Faith In The Ordinary

Then everything the New Testament says about you has to be true.

1. The Argument, Up Front

There is a moment when the New Testament stops sounding like religion and starts sounding like logic. And I love logic. When you realise that everything it says about the believer is not inspirational language dressed up in theological clothing, it is the necessary conclusion of something that actually happened.

Here is the argument in plain terms:

If Christ truly bore sin at the Cross fully, finally, without remainder, then the barrier between God and humanity was genuinely removed.

If Christ truly rose from the dead bodily, historically, as the opening of a new creation order, then death’s dominion over humanity was genuinely broken.

If union with Christ is real and not symbolic, not aspirational, but an actual participation in His death and resurrection, then what the New Testament says the believer now is must be taken at face value.

That is the logic. And it runs in both directions.

Weaken any of those identity statements: by treating ‘new creation’ as poetry; ‘seated with Christ’ as metaphor; ‘righteousness of God’ as generous overstatement and you have not simply adjusted your theology. You have implied that the Cross and Resurrection did not accomplish what the New Testament says they accomplished. You have quietly denied the event in order to soften the conclusion.

The identity statements of the New Testament are not compliments. They are logical conclusions. Deny them and you have denied the Cross.

This post follows that logic from beginning to end. The problem, the remedy, the result and why the result is not a matter of God’s generosity with language, but of what the Resurrection actually produced.

2. The Problem Is the Measure of the Solution

Any argument about what the Cross accomplished has to begin with what made it necessary. And the New Testament does not present sin as a minor administrative problem. It presents it as catastrophic rupture. Sin, in Scripture, is not primarily a list of rule violations. It is separation from God who is not simply a moral standard but the actual source of life, order, truth, and being. To depart from God is not merely to break a law. It is to sever yourself from the only thing keeping you alive. The consequences in Genesis are comprehensive precisely because they are not punishments arbitrarily assigned. Instead, they are the natural result of what separation from the source of life produces: Death, shame, fear, fractured relationships, a cursed ground and loss of access to the tree of life. This is not God throwing a tantrum but God withdrawing, and creation showing what happens when He does.

By the time the New Testament arrives, Paul can say without exaggeration: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Not because God refuses entry out of spite, but because fallen humanity in its natural condition cannot survive the unveiled presence of divine holiness. The barrier is not administrative. It is ontological.

The seriousness of sin is measured by three things in Scripture. First, what it separates humanity from – not merely blessings, but God Himself. Second, what it does internally – corrupting desire, conscience, worship, and judgment; Scripture calls it blindness, bondage, hardness of heart. These are not metaphors for bad habits. They describe a condition. Third, and most telling, what it cost to address.

The Cross is the clearest measure of how serious sin is. If sin were a minor problem, the incarnation and death of the Son of God would make no sense whatsoever. The magnitude of the remedy is the truest indicator of the depth of the wound.

Minimizing sin makes the Cross unnecessary. Which is why any serious theology of the Cross has to begin here with the full weight of what it was answering.

3. Every Barrier Was a Question

Once the problem is understood, the entire Old Testament reads differently. The elaborate system of restricted spaces, priestly requirements, ritual purification, and progressive separation that runs through Israel’s story looks at first like religious bureaucracy. Rules layered on rules. God making things unnecessarily complicated.

It was not. Every layer of separation was a sermon about the same reality and a question about how it would ever be resolved. Adam and Eve expelled from Eden. Israel trembling at Sinai, forbidden from approaching the mountain where God descends. The tabernacle constructed in concentric courts, each more restricted than the last. The Holy of Holies entered once a year, by one man, after extensive purification. The veil. Always the veil – the permanent, physical statement that the immediate presence of God was not yet accessible to sinful humanity.

Isaiah, when he actually sees the Lord, does not rejoice. He cries: Woe is me, I am undone. Peter, at an ordinary miracle, says to Jesus: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. The pattern is consistent across centuries. Sinful humanity cannot casually stand before divine holiness and this is not because God is hostile, but because holiness is a description of what He actually is, not merely a preference He holds.

“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”  — Isaiah 59:2 (NIV)

Think of it not as a permissions problem but as a physics problem. A human body cannot survive in the core of the sun not because the sun dislikes humans, but because of the nature of what the sun is. In the same way, fallen humanity in the uncovered presence of divine holiness is not simply breaking a rule. It is entering a reality it has no capacity to survive.

Every barrier in the Old Testament is God being careful with a people He is determined to keep. The restrictions are protective. And they are prophetic. Each one is asking the same question across the centuries: how will this ever be resolved? How will God and humanity truly dwell together again?

Every barrier was a question. The Cross and Resurrection are the answer.

4. What the Cross and Resurrection Actually Did

The answer came, and it did not look like anyone expected. And it must be held together as one event in two movements because separating the Cross from the Resurrection produces a truncated Gospel that cannot carry the weight of what the New Testament claims.

At the Cross, simultaneously:

• Justice is addressed – sin does not go uncondemned

• Mercy is expressed – God absorbs what we deserved

• Holiness is upheld – the moral order is honoured, not bypassed

• Judgment falls on the Son, not the sinner

• Covenant is fulfilled – the promise to Abraham, David, and the prophets converges here

• The sacrificial system reaches its destination – every offering was pointing here

• Reconciliation is accomplished – the barrier between God and humanity is dealt with at its root

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  (2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV))

That verse contains the entire exchange. Christ takes what belongs to fallen humanity. The believer receives what belongs to Christ. Not as a legal fiction but as a genuine transfer. The Cross does not ignore sin, excuse it, or treat it as insignificant. It deals with it fully, at immense cost which is precisely why the results are so comprehensive.

But the Cross alone, without the Resurrection, ends in a sealed tomb. Which is why Paul says plainly: if Christ was not raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. The Resurrection is not a bonus miracle appended to the main event. It is the declaration that the main event worked and it is doing something even larger than reversing one death.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep… For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:20, 22 (ESV))

Firstfruits is a harvest term. The first portion of a crop guarantees the rest is coming. Christ’s resurrection is not an isolated miracle. It is the opening of a category. A new humanity has begun. One that death cannot hold. What happened to Christ is the prototype of what will happen to all who are united to Him.

So, there are two humanities, two heads and two outcomes. The believer has changed which one they belong to. That transfer from the old humanity to the new is what the New Testament calls being in Christ and it is the hinge everything else turns on.

5. Therefore: New Creation Is Not a Label. It Is a Result

This is where the logic becomes unavoidable and this is the point that must not be softened. The New Testament does not call believers new creations because God is being generous with His language. It does not declare righteousness as a kind encouragement to people who are trying hard. It does not use words like ‘adopted,’ ‘transferred,’ and ‘seated with Christ’ as spiritual motivation to aim higher.

It uses those words because they are accurate. Because something actually happened that makes them the only correct description. The Resurrection did not merely demonstrate God’s power over death. It produced something. Christ rose as the Firstfruits of a new creation order which means a new creation order now exists. And the believer, genuinely united to the risen Christ through faith and the Spirit, is genuinely part of it. Not enrolled in it or heading toward it but in it.

“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 (ESV))

Note what Paul does not say. He does not say: if anyone is in Christ, he is on his way to becoming a new creation. He does not say: if anyone is in Christ, God graciously regards him as a new creation. He says: he is one. Present tense. Actual state. This is not semantics. The distinction carries enormous weight. If newness is merely declared as a label God applies out of kindness while the underlying reality remains unchanged, then the Resurrection produced nothing. It was a demonstration, not a transformation. An announcement, not an event with consequences.

But if the Resurrection genuinely inaugurated a new creation order, which Paul consistently emphasizes, then those united to the risen Christ are genuinely, actually, ontologically new. The newness is not the gift wrapping on the Gospel. It is what the Gospel produced. God is not calling you new the way you would encourage a struggling friend. He is calling you new the way a doctor reads a scan. It is a description of what is actually there.

Which is why the identity statements in the New Testament are logical conclusions, not aspirational goals. Look at what must be true, given what actually happened:

2 Corinthians 5:17	A new creation; the old has passed away
Romans 8:1	No longer condemned
Romans 8:15	An adopted child of God, not a slave
1 Corinthians 6:19	A temple of the Holy Spirit
Ephesians 2:6	Seated with Christ in heavenly places
Romans 8:17	A co-heir with Christ
2 Corinthians 5:21	The righteousness of God in Christ
Colossians 1:13	Transferred into the kingdom of His Son
1 Peter 2:9	A royal priesthood, a holy nation
Romans 8:37	More than a conqueror through Him

None of those are earned. None fluctuate with performance. None are waiting to become true after sufficient spiritual effort. They are true because union with the risen Christ is real and what is true of Christ by nature is made true of the believer by union. The believer shares in Christ’s standing before the Father not because of their own record, but because their record has been swallowed by His.

Deny any of those statements and you have not simply adopted a more humble theology. You have implied that the Cross did not fully deal with sin, or that the Resurrection did not actually produce a new creation order, or that union with Christ is less than the New Testament claims it is. The identity and the event stand or fall together.

6. The Tension Is Real — But It Doesn’t Change the Logic

Here the New Testament refuses to be tidied up. Believers are new creations and they still struggle. They are declared righteous and they still sin. They are seated with Christ in heavenly places and they still grieve, fail, and grow slowly. The New Testament does not explain away this tension. It holds it honestly. Theologians call it the already / not yet. What Christ accomplished is already true. What God is doing in the believer is not yet complete. Both are real simultaneously:

Already: justified – declared righteous in Christ. Not yet: fully sanctified – still being conformed to His likeness.

Already: adopted- fully a child of God now. Not yet: glorified – awaiting the resurrection of the body.

Already: the Spirit dwells within. Not yet: walking consistently from that reality – still being learned.

This tension is not a contradiction. It is the shape of life between the Resurrection and the return of Christ. The new age has begun in the resurrection of Jesus. The old age has not fully passed because sin, death, and suffering still operate. Believers live between those two realities.

But here is what the tension does not do: it does not weaken the logic. The struggle does not disprove the identity. It simply means the believer is living between the declaration and the full experience of what has already been secured.

Before Christ, the struggle comes from a place of bondage with separation from God, helplessness under sin, no path forward. In Christ, the struggle comes from an entirely different position: someone who belongs to Christ, is being transformed by the Spirit, and is learning to live according to a reality that is already true even when it does not yet feel true.

In Christ, the struggle is no longer the deepest truth about you. Union with the risen Christ is.

This is why Paul can say ‘reckon yourselves dead to sin’ – not because sin is pretend, but because its dominion over you is genuinely broken. He is not asking believers to pretend. He is asking them to agree with what is actually true, rather than continuing to define themselves by a condition that no longer applies.

7. You Don’t Live There Anymore, So Walk From Here

Imagine someone who moved out of a difficult place years ago but who still drives past it constantly, still thinks of it as home, still makes decisions as though they live there. The address changed. The thinking did not. That is the condition the New Testament is constantly addressing.

“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”  (Colossians 1:13 (ESV))

Transferred. Past tense. Done. The old address is no longer where you live. But the mind can be slow to update which is why so much of the New Testament is not commands to become something, but reminders of what you already are. The Spirit and the Scriptures working together to relocate the believer’s sense of self from the old address to the new one.

Paul’s argument structure throughout his letters is consistent: since you are X in Christ, therefore, live as X. Since you died with Christ, consider yourselves dead to sin. Since you were raised with Him, seek the things above. Since your body is a temple, honour God with it. Since you were bought with a price, you are not your own. He always reasons from identity to living. Never from living to identity. The foundation is always what Christ has already made true.

Walking from that foundation has practical dimensions. The mind must be renewed – not by willpower alone, but by ongoing, deliberate exposure to and agreement with what God says is real. The Spirit works through truth. Surrender is not a one-time decision but a daily posture which is the continual release of old-self instincts and the continual yielding to the new. And the goal is not performance of holiness but abiding in Christ because fruit grows from life, not from effort applied to the surface.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16 (NIV)).

Notice the structure. Walk by the Spirit and the result follows. Not: suppress the flesh through heroic effort and maybe the Spirit will show up. The positive reality is primary. Life in the Spirit is not mainly about restraint. It is about fullness. You are not a sinner trying to become acceptable to God. You are a saint – the New Testament’s actual word for believers – who is learning to live consistently with what Christ has already made true. You are not earning access to God’s presence. You are a temple. The presence is already within you.

The Gospel does not say: try harder to be good. It says: Christ accomplished something real. The Cross dealt with sin. The Resurrection produced a new creation. Union with Christ made you part of it. Everything the New Testament says you now are follows necessarily from those events not as encouragement, not as aspiration, but as the logical, unavoidable consequence of what actually happened.

It has your name on it. Now walk in it.

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