What Just Happened? After You're Saved - Part 2

Congratulations! You've just made the single most important decision of your life! You've just decided to become a Christian...

Your choice to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior has changed absolutely everything about your life. Everything about you now, everything about your future, and everything about your eternity is completely different than it was just a second ago. This one moment in time has changed so much, that it's easy to miss some of these changes if no one tells you.

So grab your Bible! Let's continue to study what happened to you when you decided to follow Jesus.

Eight Things That Changed Because You've Made Jesus Your Lord

#3 - You've been made into a brand new creature

Now, obviously you still look the same. You still have the same hair, the same scars, and even the same tastes. You still enjoy the same things (although as you grow in faith, some of these desires will be curbed by your righteousness). If you like football before you were saved, you'll still like it after salvation. If your thing was comic books - you'll still have that interest afterwards. If this is the case, then how can we say that you're a brand new creature? Doesn't all of this prove that you're still just the same person?

Not at all!

You were created with three parts. They are your spirit, your soul, and your body. (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

What other people see as the real you - what they see and hear and touch - is your body. That is the "suit" that you live in - a temporary "tent" that functions as your home here on earth. One day, you'll take that tent down and move to your new home. 2 Corinthians 5:1 NLT "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in Heaven, an eternal body made for us by God Himself and not by human hands." So you are living in the same body as you were before you were saved.

You have also been given a soul. This is what you use to connect with other people. Your soul is made up of three things; what you think (your mind), what you've always wanted to do (your will), and the things you feel (your emotions). Just like you have the same body, you still have the same soul now as you did before you got saved.

The fact that you have the same soul is sometimes a good thing. All the things you've learned, all the memories you have, and even the skills you've honed in your lifetime - these are all stored in your soul. So you wouldn't want God to wipe out all of that upon salvation. No, God leaves your soul intact when you become a Christian.

But you're going to discover that these things in your soul are going to start giving you problems. All the sins you enjoyed can still cause pleasure (Hebrews 11:25). The ungodly entertainment that you fed yourself with can still entertain you. And all the wrong kinds of relationships that you were a part of can still feel binding on you. Thankfully, God has provided a way to overcome these conflicts, and we'll talk about that when we get to point #7. Don't give up my friend!

The real you is your spirit. God is a spirit (John 4:24), and you were made in His image (Genesis 1:27). This means that you are a spirit.

So the correct way of thinking is this:

You are a spirit.

You have a soul.

You live in a body.

Before you were saved, you were dead in your spirit. Ephesians 2:1 says this, "Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins."

With your spirit dead, you were left to live by your natural soul and fleshly desires - like a common animal. But when God called you out of that mess, and you gave your life over to Him, look at what happened! Ephesians 2:4-5 says, "But God is so rich in mercy, and He loves us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us life when He raised Christ from the dead."

You spirit, the real you, was re-created when you got saved. This is what it means to be "born again" (John 3:3). God has become your Father (1 John 5:4) and you are a brand new creature. Look at 2 Corinthians 5:17 and know that this means you!

"This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!"