shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His." He's referring there to the fact that when Jesus Christ was dying on the cross, in an objective sense, those that were given to Him were in him, and therefore that which he was procuring on the cross was as good as theirs. That's what he's saying there. Thankfully, he repeats the same line of argument in our text. So let's go back to 2 Corinthians and chapter 5. That's where we are looking. But this time, verse 14. Look at the way he concludes. For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. That's our conclusion. That when He was paying the price on the cross, we were in Him in an objective sense. And so we benefit from his death. We died in him 2,000 years ago. But then there is a third sense in which we are in him, and it is the sense that Paul is dealing with here. And it is at conversion. When we become Christians, The spirit of the living God immerses us into Christ, baptizes us into Christ, puts us into union with Christ in an experiential way. In other words, that which took place on the cross 2,000 years ago becomes ours by actual experience. We see this back in Ephesians again, chapter one. So if we can just quickly turn there, Ephesians chapter one and verse 13, verse 13. In him also, okay, that is in Christ, In Him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Okay, so this is no longer in eternity. This is no longer 2,000 years ago on the cross. This is when you heard the gospel and something that took place there and believed in Him. So it was at the point, not only of you hearing, but of you putting your trust in Jesus Christ. What happened? You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. So that's when we put in Him, in that third sense, in Him you also, when you heard, were sealed, you were included in Him. Now brethren, that's important. It's important because what it says to us then is that Christianity is not simply a decision you make to be numbered with a certain group of people. Christianity is more than taking on yourself a form of religion, which is what happens when a person becomes a Muslim. When a person becomes a Muslim, nothing happens to him. Absolutely nothing. All that takes place is that the person makes a decision. that from now on, I will follow the teachings of Muhammad from now on. He may register his name at a local mosque or something. I'm not sure that they baptize their converts, but whatever process they take them through, the person goes through it. But nothing happens to him. In true Christianity, Biblical Christianity, there is an immersion that takes place. A person gets united to Christ experientially. And what takes place then? Well, the Apostle Paul puts it this way. Back to our text. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Wow! He is a new creation. That's the way that the apostle Paul is trying to describe the transformation the seismic transformation that takes place when a person truly becomes a child of God. He's speaking about the great and radical nature of what happens at that point by borrowing the phrase, a new creation. If your car is giving you problems and you take it to the garage and they fix it, you don't drive it back home and call all your children out of the house and say, come and see my new car. They'll quickly take you to Chinamma, straight. There's nothing new there. Your car may have a new carburetor or whatever extra new part that has been put in there, but the car is not new. It's just been fixed. The apostle Paul just felt he needed to bring in a phrase that best captures what has happened when a person says, you know what, I became a Christian yesterday. What is it that they're referring to? Did they just make a decision to start following Jesus when previously they were following their own sinful desires? Oh, that's partly true. But Paul is saying, no, there's something that is more glorious than that. It is this, that that which did not exist before has begun to exist. That's what creation is. that which did not exist before has begun to exist. There is a totally new state of being. I can't think of any better way to describe a person becoming a Christian. or to use other words that he uses elsewhere, you were dead. You've now come alive. That's how serious it is. From death, not that you fainted and then people poured some water on you and you woke up again. No, no, no. You were dead. And now you have come to life. The Apostle Paul here uses not just the fact that you are a creation, but a new creation. A new creation. the phrase new there is not simply in terms of something that did not exist but now exists, but it is also in terms of something that is uncontaminated, something that is unused, it's never been used before, something that was previously unknown and has now come to be known. something that is remarkable or excellent and so on. That's the phrase that he is using there. Now whichever way you look at it, it is a transformation that captures, indeed really captures the attention of those before whom it is. In other words, you can't become a Christian and it's only you who knows about it because it's in your heart. And you have to be trying to convince people around you. In fact, people will ask, what has happened? Why are you behaving like this? There's definitely something different. You can explain it simply, that yes, there's been a major overhaul that has taken place in my soul. A transformation that can only be likened to a new creation. That's what God has done. Paul is not content to end with the phrase, a new creation. He extends it with the phrase, the old has passed away, the new has come. Let's read it again. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation or a new creature. The old has passed away, the old is gone, the new has come. He's deliberately wanting to separate your former life with your new life. Deliberately so. When he says the old is gone, the new has come. There are times when, as a fruit of my own evangelistic efforts, I often go back to individuals over and over and over again, sometimes for over one year. And as I begin my discussions with the guys that I'm visiting, I say, okay, so tell me what has happened between that time and now and so on, and they're trying to encourage me to keep coming. So they tend to say something like, yeah, I'm seeing changes. Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. So continue coming. I'm making some improvements here and some improvements there, thinking I'm being encouraged by this slow change. And I do have to disappoint such people. Because I'm not expecting slow changes. I'm expecting a transformation from death to life. I'm expecting somebody to be able to say, you know, God has become real to me in a very unusual way. I'm opening my Bible, and previously it was a dead book, but now when I open it, it's full of life. It's fresh. It's meaningful. Pastor, something has happened to me. Something. I don't know what it is, but something has changed. The old is gone. The new has come. That's what Paul is referring to here. I once had worldly opinions, but I don't think that way anymore. I now have spiritual opinions. Isn't that what he says in verse 16? From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, according to the world. We've stopped doing that. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard Him thus no longer. Our thinking has completely changed. At one time, My thinking was based on selfish principles. What is it that I will get out of this? That's all I thought about and like. But now I think in terms of godly principles. How can I glorify God in what I am doing here? Something has definitely changed. The old is gone. The new has come. Friends, that's the way the Bible describes a Christian. Just the way in which on New Year's Day, you were all now sending messages to one another. saying goodbye 2024, goodbye. Some people love to have dreams which never come true. They even say bye to all disappointments. Bye to poverty. Feels nice, isn't it? Bye to joblessness. Bye to singleness. And so on and so forth. And then they find them continuing in 2025. But at least you can understand the picture. They're saying we had so many disappointments in 2024, we don't want to cross over with those problems into 2025. Now, of course, you don't just wish problems away. They still follow you. Paul is making the point here that becoming a Christian has this moral transformation, this spiritual transformation that can enable you to say to the devil, to the world, and to your own sinful nature, guys, I've crossed over. I'm now in Christ. There are new principles that will be guiding me. And it is God in my life. He came in. I am new. Let me just quickly show you a few passages that bring this about. One of them is quite a favorite passage of mine. It's in first Corinthians and chapter six, first Corinthians chapter six. It's a warning about the people that will not go to heaven even though they are in the Christian church. 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 9, and then those who will go to heaven. And I want you to notice this because something has happened to them. 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 9. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Now the reason why he's saying, don't you know, do not be deceived, is because he's warning the Corinthians themselves. He's saying, if this describes you, it doesn't matter whether you are in the church in Corinth. It doesn't matter whether you think you became a Christian because I, Paul, preached the word of God. It doesn't matter. You are not going to go to heaven. If this describes your life, you are on your way to hell. Well, how do we know those who are on their way to heaven? Listen to this. Verse 11. And such were some of you. Well, what happened? But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified. in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. There it is. You were once like this. This was your life. 2024 as it were. But somewhere around that midnight, you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, you crossed over. Now, this is your new life in Christ by the power of the Spirit of God. Can you speak in those terms? Can you? That this is what I once was. This is what I now am. I crossed over. Paul writing to the Philippians in Philippians chapter 3 puts it this way. Philippians chapter 3 verse 17. I want you to notice that he even wants to shed tears when he thinks about the way people live without Christ. Verse 17, brothers, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears. walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. That's the way their lives are. They live in sin. They drink in sin as if it is water. He says in verse 19, their end is destruction, their God is their belly, and their glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. Now listen to the contrast, and it's crucial that we don't miss it. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself. The point he's making there is that we are not like them. The people that have just described, we are not like them. It breaks our hearts to imagine that people should live like this. Now, President, how dare we accept that people are converted who live like that? How dare we? Under the pretext that, you know, we shouldn't judge. No, we shouldn't judge other people. We shouldn't judge. Come on, the Bible itself judges. It's saying people who live like this are heading for destruction. They are not with us awaiting the glorious Savior from heaven. There's a difference. A very real difference. And we should not compromise because we are simply encouraging people to go to hell on a religious wheelchair. That's what we do. Let me give you one more and with that I must hurry on to close. First Thessalonians and chapter one. First Thessalonians and chapter one. Let me begin from verse eight. My temptation is to begin a little earlier, but I'll discipline myself and start from verse eight. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone everywhere. What it means by that is wherever we are going now to preach the gospel, people are telling us about transformed lives in Thessalonica. As we go on in Macedonia, we go on in Achaia, people are telling us that they have heard of the transformation that has taken place. Your faith in God has gone everywhere. So that we need not say anything. But that doesn't mean we're not preaching the gospel. It's saying we don't need to convince people that Jesus changes lives. We don't need to. They themselves are telling us that your Jesus changes lives. Let's go on. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come." Saying there, The people themselves are telling us that, yes, you are the guys we heard about who visited Thessalonica. And by the time you left that city, individuals who were spending their time and their money and everything about them, bowing down to idols, abandoned those idols altogether. There was a transformation, a major transformation, an observable transformation, where now they are speaking about the Lord, serving the Lord, loving the Lord, worshiping the Lord. Jesus and Jesus and Jesus that he's speaking about and that they're waiting for him to come back. It's a complete change. They are testifying about it to us. Why? Because the old is gone. It's passed away. It's gone. Idols, gone. A life lived in emptiness and debauchery, gone! It's a new life now. A life that seeks to glorify God. Is that you? You claim to be a Christian. Is that you? Can you honestly say that the man The woman I used to be is dead, is buried six foot in the ground, gone. The word 2024 is gone, gone. And the person you are looking at is brand new. just as 225 was born a few days ago. It's the new me. Gone. Can you speak in those terms? Now you may be sitting there thinking, well, come on, look, it's not possible. It's not possible. People don't just change like that. You need to give them time to be slowly, slowly changing, slowly. Well, let me agree with you first of all by saying you are right. It is impossible. But you are wrong because All this is from God. That's what Paul goes on to speak about at the beginning of verse 18 there. The old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this is from God. Friends, salvation is not something you do. No. It is something God does to you. And this God is the creator of the entire universe, entire universe. Our telescopes are still simply scratching the surface of this almost infinite world that God created. Can he fail to fix your little soul? Can he? He obviously can't. So for the reasons I gave at the beginning of my message, which I'll recount, it's important that we don't lose sight of this. The two reasons I gave is, it's very easy in Zambia to claim to be a Christian. Very easy. And number two, We have factory processes that often end up making people think they are Christians when they are not. And therefore, it's crucial that we go back to the basics. What is Christianity according to the good old book? What is Christianity? And it's what we've learned today. It is being in Christ. It is being a new creation. It is the old being gone and the new coming in. Let me ask you, does that describe you? You claim to be a Christian today. Does that describe you? Now, please listen to me. With all the love in my soul, don't allow yourself to come up with a third category. Yes, there are outright sinners there, terrible sinners. And yes, there appears to be certain Christians who, yes, you sort of admire them at a distance. Me, I'm in this category. Like the way it is at dawn. There's that time when you can't tell, is it day or is it night? Is it day? Even your solar system is trying to make up its mind. Is there enough sun to power the house? No, not yet. And you want to be there. This is where I am. Maybe by the end of this year or next year, yes, maybe I'll get there. But for now, surely, this must be good enough. No, it's not. It's not. You're either in the dark night or you are in the daylight. You either hate sin or you love it. You either love God or you hate Him. You are either dead or alive. You are either a new creation or an old one. You are either in the kingdom of darkness, of Satan, or you are in the kingdom of God. And let me give you advice. It's always better to make the mistake of thinking, I'm not a Christian, and then pleading with Jesus to save you. It's always better. Than for you to think you are, when you are not. and then you continue until you land in hell and it's too late. So I would rather you're one of those individuals who's still going to Christ saying, Jesus, please save me, please, please save me, please! Until the Lord assures you that you are saved. that I have changed you from the inside out so that you can join the people of God from an assured heart singing, I am a new creation. No more in condemnation. That's over. It's gone. Now marching forward in full faith because I'm a child of God. May you answer that question honestly today. Is the old gone? Am I looking into the new you? May you answer that question with judgment seat honesty. Judgment seat honesty. The Bible has spoken. What is your answer? Amen.