“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
A person who is a new creation in Christ but struggles with the memories of past transgressions can find help in looking at the example of the person who authored the God-inspired passage quoted above- Paul the Apostle. Paul was someone who refused to allow the mistakes he made before he became a Christian to derail God’s plan for his life.
The subject of Paul’s pre-conversion lifestyle was probably not something that he enjoyed talking about. However, Paul opened up about that period of his life in a letter to a young pastor named Timothy…
“Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:13-14 NIV).
The New Testament book of Acts provides us with a brief account of Paul’s early life and tells us how he “…tried to destroy the church; going from house to house, he dragged out the believers, both men and women, and threw them into jail” (Acts 8:3 GNB). Following his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road and his subsequent conversion to Christianity, Paul could have allowed the guilt of those past experiences to prevent him from fulfilling the important work that God had given him to do.
However, God also inspired Paul to record an important spiritual truth in his earlier letter to the Corinthian church when he said “For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain…” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10).
Like Paul, God’s grace towards us is not in vain because any shameful deed we may have committed prior to our conversion has been put to death with Christ.
Paul’s example shows us that we do not have to allow something from our past to prevent us from enjoying God’s best in the present- and 2 Corinthians 5:17 reminds us that we do not have to allow the mistakes, poor decisions, or shameful things from earlier in life to undermine God’s best for our future.