Happy New Year and welcome to today's encouragement from our daily bread.

I'm James Banks, and I titled our reading New Identity in Christ.

I'm not who I once was. I'm a new person.

Those simple words from my son, spoken to students at a school assembly, described the change God made in his life.

Once addicted to heroin, Jeffrey previously saw himself through his sins and mistakes, but now he sees himself as a child of God.

The Bible encourages us with this promise in 2 Corinthians 5. If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone. The new is here. No matter who we've been or what we've done in our past,

when we trust Jesus for our salvation and receive the forgiveness offered through his cross,

we become someone new. Since the Garden of Eden, the guilt of our sins has separated us from God, but he has now reconciled

us to Himself through Christ, not counting our sins against us.

We are His dearly loved children, washed clean and made new in the likeness of his son. Jesus liberates us from

sin and its dominating power and restores us into a new relationship with God, where we're free

to no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died for us and was raised again.

On this New Year's Day, let's remember that his transforming love compels us to live with new

identity and purpose. It helps us point others to our Savior, the one who can make them new people too.

Today's our daily-bred devotional scripture reading is from 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 14 through 21.

For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no

longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised

again. So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded

Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.

The old is gone. The new is here.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the Ministry of Reconciliation,

that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,

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