Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:7

Take careful note of the words “passed away.” Literally the phrase means “to fall by the wayside.” In other words, Paul says that, for Christians, the past you had outside of Christ is not “eradicated,” it is simply “left on the side of the road” while you continue on without it.

God doesn’t erase your past, God doesn’t change your past: God doesn’t make it so that you never were a sinner. What God does is refuse to hold your past against you. He will make it so that you might as well had not been a sinner.

He doesn’t remove your past, He disregards it. He allows you to cast it aside and continue on life’s journey without it.

With the old gone, what’s left is allowed to become something else entirely: “Behold all things are become new” Paul says.

You were a murderer? Now you are a new person. You were a thief? Now you are a new person. You were a drunkard, hate-filled, jealous hater of God and goodness? Now you are new. Who better to preach that message than the former Saul of Tarsus, hater of Christ and persecutor of His Christians. The past is in the past. He’s left it behind. He’s new.

You can be too.