You Are Not Who You Used to Be

You Are Not Who You Used to Be

— By M.T. Clark — P-2020, 07/20/2026 — Today’s Audio Podcast

Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of George Lafayette Clough’s (1824–1901) painting, “Untitled Adirondack Camping Scene” depicting a quiet lakeside camp with a white canvas tent among the tall trees, a man in a red shirt reading by the campfire, and a small rowboat drawn up on the still water comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this work of art at the Adirondack Experience Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, NY, on August 9th, 2023.

Well, it’s Monday, and I share this peaceful old painting of a north-woods camp because it reminds me of my recent camping vacation beneath the Adirondack pines and because there’s something in it that quiets me every time I look at it. A man sits reading by the fire, a boat rests on the still water, and the whole scene seems to have stopped hurrying.

We so often start a new week already rushing, and the Lord keeps inviting us into a stillness like this one, where we can actually hear Him and find an abiding peace, even as we prepare for another week of work. So, before you run out the door into the work waiting for you, take a deep breath and let God meet you in the quiet for a moment or two to receive His love and to take His peace with you. Speaking of receiving God’s peace….

Our series, “Freedom Stories,” continues today with the new identity God gives.

You Are Not Who You Used to Be

Few passages in Scripture turn on a single word the way 1 Corinthians 6:11 does. Going into verse 11, Paul lists a sobering catalog of sins that will prevent you from entering the kingdom of God. It’s a list of things that many of us are very familiar with, and when we hear of the potential consequence of our association with them, our blood runs cold.  But then Paul turns to the believers and says in 1 Corinthians 6:11 (NKJV): “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”

The whole weight of the verse hangs on that little word “were.” He says, “such were some of you, not “such are some of you”, where we are still identified by the sins of our pasts. Paul is not declaring that we are permanently or hopelessly stuck. He says “such were some of you” to declare our freedom from a past that the work of Christ has decisively closed and to proclaim that the old laundry list of sins has no place in our new lives in Christ.

This is the foundation of freedom, because identity always drives behavior, never the other way around. We tend to think that if we could just change our behavior long enough, we’d eventually become a different kind of person, but Scripture works in the opposite direction.

God first declares who you now are (washed, sanctified, and justified), and the new behavior grows out of that new identity like fruit growing from a living root.

Paul doesn’t tell the Corinthians to behave their way into a new self. He tells them what they already are by the work of Christ and the Spirit of God, and then he calls them to live like it.

Notice, too, that Paul stacks three verbs to describe what happened to them. Followers of Christ are washed, sanctified, and justified. All three are in the past tense, and all three were done to them, rather than by them.

• They were washed, meaning the defilement was cleansed away.
• They were sanctified, meaning they were set apart as God’s own.
• They were justified, meaning they were declared righteous in God’s court, not on the basis of their own merits, but through grace and faith in Christ alone.  

We don’t do these things on our own. They are things that were done to us the moment we came to Christ, and together they mean the old identity no longer tells the truth about us.

For years, the hardest thing for me to believe was not that God could forgive what I had done, although that was the realization that opened the door to His kingdom, but that He had actually made me into someone new.

I was “the sinner saved by grace”. I kept introducing myself to God by my old résumé — the addict, the grieving man who walked away, the one who had broken things — as if He needed reminding of who I used to be. Freedom didn’t take root in me until I stopped arguing with what God kept telling me about myself, that I’m not who I used to be. God’s word told me I was a new creation and that there was no more condemnation for me because I was in Christ. The old accusations about me weren’t true anymore because “the sinner” had died and I was raised to a new life as a “saint” with Christ.

So, when the enemy calls you by your old name and invites you to go back to the way things used to be, you don’t have to argue with him on his terms or sink under the weight of who you used to be. You can answer the enemy with one word from this verse. Were. “Such were some of you”; that is who I was, not who I am now.

We can confidently proclaim: “I am a new creation in Christ. I submit myself to God and resist the devil, who must flee from me now.”

By the washing, the sanctifying, and the justifying of God, I am not who I used to be, and neither are you if you are in Christ. Learn to live from that settled identity, and you will find the freedom that behavior management could never give you.

Our victory and freedom are rooted in our new lives in Christ. The battles we face are not won by remembering who we once were, but by standing in the truth of who we are now in Christ.

Keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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