“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5.17 NLT).
I’m very nostalgic. I still have every letter that my husband (then boyfriend) wrote me over thirty years ago. I also started journaling off and on again when I was fourteen. I kept every journal until around five years ago. I read through some of my journals from my high school and college years. Then I skimmed through some I wrote in my twenties and thirties. That’s when the thought suddenly struck me: “I am not this person anymore.” Yes, that person was part of the process of who I was becoming in Christ, but much of what I wrote I either disagreed with or seemed inconsequential to my current life of faith. I did something I never thought I would do. I threw away every one of those journals, and there were around fifteen of them. Many times, people hang onto things that happened to them or that they did in the past. Hanging onto our past mistakes is like carrying the dead weight of a body. That old us has died in Christ and is resurrected in Christ (Romans 6.8). We don’t need to carry our dead, imperfect selves when we have been made new in Christ! His sacrifice on the Cross has completely liberated us from our past, current and future sins. We are being made new every second, and we don’t have to shoulder the burden of our mistakes. We simply repent and give them to God. He takes them because He knows Jesus died for them. So let us not carry the weight of something that has already been lifted from us. Rather, we can walk in the beautiful grace of Christ.
Are there things from your past that you still carry around? Do your past sins or the sins of others done to you distort your view of life, others and yourself? How can you finally let go of what no longer exists and begin to walk in the freedom of grace?
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