THE BENEFITS OF NEW LIFE – BIBLE STUDY

AIM: To encourage the Christians that, as we consciously strive daily to die to sin and be alive in Christ, it is never in vain and not a waste. We shall receive the benefits of new life both in this world and in the world to come.

TEXTS: John 3:4-6; 1 Cor. 5:17; Romans 8:9-10; Matt. 19: 27-28

INTRODUCTION

“My life time, I will give God my life time/2ce

If I give God my life time, He will take care of me…

He will never, never let me down,

I will give God my life time.”

Christianity is an experience: a life-changing, personal experience of the risen Jesus Christ. Everything else in the writings of St. Paul flows from that personal encounter with Jesus Christ. If we truly seek him, then we will always find him. But when we find him, we need to be ready for the consequences, because nothing about our lives can be the same.

Let me share a story with you to explain what I mean. It’s about a young man named Franz who lived about sixty years ago in a small village in Austria. Franz was the illegitimate son of a farmer who later died in World War I. He was a wild teenager. Local people recall that he was the first one in his village to ride a motorcycle; and it’s not because he rode safely or kept to the posted speed limits. Franz was the leader of a gang that used to fight rival gangs in neighboring towns with knives and chains. He was something of a cad, too, and a womanizer. He got a girl pregnant and was forced to leave the town. People said he went to work for awhile in an iron mine.

For reasons nobody knows, Franz came back a changed man. He had always gone to church, even during his wildest days. But when he returned, he was a serious Christian, not just a Sunday Christian. He started making payments to support the child he had fathered out of wedlock. He married a good Christian woman and settled down to become a good farmer, husband and father, raising three children and serving as a lay minister in his local parish.

I want to quote something Franz wrote in a letter to his godson. He wrote: “I can say from my own experience how painful life often is when one lives as a halfway Christian. It is more like vegetating than living.” Believers today are relentlessly tempted to accept a halfway Christianity, to lead a “double life” to be one person when we’re in church or at prayer and somebody different when we’re with our friends or family, or at work, or when we talk about politics.

New life in Christ brings three new relationships.

1. A new relationship with God.
   1. Instead of a judge, he becomes our father.
   2. Old sins are not held against us.
   3. A special closeness and courage flows into our lives.
2. A new relationship with our other people.
   1. Hatred should become love.
   2. Selfishness should become service.
   3. Bitterness should become forgiveness.
3. A new relationship with ourselves.
   1. We are usually our own worst enemy.
      1. Weakness becomes strength.
      2. Tension becomes peace.
   2. Inward change, both sudden and gradual.
      1. Old habits conquered.
      2. New way of thinking.

TALK BACK

MEMORY VERSE: 2 Corinthians 5:17 :    Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.