Enjoy your new nature.

“If you ask those who have made a commitment to Jesus Christ what the Christian gospel is, you will probably be told that Jesus died to pay for your sins, and that if we will only believe he did this, we will go to heaven when we die.  In this way what is only one theory of ‘atonement’ is made out to be the whole of the essential message of Jesus. Justification has taken the place of regeneration, or a new life.” 

-- Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy.

   Many Christians think that most of the significant transformation of their souls will occur either later in their lives when they finally get how to be a good Christian, or "in heaven."  There's always this sense of "I'm not enough yet.  I need to become more_______________." 

This incessent assumption that you are so devoid of goodness and Christ-like character that you can never rest until you are more spiritual [and therefore supposedly more pleasing to God]  sabotages the dramatic work Christ has already done in you. 

Our mistaken understanding of the “new birth” is that it is something primarily reserved for heaven or the spiritual elite.  We have made the Gospel entirely about Justification [getting your sins forgiven so that you can go to heaven] and assumed that Sanctification will happen ... someday.  Hopefully.

The idea of "regeneration" -- that our hearts have already been made new and holy -- rarely gets spoken about in many circles.  Even a noted evangelical like J.I. Packer has said regeneration is:

“the spiritual change wrought in the heart of man by the Holy Spirit in which his/her inherently sinful nature is changed so that he/she can respond to God in Faith, and live in accordance with His will" (Matt. 19:28; John 3:3,5,7; Titus 3:5).

This dramatic change in our nature and tendencies from sinful ... to holy has already occurred.  This is not a new teaching.  God has met his promise:

By this new covenant (new way of relating to God), “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Heb. 10:10) “…for he purified their hearts by faith.” (Acts 15:9)

Enjoy your new nature!

Changing our nature...what has already occurred within

Why does God insist on making us loveable, lovely, whole?  For certainly he has always loved us, even when we were unlovable; yet this wasn't enough for him, says C.S. Lewis:

"...it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less."  - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

"We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses - that he would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves:  but once again, we are asking not for more Love, but for less."  -- C.S.  Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I want to answer Lewis here (not knowing how he might respond)...   In order to fashion us into the supernaturally glorious creatures he desires and loves into wholeness, God indeed did change our natural selves, our natural impulses -- from unlovely to noble and good.  This he did at the level of the heart. 

We need not wait for heaven for this.  It has already happened.  It is the promise of Ezekiel 36:26 fulfilled (and in other places throughout Scripture).  We now grow out of that new and noble nature with its noble impulses.  We practice our new nature.  Discipleship is learning how to live from that good heart.