Pastor Jeff on the Radio

Guest (Male): You're listening to Pastor Jeff Ministries, the Bible teaching ministry of Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub. On today's program, Pastor Jeff continues his message, Genuine Transformation, from the series Mission Critical, and helps you understand what it means to live from your new identity in Christ. Not performance, but transformation from the inside out.

Our mission is to challenge you to respond courageously to God's word and live fully for Jesus Christ. As we prepare our hearts for Easter, we're focusing on what it means to be made new in Christ and sent on mission for Him. To grow deeper each week, visit PastorJeff.com and sign up for weekly devotional emails delivered straight to your inbox. Now, here's today's message.

Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub: If there's anything among Christians that needs to be taking place that people see in the world, here's what they would say about Christians: "That group of people, I can't understand them. They have all different socioeconomic backgrounds, all different colors of skin, different genders, different political persuasions, but when they get together, they genuinely love one another." That can only be said about the church, and it must be said about the church. Why? Because of our identity in Christ. It's who we are. We don't judge people according to the flesh.

Where do you think the labels we place on others come from? It comes from the father of lies from the pit of hell. Do you know how Paul viewed people? Paul viewed people in one of two ways. Either they are born again and in Christ, or they are lost and they need Christ. That's the only way we ever look at people if you're a Christian. That's it. It means no matter whom you're talking to, they either know Christ and need to grow in Christ, or they're lost without Christ and need to hear about Christ. That's it.

That's why the church exists. That's why we exist for Christ. It's a recognition of our identity. That's why it says in verse 17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ," meaning he's born again, "he is a new creature. The old things passed away; behold, new things have come." When you come to Christ, you are fundamentally altered at the moment that you trust Jesus. God doesn't change your physical appearance. He doesn't change your socioeconomic background. He doesn't change your skin color. He doesn't change your gender. He created you just the way you are.

But what goes on from the inside out is God has recreated you in a way to love Him and love others in a way that was impossible for you to do before. He gives you a completely new worldview where you will have love for people you would have never had love for before, that you want to be around people that you would have never wanted to be around before. Why? Because you represent the King who died for all. You're a new creation. You're different.

The analogy that's often used is a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly. A caterpillar that's crawling down around on the ground gets into a chrysalis, comes out, and turns into a butterfly. We give that creature an entirely new name. We don't call him a fuzzy floating thing. We don't call him a confused caterpillar. We don't call him a worm with wings. We call him a butterfly. If that butterfly tried to go back and live like it once was as a caterpillar, that butterfly would be utterly miserable because it wasn't designed to crawl around on the ground. It was designed to soar.

In the same way, when you come to Christ, you are fundamentally different. You are not the same identity you used to be. You say, "Well, yeah, before I came to Christ, I was a drunk. I was a drug addict. I'm an athlete." That was all before. Now, you're first and foremost a Christian who may happen to engage in certain behaviors, but you're first and foremost a Christian. Why is this so important? Because there are some people who have been born again for a long period of time that would still describe themselves by a term that God would not describe you as.

"I'm a divorced Christian. I'm a Christian who had an abortion. I'm a Christian who was sexually immoral. I'm a Christian who still struggles with this sin." Let me just tell you something on the authority of God's word. If God were to take you to heaven today and walk you around and introduce you, He would not introduce you by your past and what you used to be. He would introduce you by who you are right now.

If He introduced you to people in heaven, He would say of you, "This is my daughter. I love her. I can't stop loving her. If she knew how much I loved her, she would respond to me with incredible grace because no matter what she does, I love her. She's incredible. This is my boy. I'm so proud of him. I love him. I created him so unique. He gives me great pleasure just to watch him live his life and who he is, and even when he stumbles, that's never changed my love for him."

Most of us say, "Well, then why do I have this thing in my head where I always feel like I'm not good enough, and I'm not smart enough, and I don't have any friends, and I just feel like I'm a failure? Why do I feel that way?" Because you have an enemy that lies all the time. It's why you hear that voice all the time. You'll stop hearing that voice when you're dead and in glory. But I'm here to tell you on the authority of God's word, you can't be transformed and conformed into the image of Christ if you adopt names about yourself that just aren't true. God wants you to take on your new identity.

There are a lot of verses I could share with you. John chapter 1 and verse 12 tells me I'm a child of God. I have three kids. I love them. I mean, I love them so much I would do anything for them. I would give them anything I have. I want them to go further in life than me. I discipline them. I love them. I care for them. I'm there for them. They're incredible. I love them more than any other children in the world because they're my children.

Now think about this for a minute. God tells me He loves me more than I love my own children. He says, "You who are evil know how to give good gifts to your kids. How much more your heavenly Father who gives you His Holy Spirit." God loves you. I'm a member of Christ's body. I've been chosen by God and adopted as His child. When was I chosen? Before the foundation of the world. He chose me in Him to be holy and blameless. I'm complete in Christ. I have direct access to the throne of grace. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

If God is for me, who can be against me? I'm a citizen of heaven. I'm born of God and the evil one cannot touch me. I've been chosen and appointed to bear fruit. I'm God's workmanship. I can approach the throne of grace with freedom and confidence. That's just a snippet. That's an appetizer of what the Bible tells me about myself. Why is that so important? Because if I walk around knowing there's no condemnation in my life and I'm crowned with glory and honor because I'm in Christ, God sees me. The Father sees me through divine son glasses and looks at me and says, "Jeff's righteous, and he's holy, and he's good, and he's adopted, and I chose him to be completely transformed in the image of my son. And no matter what he does, I love him." That changes who I am.

It took me a long time to take ownership of my identity because what I used to do is look in the mirror and I would read the Bible and I'd say, "This is what I'm supposed to be, but this is who I actually am. God wants me to be this, but I'm not very good at it. And God's trying to get me to do that, and now I feel even more guilty. And God's putting this burden on me, but I can't do it." Then one day it dawned on me. What Jesus Christ demands of me, He's the one that provides for me. Everything He said He wanted me to be, He'd already done. It was no longer about performance for God; it was, "God, you do the performance in and through me."

That's why the apostle Paul also says in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in this body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Christians, get off the performance plan. You're not that good, and it's only going to make you miserable. Get on the identity plan that you already are positionally everything God said, and then you continue to grow and walk in it.

This is what God has for us. We miss the mark so often because we start thinking about people wrongly. One of the reasons we have a hard time living the gospel and sharing the gospel is we group people based upon how we think people must think and who people are. Here's what they are: They're either in Christ and need to grow in Christ, or they're apart from Christ and they need Christ.

In this church, if you don't know who Jesus Christ is and you've not turned from your sins and trusted Him, when the world ends, be it today or any other day, you will go straight to hell for all eternity. Family members that you have that have not repented and trusted Christ, they will go to hell for all eternity. Your neighbors that don't know Christ, they will go to hell for all eternity. Your business associates that don't know Christ, they'll go to hell for all eternity. How are we going to reach them? We're going to be motivated with the love of Christ and our new identity in Christ, and we're going to have great compassion for people that don't love Christ.

When people are mean to us, what are we going to do? We're going to love our enemies and we're going to pray for those that persecute us. That's what it means to live for Christ. Why? Because the stakes are so high. A hundred years from now, none of us are going to be here. Maybe that baby crying might be, but nobody else. We're not going to be here. The most important thing we can do is be aligned with who Jesus is and then go live for Him and let other people know about Him. The greatest return on investment is to share the gospel. Why? Because we don't want to be deceived.

If you were to poll most people and even most Christians in America, they would tell you a majority of people are going to heaven even though Jesus said the opposite. Jesus said wide is the road to destruction and many are on it. People are heading to hell in droves. But narrow is the road and narrow is the gate that leads to life, and few are on it. That's a hard word. That's why we're called to be ambassadors for Christ.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Pastor Jeff Ministries and today's message, Genuine Transformation, from the series Mission Critical. Helping you understand what it means to live from your new identity in Christ. Not performance, but transformation from the inside out. We'll get back to Pastor Jeff in just a moment. But first, generous listeners like you make this ministry possible. When you give this month to help share teaching like you're hearing today with more folks around the world, we'll send you Pastor Jeff's booklet, Made New: Discovering Your New Identity, New Focus, and New Mission. It's a powerful, scripture-saturated guide to help you understand what truly changes when you surrender your life to Christ: Your identity, your focus, and your purpose. This resource pairs perfectly with the messages you're hearing, calling you to step boldly into the mission God has for you. Request your copy today when you give to Pastor Jeff Ministries. Just go to PastorJeff.com. Now, for the conclusion of today's message.

Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub: Paul says these very sobering words in 1 Corinthians 6:9, "Or do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." Every time I read that scripture, the only thing people hear is homosexual. No. Fornicators. You're shacking up practicing your fornication. Why are you deceiving yourself thinking you're a Christian? Repent and trust Christ.

Those of you that put other things ahead of Christ and have idolatry in your life and you love your house and your gifts and your items that you possess more than you love Christ, you're not entering either. Thieves, covetous people, people that are jealous of everybody else, drunkards, revilers. Notice what he says in verse 11: "Such were some of you." We were all that way. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. God can take any sinner and completely redeem them. Your past does not determine your future. Your past is what you were. Your present is who you are in Christ now and forevermore.

Live your identity. Live it. When you look in the mirror some days, you may say, "I don't feel like that. I don't feel like I'm a great Christian." Just make declarations over yourself by what the Bible says about you. Jesus said He loves you, so you're loved. Jesus said He chose you, so you're chosen. Jesus said you're adopted, so you're His child. Jesus said you're forgiven, so you're forgiven. Jesus said there's no condemnation, so He's not condemning you. The more you own the truth about who Jesus is, the more you'll love Him, the more you'll want to walk in your identity and the more you'll want to live for Him.

It starts with a motivation of love and it grows from a recognition of identity. Genuine transformation or total transformation is rooted in the reconciliation of relationship. Christianity is not first and foremost a religion; it's a relationship. It's about how to have relationship with God, not what doctrines do I have to believe or what things do I have to do. That's every cultist religion in the world. Christianity is about having a relationship with a person of Jesus. Not only does He hear your voice, you hear His. You know that you're known by Him.

Notice what the scripture says in verse 18: "Now all these things are from God." How do I walk in the motivation of love? How do I walk in my identity? Who did that for me? All these things are from God. In salvation, God does all the work. In sanctification, God does the work as He partners with you and you align with Him. It's all from God. He's the one that set all this up. What does it say? "Who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation."

Hear the word reconciliation about four times in those two verses? Reconciliation is a step beyond forgiveness. Forgiveness is: "I'm not holding that debt against you. You sinned against me, I forgive you, I'm not bringing it up again. That's fine." But I'm keeping some distance because I don't want you to hurt me again. Reconciliation is: "Not only do I forgive you, but at the moment you realize what you've done and repent, I'm willing to have relationship with you again. I want to restore a relationship that was broken. You broke the relationship; I'm willing to go as far out as I possibly can to restore the relationship."

Christ wants to restore relationship with you. His goal is not to get you saved so that one day you go to heaven; His goal is for you to personally know Him now and to experience Him forevermore. He wants to reconcile with you. He wants to give you His very life. And what does reconciliation look like? Not counting your sins or trespasses or iniquities against you.

We forget all that Christ has forgiven for us. I'm here to tell you your biggest problem is not your checkbook. Your biggest problem is not what you own. Your biggest problem is not finding a job or finding a spouse or getting your marriage back on track or being a better parent. Your biggest problem is that you're a sinner in need of the grace of God. And the message of the gospel is that Christ paid for them all. He's willing to wipe them all away.

Christian, even those of you that have been saved for a long time that still have this tape in your head that goes back and back and records things. It records things in your head and you go back and you replay the tape all the time of when you were twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-two, thirty-five, and you can't get over that. Friends, on the authority of God's word, if you've trusted in Him and are born again, that's gone. It's over. You're not held accountable for it.

The Bible says when God forgives, He forgets. It doesn't mean He can't remember; it means, "I am never bringing that up again. Why are you?" It's done. I put that to bed at the cross. I nailed it to the cross. All your sin is atoned for. And really what you see in this text is this divine exchange. It's all your sin for all of Christ's righteousness. All your sin for all of Christ's love, all your sin for all of Christ's forgiveness, all your sin for all of God's mercy, all your sin for all of God's grace. He'll take all the bad and He'll replace it with His very life. Friends, that's the best news on the planet. And who will He do it for? Anybody that wants it. It's a free gift. It's offered to the world so that when you stand before Almighty God, you don't have to come up with all your reasons why you think you're saved or all the good things you thought you did. You can say, "I don't deserve to be here, but I believe you died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead, and I banked my entire eternity on you being God."

We have a hard time because we don't really feel like we broke the relationship. Most of us in growing up think we're pretty good people. Even if we're not the best of people, we can always find somebody that's worse than us. So it doesn't really make sense to us that God reconciled to us because what did we ever do that was wrong? I really didn't do that. Yeah, I stole, I lied, I cheated. I mean, some of that stuff. But you're talking about a perfect, holy God.

I want to read you a story today that has a human element to it that when you hear about this story of reconciliation, it'll maybe give you just a glimpse because this story is a limited microcosm compared to what Christ did for you. It's a story about Corrie ten Boom. Most of you are familiar with her family. They were arrested by the Nazis. Corrie ten Boom was, along with the rest of her family, eventually imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp with her sister Betsy, who died days before Corrie ten Boom's release on December 31 of 1944. She wrote a book called The Hiding Place, which was her autobiography, and this is one snippet from that book where she shares a story of God's forgiveness and her desire to see somebody reconciled to Christ.

She writes: "It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding, heavy-set man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken. It was 1947, and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. And that's when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat, and the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment of skin. Betsy, how thin you were.

Betsy and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland. This man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent. 'You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,' he was saying. 'I was a guard there.' No, he did not remember me. 'But since that time,' he went on, 'I've become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I'd like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein,' his hand came out, 'will you forgive me?'

And I stood there, I whose sins had every day to be forgiven and I could not. Betsy had died in that place. Could he erase her slow, terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed like hours. I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do. For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. 'If you do not forgive men their trespasses,' Jesus says, 'neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.'

And I stood still there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. 'Jesus, help me,' I prayed silently. 'I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.' And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced all the way down my arm and sprang into joined hands. And then the healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. 'I forgive you, brother,' I cried, 'with all my heart.' For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then."

I'm moved by that story for several reasons. I'm moved for that story because my grandfather was a Jew in Germany and got out before all the stuff happened. I'm moved by that story because of the incredible grace and forgiveness that God can use. We're not called just to have a heart of love for God; we're called because of our heart of love for God to have a heart of love for others, which means nobody is beyond our willingness to have relationship with them. Nobody.

And even as you hear that story, the sin that he sinned against her and several different women and people in that concentration camp is small compared to the sin that you've had against Almighty God. And even though you've sinned like that, Jesus Christ said not only will I come and not only will I declare that I forgive you, I'll come die for you, take the punishment from my Father for all of your sin so that you never, ever have to experience it. Friends, there's nothing like the gospel of Jesus Christ. There's no greater message anywhere. It is a message of reconciliation. Our message to the world is no matter who you are, no matter what you've done, that God the Father wants to have a relationship with you through the person of Jesus Christ. And that because we love God, we love everybody. That's the message. That's the ministry of reconciliation.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening today. That was Pastor Jeff with his message, Genuine Transformation, from the series Mission Critical. Helping you understand what it means to live from your new identity in Christ. Not performance, but transformation from the inside out. Thanks for joining us for today's program.

Before you go, a quick reminder. When you give a gift of support today, we'll thank you by sending a copy of Pastor Jeff's powerful booklet, Made New: Discovering Your New Identity, New Focus, and New Mission. This isn't just a devotional; it's a scripture-rich guide to help you understand who you are in Christ, why that changes everything, and how to step boldly into the mission God's given you. So request your copy today at PastorJeff.com when you give to help others experience the transforming power of God's word. That's PastorJeff.com. We'll see you next time.