Living Free in Christ: Take Hold of Your New Life

Introduction

"My theme will be living free." Samuel Peterschmitt, pastor of La Porte Ouverte Chrétienne in Mulhouse, says this message has been laid on his heart with the conviction that it sets people free. He bases it on a word from the apostle Paul: "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

His starting point is pastoral: "After 40 years of ministry, I have realized that many believers have not entered into their freedom. They keep living as if they were guilty, as if Satan still had a right over them."

To answer this, the pastor goes back "to the fundamentals," like a child who missed the basics of grammar and drags that gap along for a lifetime. Three questions guide the message: what does it mean to be in Christ, what is a new creation, and how do you take hold of this new life by faith?

Message outline

1. A freedom bought at a great price

• On vacation, the pastor takes his wife to the D-Day beaches. At Omaha Beach, he thinks of those young men of 18, 19 or 20 who came from Arkansas or Texas and knew nothing about France. For 900 of them, solid ground was never reached.
• "All those young men paid so that I could live free." The way he lives, sees himself and behaves either honors or dishonors their sacrifice.
• There is something greater than a landing: Christ left the heaven of glory to deliver us from the law of sin, from Satan and his authority, and to make us free men and women.
• More than five centuries ago, Martin Luther whipped himself in his monk's cell to find peace, and did not find it. Until this revelation: we are saved by grace, not by works or by self-imposed penance. It changed his life and the lives of millions of people.
• Paul writes to the Galatians: "Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don't be entangled again with a yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1).

2. The new yokes we put back on our shoulders

• "We don't whip ourselves like Martin Luther. But we often whip ourselves psychologically and spiritually." The pastor meets many believers who are discouraged, for whom the Christian life seems to have become a purgatory. From the outside, becoming a believer looks oppressive.
• Some are told they have no peace because of ancestral ties. Others are told that a demon still needs to be cast out. He has met people "in deliverance for 5 years, 10 years" who are still not free. "It seems to me that when Jesus cast out demons, they had to leave. They did not come back."
• Others become austere to give themselves a sense of holiness. This austerity dries them up and makes them legalistic and sad: "They just went from one slavery to another slavery."
• He speaks respectfully, both of those who teach these things and of those who practice them: he himself struggled with all of this, and these questions tormented him for a time in his Christian walk. He will never allow himself to judge, let alone to mock.
• At the other extreme, there are Christians who indulge in sin "in the name of grace." They have not understood what it means to be in Christ either: they are still under the power of their sins.

3. Being in Christ means leaving Adam

• The word "if" introduces a condition. The new creation and the passing of the old things depend on this: being in Christ. The first step for anyone who has never met Jesus: give him your life, acknowledging that you are a sinner. He is the door of the sheep, the way, the truth and the life.
• "Anyone" means the small and the great, Europeans, Africans, Asians, those who lived decent lives as well as those who wallowed in sin. "Tell your neighbor: you are someone."
• If we have to specify "in Christ," it is because before, we were in someone else: in Adam. "Are we sinners because we sin, or do we sin because we are sinners?" The Bible answers that our nature is sinful (Romans 5:12). Whether we commit many sins or few makes no difference.
• The pastor illustrates this with his own family line: before he was here, he was in his father, and before that in his grandfather, then in his great-grandfather. If you keep going back all morning, you arrive at Adam.
• In a small Breton village, his car, parked according to the rules, was scratched from one end to the other and dented by kicks. He did not get angry ("it's only sheet metal"), but he draws a lesson from it: "Man is wicked for no reason." Nobody thinks you need wickedness to be happy, and yet everyone lies, steals and deceives naturally, because sin is written into us.
• Changing ourselves is not enough. He cites American studies according to which it would take about 10 years to change 7% of one's character: "In other words, by the time you are transformed, you will be a dinosaur." The good news: Christ came to bring us out of this condition.

4. The blood of Jesus has settled everything

• God proves his love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Justified by his blood, reconciled by his death, we will be saved by his life (Romans 5:8-10). "The blood of Jesus justifies us, it clears us of all charges."
• All have sinned, but they are "justified freely" through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23-24). And the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
• "So why do you live as if demons still had rights over you? Is it true or is it not true?" It cannot be both. "If it is true, I am free. If it is not true, I am lost."
• The pastor has the congregation sing an old hymn, "Whiter than Snow," then challenges them: "Do you believe what you are singing? If you believe it, then why let yourselves be tormented?" The accuser of the brothers has been overcome by the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 12:10-11).
• In baptism, you do not die, you are buried: "Do you bury the living?" God has erased the record of charges written against us and removed it by nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities of their right over us and made a public spectacle of them (Colossians 2:12-15).
• Hence Paul's declaration: "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). Neither the devil, nor your past, nor your ancestors, whatever magic and occult practices they may have engaged in: Christ became a curse in your place (Galatians 3:13).

5. You are already a new creation

• "If anyone is in Christ, he is." It does not say "he will be," nor "he will become one day after making a great deal of effort." A baby is a baby from conception, not at nine months or at birth, even if all you can see is a single dividing cell. You may have just arrived and many things are still as they were: you are already a new creation.
• As there was a lineage in Adam, there is now, through the new birth, a lineage in Christ: "Before, I was born of Adam, now I am born of God."
• Paul was well placed to say it. He gave his approval at the killing of Stephen, tore whole families apart and made thousands of people suffer. Yet he writes that the old things have passed away. "Do you see Paul digging around in his past?" The pastor sees believers investigating their grandparents and their occult practices: "You are not free, and you will never be free that way. Freedom is found in only one person, and that is Jesus." Paul did not start by casting out spirits: he knew who he was now, in Christ.
• Paul still experienced "fighting on the outside, fear on the inside" (2 Corinthians 7:5), but these struggles were tied to his new life and his ministry. He was no longer tormented by his past.
• God raised us up together and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). "That is your position." Jesus tells Nicodemus that you must be born again (John 3:3). "I am a citizen of heaven. My father is God and I have a wonderful brother, Jesus."
• Walking according to the Spirit (Romans 8:4) is not first of all seeking revelations or words of knowledge, the pastor clarifies, speaking of Pentecostal circles. It is walking according to the new man born of the Spirit, taking in everything the Bible says you are, and resisting the devil by telling him: "You no longer have any right over me."

6. Take hold of your new life by faith

• "Tell your neighbor, even if you have been here for 30 years: take hold of your new life." Many Christians resemble a pardoned prisoner: the door of his cell is open, but he stays in his 9 square meters, looks through the bars and is afraid of the guards. "Stop sitting in your prison."
• The key is faith: "The righteous will live by faith" (Romans 1:17), "not by feelings." Faith is "assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). The pastor describes it as a sixth sense that Christians have and that unbelievers cannot have.
• Our five senses make us act. When he comes home and the smell of a vol-au-vent reaches his nostrils, he takes the stairs four at a time and blesses God for his wife. The day he saw the woman who would become his wife, he did not just look at her: he went into action.
• Assurance is taking hold of what we hope for. To eat the apple sitting on the table, you need an arm to take it. Faith is that arm: when the Word declares that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, faith seizes it. "I benefit from the authority of his work."
• Faith also lets us resist the devil, whose only weapon is doubt. Yesterday: "Has God really said?" (Genesis 3:1). Today: "Are you really sure that the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin?" To doubt is to give him rights back. Jesus resisted him by faith and by the Word: "It is written" (Matthew 4:1-11).
• The word they heard "didn't profit them, because it wasn't mixed with faith by those who heard" (Hebrews 4:2). Without faith, we try to earn what Christ has already done. Then the cycle of guilt and doubt begins, and the "shoulds" pile up: read your Bible, pray, fast, witness, free yourself from all your ancestors, "and suddenly the shoulds are crushing you."
• The pastor reads the Bible "out of passion," out of gratitude, and often spends hours praying as he walks in the forest: "I don't pray because I feel that if I pray more, I will get more access to the throne of grace. I pray because I love Jesus."
• He confides that for a long time he was satisfied only after 15-hour days of visits and activities. "That was the flesh." Paul puts it this way: "Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh?" (Galatians 3:3). Today he can still work 15 hours, but in joy, and not to earn his day.

7. What you were, what you are

• "Holiness is not trying to improve the old man. Holiness is living according to the new man." Paul can say: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).
• In conclusion, the pastor proclaims what the apostles taught the early Church. Formerly, we were slaves of sin (Romans 6), dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2), without Christ, without hope and without God (Ephesians 2:11-13), strangers (Ephesians 2:19), enemies in our minds and by our evil deeds (Colossians 1:21), enslaved to evil desires (Colossians 3:7-8).
• Now we are freed from sin (Romans 6:22), we have received mercy (Romans 11:30), we have been washed and justified (1 Corinthians 6:11), we are members of God's household (Ephesians 2:19), light in the Lord (Ephesians 5:8), God's people (1 Peter 2:10), sons of God through faith (Galatians 3:26), clothed with the new man (Colossians 3:9-10), and we have eternal life (1 John 5:13).
• "Therefore don't throw away your boldness, which has a great reward" (Hebrews 10:35). The pastor warns against those who offer paths the Bible does not clearly state, often drawn from the old covenant: "Go back to the work of Jesus. It is finished" (John 19:30).
• Returning to Omaha Beach: "The way to honor Christ is to live as a free man." Not the kind of freedom that leads to laxity in the name of grace, but a life of holiness, according to the new man, as a son and daughter of God, happy and free.

Key takeaways

• Christ set us free for freedom: going back under a yoke of guilt, endless deliverances or legalism dishonors his sacrifice.
• We were in Adam, heirs of a sinful nature. In Christ, we are born of God, and there is no condemnation anymore.
• "If anyone is in Christ, he is": the new creation is a present reality, not a reward for our efforts.
• Faith is the arm that takes hold of what the Word declares and resists doubt with "It is written."
• Holiness does not consist in improving the old man but in living according to the new man, neither in inner torture nor in laxity.

Personal application

1. In what area do you still live as if you were guilty, even though the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin?
2. Which "shoulds" have piled up in your Christian life to the point of crushing you? Do you do them out of love or to earn something?
3. Are you looking in your past or among your ancestors for the explanation of your lack of peace, instead of returning to the finished work of Jesus?
4. Which truth of the Word about your identity in Christ will you proclaim this week in the face of doubt: "It is written"?
5. How can your way of living concretely honor the freedom Christ paid for you?

Verses cited

• 2 Corinthians 5:17
• Galatians 5:1
• Romans 5:12
• Romans 5:8-10
• Romans 3:23-24
• 1 John 1:7
• Revelation 12:10-11
• Colossians 2:12-15
• Romans 8:1-4
• Galatians 3:13
• 2 Corinthians 7:5
• Ephesians 2:6
• John 3:3
• Romans 1:17
• Hebrews 11:1
• Genesis 3:1
• Matthew 4:1-11
• Hebrews 4:2
• Galatians 3:3
• Galatians 2:20
• Romans 6:17-22
• Ephesians 2:1-19
• Colossians 1:21-22
• Colossians 3:7-8
• Romans 11:30
• 1 Corinthians 6:11
• Ephesians 5:8
• 1 Peter 2:10
• Galatians 3:26-27
• Colossians 3:9-10
• 1 John 5:13
• Hebrews 10:35-38
• John 19:30

Frequently asked questions

What does "being in Christ" mean according to 2 Corinthians 5:17?

For Samuel Peterschmitt, the little word "if" sets a condition: the new creation belongs to the one who is in Christ. Before, we were all in Adam, heirs of a sinful nature. By giving your life to Jesus, you move from a lineage in Adam to a lineage in Christ: you are born of God.

Why do so many Christians not live free?

The preacher observes that many know intellectually that everything is finished, but have not taken it in. They look for peace in ancestral ties to break, endless deliverances or austerity. As Hebrews 4:2 says, the word heard is of no use if it does not meet faith.

How do you take hold of your freedom in Christ?

By faith, which Samuel Peterschmitt calls a sixth sense. Like the arm that takes the apple from the table, faith seizes what the Word declares: the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin. It then resists the adversary's doubt by answering as Jesus did: "It is written."