Stop trying to be someone you're not!

I'm beginning to memorize a chunk of Ephesians with a friend from church, and here is the first part that I was working on today:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

-Ephesians 4:17-24 (my emphases)

Paul is writing here to Christians, encouraging them to not go on sinning like they use to do, and like the Gentiles continue to do. But notice how Paul doesn't say, "Stop sinning or else God will disown you!" or, "You'd better stop sinning or else you'll cease to be a Christian and then you'll go to hell!" No, Paul simply says, "Stop being controlled by sin... because that's not who you are anymore."

If you are a Christian, this doesn't mean that you're not still a sinner in a fallen world. What it does mean, however, is that you're no longer a slave to sin:

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

-Romans 6:17-18

This freedom from the reigning power of sin is the beginning of the release from sin that Christ's atoning sacrifice purchased for you 2000 years ago. It means that your sin no longer keeps you under God's judgment, because it has been paid for. It also means that God has given you the ability to turn away from sin, to resist temptation, and that He is strengthening that ability in you as He sanctifies you and grows you. One day, when you are finally in the presence of Jesus, the release from sin will be completed, and at that time you will no longer be under any effects of sin. But until that day, remember what the true Gospel is, remember what it has purchased for you, and remember what it has made you: a person free from the reigning power of sin.

If we are people who have been freed from the reigning power of sin, then let's stop letting sin reign over us. Let's stop trying to be people we're not.