Let the Old Self Rest in Peace!

“For we died and were buried with Chris by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we may live new lives.” Romans 6:4

I was laying in bed on a Saturday morning. The week had been difficult and Friday night’s sleep was fitful. I was in that state of early morning semi-consciousness when my mind took me back into a journey to my past. In this unguarded state, unwelcomed thoughts and feelings of self-accusation and condemnation flooded into my head.

The longer I lay there the stronger the case against me became. “What a horrible person I have been! As a child, a teen and as an adult I have fallen way short of what I could have been. I wish I had never said or done such things that can’t be undone or unsaid..and done some things that I wish I “woulda coulda” done. Sins of commission and sins of omission.” That very morning, I was going to our church’s men’s breakfast and had a part in its leading the meeting. “How can such a dried up well offer any life-giving water to thirsty men?” I cried out to God.  I didn’t hear any audible answer, but I knew I needed to get my butt out of bed and open my Bible!

I opened it to the verse, that 50 years ago the God used to break my bondage to my past. (Then it was only a past of 17 years, now nearly 70!) In Galatians 2:20 the Apostle Paul wrote, “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So, I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  I looked anew at the context of the verse. This “old self” that Paul referred to here, was the person who gained his identity in how he kept the law…how he performed…how diligent he had been obey His word. God declared that the old “Saul” had died once and for all. He had to be put to death with Christ on the cross, buried and given Christ’s new life that would now live in and through him. Christ gave him a new name, “Paul” meaning “small.” Jesus became His all in all and Paul became small. It was not what Paul did IN his past but what Christ had done TO his past on the cross that made him truly a changed man.

This is where I had been led astray that morning. In my mind I had allowed myself to forget that the old Jamie had never been “salvageable.” I had forgotten to put my full weight upon what the Bible says about my true new identity in Christ. I fell for the lie that the “old self” was “me” rather than simply “the shrinking vestiges of the fall” still attached to me. I confessed my sin of unbelief and turned to Him to once again to live “by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Next time this happens to you, try what the Apostle Paul taught and what I am continually reminded to try. Let the old self rest in peace!