The Best Self-Improvement Course

Are you looking for a great self-improvement course?  You know, a really effective workout with terrific results?  Here’s the best one that I know of:  “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).

And here’s the follow-up question:  How often is that my consideration? 

There is no need to wrestle with self.  There is no prosecution and painful crucifixion of an evil you that is yet to be accomplished.  There is no work of fashioning a you that stands against sin FINALLY, and there is no need of a better you or of getting rid of a badder you. 

There is no self-improvement course needed.  You can give up on all that effort.

Jesus took care of all that because He took care of you when He died—He took you with Him on the cross.  All that remains is to consider what He did in making you dead to sin through the cross, and alive to God through the resurrection.  That’s where you’ll find yourself.  That’s where your life is.  That is the work out that works, because that’s how life for you works. 

You and I live by faith in Jesus.  We live by faith that Someone Else’s workout worked—that it was perfect and that it was for me and for you; the old you that’s gone, and the new you that has arrived.

Consider that.  Again and again and again.  There’s your workout. 

(This is a transcript of yesterday’s video, “The Best Self-Improvement Course,” and is for those who might rather read than watch.  To see the video, click http://youtu.be/fWLv3iY_AMA, or scroll down this page.)