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10 Sermon Illustrations on New Life in Christ

10 illustrations

New life in Christ signifies the radical transformation believers undergo through faith, becoming new creations as old ways pass away (2 Corinthians 5:17). It emphasizes spiritual rebirth and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit to shape Christlike character within us (Romans 6:4). Illustrations often use images of fresh beginnings, renewal, and inner change to convey this profound spiritual reality.

Ending and Beginning

Revelation 1:8

In Christ, old things end and new life begins, continually reshaped by the Spirit.

Revelation 1:8 reads, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord." Have you ever given thought to how many things about us are constantly ending and beginning? For example, today will end with the beginning of night and night will end with the beginning of tomorrow. Our Lord is both the beginning and ending of everything! 2 Corinthians 5:17 speaks to us about some endings and beginnings within our own lives: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new." For the believer, there is a constant change going on. Life is being re-shaped. It begins in a new-birth experience and as we grow in the Lord, this new life constantly changes, as we are reshaped into the image of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.

Spiritual Resurrection

Receiving Christ changes desires so sin is no longer wanted, like refusing to eat dirt.

"Oh, how many things I would have to give up!" said a sinner who was wondering whether to receive Christ or not. "So many things I do now I would no longer be able to do." "Don't be afraid," an experienced Christian told him. "Even now aren't there things you can't do? For instance, can you eat dirt?" "No, of course not," was the reply. "I don't even want to eat dirt." "This is exactly what will happen when Christ begins His life in you," said his friend. "The sin that you now desire you will not want at all."

Living the Christ Life

Galatians 2:20

Living the Christ life is impossible without being born again and Christ living in us by faith.

“Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Galatians 2:20

I was holding a series of evangelistic meetings in a church in Virginia. One evening, a visiting minister was asked to open with prayer. He said, “Lord, grant Thy blessing as the Word is preached tonight. May it be the means of causing people to fall in love with the Christ life, that they may begin to live the Christ life.” I felt like saying, “Brother, sit down; don’t insult God like that.” But I felt I had to be courteous and I knew that my turn would come when I could set forth the precious truth as to God’s way of salvation.

The gospel is not asking men to try to live the Christ life. If our salvation depended upon our doing that, apart from a second birth, we would all be just as good as checked through to hell. It is impossible for an unregenerate man to live the Christ life, no matter how much he may admire it as seen in Jesus, as it would be for one who had no sense of tune or of rhythm to live the Paderewski life or the life of any other great musician. One may enjoy music and admire musical ability who could never play or sing himself. It takes the soul of a musician to enable one to live a musician’s life, just as it takes the eye and hand of an artist to be a painter or a sculptor.

When born from above, Christ dwells in our hearts by faith and as He lives out His life in us we are enabled to walk as He walked. There is no other way whereby we may live the Christ life.

Age, Changed to Youth

Spiritual renewal through Christ brings perpetual youth and transformation.

Jason asked Medea, whose magic arts he had proved to be remarkable, to take some years of his life and give them to his then aged father. She consented to add years to the father's life, but refused to shorten his. She sacrificed to the gods, then wrought a mighty enchantment, filling her caldron with magic herbs, heads of crows and owls, the entrails of a wolf, and remnants of other things tenacious of life. Then she cut the throat of the old man. Eson, who was laid beside her on a bed of herbs, and poured into his mouth and his wounds the juices of her caldron. When he had imbibed them, his beard and hair laid off their whiteness, and resumed the blackness of youth; the signs of age were gone; his veins were full of blood, his limbs of vigor and robustness. Aison is amazed at the change, and remembers that such as he now is he was forty years before. Religion has a greater than Medea's power to renew the age. It gives perpetual youth.

Old Age, Alleviated

True age is counted from regeneration, not physical years, reflecting new life in Christ.

A Persian emperor once asked a gray-haired old man, "How old art thou?"—"Just about four years," was his reply. He counted only the years of his regenerated life.

from New Cyclopaedia of Prose Illustrations · Elon Foster regeneration

Life, New, From God

New spiritual life comes from God, like pollen fertilizing a distant rare plant.

In London there dwells a man interested in rare and exotic plants. A friend who had been in the Amazon brought him home a rare tree. In the winter he keeps it in the hothouse, but when summer comes, he carries it into his garden. So beautiful is the bloom that he gave garden-parties that men might behold the wondrous flower. One summer’s day he noticed a strange thing that set his pulses throbbing--a singular fruit had begun to set. Sending for an expert, they took counsel together. They knew that this was the only tree of the kind in Paris, and they could not understand from whence had come the pollen that had fertilized the plant. At length they published the story in the papers, and that story brought the explanation. A merchant wrote that years before he had brought to Marseilles a young plant from the Amazon. The pollen of that tree nearly four hundred miles away had been carried on the wings of the wind over hill and vale, and found out the blossom that awaited its coming.

And not otherwise is it with the soul. Because it is in His likeness, it shares with Him in those attributes named reason, wisdom, goodness, holiness and love. The soul waits. Without God it can do nothing. Its life is from afar. Expectant and full of longing, it hungers and thirsts, and desires His coming. That repentant youth, lying in the desert, with a stone for his pillow, waits, and then the light comes from God.

— N. D. HILLIS

Life, Self-Propagating

True life is self-propagating and comes from Jesus, the source of spiritual life.

The yeast-plant is so small that it can be seen only under the microscope. Each yeast-plant consists of a closed sack or cell, containing a jelly-like liquid named “protoplasm.” Under the microscope the yeast-plant is seen to change in form. Sometimes little swellings grow out, like knobs on a potato, and these will by and by separate themselves from the parent and become other yeast-plants. It is alive and growing.

“What we need,” said McLeod, “is not life, (from galvanism), but the life of life”--Jesus himself. (Text.)

New And Old

New things often have roots in old truths, showing continuity in spiritual life.

A professor of mathematics from America was visiting a college in North China. To a native professor there he said, “There is a new method in mathematics being taught in America. It is called the ‘short cut,’ and is a method of casting out the nines.” Imagine his surprize when the Chinese scholar replied, “The Chinese have been practising that method farther back than recorded history goes.” And he called a pupil up to prove it. Sure enough, it was the “short cut,” the casting out of the nines.

New things are not so new, and old things are coming to light. (Text.)

from Cyclopedia of Illustrations for Public Speakers · Robert Scott and William C. Stiles spiritual renewal

Springs From God

The soul’s life flows from God’s pure springs despite worldly temptations and troubles.

* * * * *

Salvation is by character, but character is the gift of God. Far up on the northeastern coast of Maine there is a little spring; through all the hours of a sunny afternoon it poured its crystal flood that ran singing toward the sea. Then, the briny sea turned to a salt the spring. The waves with their bitterness came in and buried it, and the sweet water seemed lost forever. Then in the eastern sky God hung His orb of light, and silently by that invisible pull, and with its secret voice it called to the waves of salt, and drew back the briny flood with its mire and filth, that ebbed away, and lo, the little spring flowed on, fed by the pure fountains on the hillside far above the ocean’s brine. And the soul’s life comes down from the mountains, where its hidden springs are in God. Aspiration, hope and love gush on forever pure. Temptations may rise, like the tide. Troubles, ingratitudes and hatreds may sweep on like hungry waves, the world may cast up its mire, but soon these troubles will recede, and leave the spring of life within the soul, to gush forth once more. It is the river of God, the well that springs up into everlasting life.

— N. D. HILLIS

Water Of Life

Daniel 12:13

A Bible verse leads a young man to reflect and find new spiritual life.

See SURFACE LIVES; SPRINGS OF LIFE.

WAY, DIRECTION OF

Years ago a young man in Providence, R. I., took up a loose leaf of a Bible to use for a wrapping. “Don’t use that,” said a friend, “it contains the words of life.” The young man put the leaf in his pocket. Later, taking it out again, he said, “I will see what kind of life it is that that leaf tells about.” The words in Daniel 12:13 caught his eye, and he read, “But go thou thy way till the end be, for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” “I wonder what my way is and where it will end?” he asked himself, and the reflection at length led him to a new life.

from Cyclopedia of Illustrations for Public Speakers · Robert Scott and William C. Stiles personal conversion

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