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Summary
In this episode of “Dispatches from the Spiritual Front,” Alan Wartes explores the struggle many Christians face between living in the world and embracing a new life in Christ. He emphasizes that faith in the gospel should not leave believers feeling stranded between two worlds, but rather empower them to live fully in the freedom that Christ offers. Wartes discusses the concept of divided living, referencing biblical passages that highlight the importance of choosing to serve God over worldly systems. He encourages listeners to reject lukewarm teachings and embrace their identity as new creations in Christ, emphasizing that this transformation is not just a one-time event but an ongoing process of conversion.
Wartes uses the metaphor of ice melting into water to illustrate the transformation believers undergo when they accept their new life in Christ. He stresses the importance of believing in this new identity and surrendering to the Holy Spirit to fully experience the freedom and power that comes with it. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to open the door to new life and fully embrace the promises of God, encouraging them to let go of their old selves and step into the flow of eternal life.
Takeaways
Living half a life of faith is not okay.
We can’t serve both God and mammon; it’s impossible.
The new creation has come; the old has gone.
Titles
Embracing New Life: The Transformation in Christ
From Ice to Water: The Journey of Spiritual Conversion
Sound bites
“A house divided against itself can’t stand.”
“The new is here. Present tense, ours for the taking.”
“To be water requires you to cease being ice entirely.”
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Spiritual Living
00:56 The Struggle Between Two Worlds
04:44 Understanding Spiritual Conversion
08:24 Embracing New Life in Christ
09:59 Call to Action: Entering New Life
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.
If you’ve found your way to this podcast, then you’re probably ready, as I am, to stop pretending that the average common way of Christian living in this world is all there is. You feel it in your bones, that faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ was never meant to leave us stranded and flailing in no-man’s land between two worlds.
And yet we have to admit it, that is how most Christians live today.
On one hand, we still live as if we’re subject to the rules of this world, set by the ruler of this world, Satan. And on the other, we know we are called to a new way of life, a holy way, but it’s on a very high shelf and we can’t reach it.
Paul described this as a warning in Galatians 5:
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery”
Galatians 5:1.
Those who try to live a severed, burdened life will always fail to some degree at both halves because a house divided against itself can’t stand. Jesus said, we can’t serve both God and mammon, meaning the whole world system. We have to pick.
He didn’t say it’s tricky to serve both. He said it’s impossible. And when we see life as a tug of war between these two that we have to fight, guess which side wins? Inch by inch or maybe in a moment of crisis, we fall back on what we know best, the world’s way.
And then we read, where Paul wrote to the Romans in chapter 8:
“No, in all these we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I’m convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”
Romans 8:37-38
It’s really tragic that these words meant to be the greatest pep talk of all time can sound and feel like an indictment, like an accusation.
Because in divided living, I don’t feel much like a conqueror. I feel separate from the love of God most of the time. Verses like these can make us want to run and hide from God because we feel as naked as Adam in the garden.
It’s past time for us to get to the bottom of this. It’s time to reject the status quo lukewarm teaching we’ve heard from so-called leaders who are also desperate, in desperate need of the truth. They just don’t know it.
Living half a life of faith is not okay, and it’s not what God intends for us.
Here is the truth that few have yet to fully grasp. Paul left no room for conditions or caveats in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 when he said:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17.
In my NIV translation, there’s even an exclamation point there. The new is here! Present tense, hours for the taking. Hallelujah.
Now, God is faithful beyond all description in keeping His part of the promise of the New Covenant. So if we struggle, if we’re stuck still looking at the promise of new life as if from the outside in, then the reason why must lie in our own persistent confusion.
I think it would help if we could better visualize what it means to become something completely new and yet still be ourselves. I mean, what does that even look like?
A perfect picture of this is found in nature, or in your kitchen for that matter. I’m talking about what happens when ice becomes water. Physicists call it phase change, and they define it as the conversion of matter from one state into another.
I mean, we’ve all seen it. When ice has absorbed enough heat, it becomes something totally different, completely new. It’s chemically unchanged, but you wouldn’t know that by how it looks or feels or behaves.
I live in Colorado, so I’m very familiar with this wonderful image of a frozen stream melting in spring, releasing water to flow away and join the awakening life of the earth.
It’s no accident that we use the word conversion in both cases to describe ice becoming water and a person becoming a new creation. This is what being in Christ is meant to do. Not just to cancel the debt, but to literally convert anyone who believes from a state of frozen bondage to sin and death into something new, free and full of power in Him.
Now, we need to stop there and clear up some common confusion. Most people think the conversion we’re talking about happens all at once, when a person first confesses their sins and believes they are forgiven through the power of Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection.
Now to be sure, that is the essential door we must all come to and walk through for any of this to be available to us. But what I’m talking about is what happens next.
Because it is quite possible to believe your sins are forgiven and washed clean by the blood of Jesus and still not believe that that very same sacrifice secured for you the right to be made into something entirely new.
That is what leaves us stuck and torn between two worlds. That is why so many believers today live in frustration and defeat. I mean, what would it look like if ice had the power to choose, despite the freely given heat of the sun, to stay teetering between frozen bondage and liquid freedom? In that state, it really could be neither.
So here’s what we must do to break this impasse and fully embrace the conversion into new life that Jesus bought for us.
First, believe it. Accept that new life is yours in the power of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant. The Bible is absolutely filled with promises to bolster that belief. Find them, claim them.
Second, surrender to this with all your heart. Let go of your old self. Let the Holy Spirit take over.
To be water requires you to cease being ice entirely. There is no middle way.
When you let go, you will enter the flow of eternal life, carried along by God’s will toward his kingdom as he promised. Jesus invited us to this very thing when he spoke to the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3. Now don’t miss that point. He was talking to believers who had found the door of redemption but stopped short of walking all the way through it into new life.
“Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me.”
Revelation 3:20
Kind of a no-brainer, really, when you put it like that. Why wouldn’t we do it?
May God bless you and keep you and lead you into new life. See you next time.
