• Now since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through His death He might destroy the one holding the power of death-that is, the Devil- and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death, For it is clear that He does not reach out to help angels, but to help Abraham’s offspring.
  Hebrews 2:14-16 HCSB

The letters B. C. stand for Before Christ. It refers to the years before Christ’ birth which was about 2,000 years ago. For example if someone said that something happened in 500 B. C. they would be referring to about 2,500 years ago. The term A. D. in Latin is “Anno Domini” which means the year of our Lord. The two abbreviations separate the time before Jesus’ birth and the time after His birth. What’s important about Jesus’ birth is that it changed how people dealt with sin. In the Old Testament the people had to go through burdensome rituals in order to repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. Could you imagine getting up on Sunday morning and having to load up an ox or bull and bring it to church to allow the preacher to sacrifice it so you could receive forgiveness?

Jesus changed all that because He was the payment for our sins. He paid our ransom, and served as the sacrifice for our sins. But, in my title today I am not referring to how the calendar is marked for the rest of the world. I am talking about our personal calendars. Our lives before Christ are filled with sin. Once we surrender our lives to Christ and submit to Him, our lives should look way different. Some people mistakenly think that A. D. stands for after death. This is not the case, but for our purposes today I am using A. D. to refer to after the death of our old lives.

When we are saved we experience a death of our old sinful ways of living. We die to our old sinful selves. We experience a spiritual rebirth where we become new creatures in Christ. Paul speaks of this in Galatians 2:20, he says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Then in 5:24, he says, “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

Just as the universe’s B. C. was much different from it’s A. D. ours should be also. Our lives should be totally transformed when we accept Christ as our Savior. We should no longer conform to the ways of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). It doesn’t mean that we will not sin, but it means that we won’t want to sin. We will still slip up at times because we are human, but we will immediately be convicted by the Holy Spirit so that we can confess our sins to Christ, repent and be forgiven. Once this is done, God will remove our sins from us.

If you accepted Christ as your savior and made a commitment to follow Him, your life should look much different than before this happened. After we die to our old sinful ways we want to be imitators of Christ (Ephesians 5:1). We want to do the things that please Him. We are no longer living to satisfy our own fleshly desires, but to satisfy Him. We want to bring glory, honor and praise to Him.

If you are living in the A. D. part of yourself, does it look way different that the B. C. time in your life? It should. If it doesn’t look a whole lot different, you may want to draw near to God and rethink some things.

Once we die to ourselves and make Jesus our Lord and Savior and focus on Him, we can put away our old sinful ways from our B. C. era.

I hope that you are living in the A. D. era of your life, but if you are still in the B. C. era, you can fix that. You can draw near to Him. You can confess your sins and repent and be forgiven. Then you can enjoy living A. D. know that the old, sinful you is dead and gone and you are now a new creature in Christ.

Have a great day!