BillMounce.com blogs

Deny Yourself (Mark 8:34)

Bill Mounce — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:50:56 +0000

How is the new life that we live with Christ different from the life we lived before the gate? How is the path different?

The path is different because it is the path of discipleship, of following Jesus. As we follow Jesus, we start to “look” more and more like him; and as we look more like him, we look less like the world.

There are many descriptions in the Bible of the path of discipleship and why it is so different from the world, but my favorite is in the book called “Mark,” chapter 8, verse 34. This is the pivotal verse in my life when it comes to how I think about life as a follower. It changed the way I think, and actually led me to write this blog.

We are at a turning point of Jesus’ story. Jesus has been conducting a public ministry, speaking to large crowds, teaching about the kingdom of God, and doing miracles to prove his authority. At Mark 8:27, it is like Jesus has finally come to the point where he is willing to ask the disciples to make a commitment. Who do they think that he is? Peter, probably speaking for all twelve of them, says, “We believe you are the Christ, the Messiah, God’s king who was to come into the world.” Jesus accepts Peter’ confession as true.

But then everything in the gospel story changes. Jesus’ ministry becomes mostly private, not doing as many miracles, and primarily teaching the twelve disciples what it is like to live as disciples in God’s kingdom. In verse 34 Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

If anyone, man or woman, wants to follow Jesus, to be his disciple (be a “Christian” we tend to say), then he must do two things. He must “deny himself” and “take up his cross.” When Luke tells this same story, he clarifies that we are to take up our cross “daily” (Luke 9:23). What does this mean? The answer to this question shows why the path is so different form the world.

To “deny” yourself means to say “No” to yourself and “Yes” to God. Paul is not talking about asceticism — forgoing earthly possessions, not eating certain foods, ignoring the world, etc. To say it differently, the process of denial is “to humbly submit my will to God.” It is to go through life repeating the words that Jesus said the night before he died. When he was praying in the garden, he said to God his Father, “Not my will but yours be done.” It is what millions of Christians have prayed for centuries when they repeat what we call the “Lord’s Prayer.” “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”( Matthew 6:10).

What does it look like to live out this prayer? Someone hurts you. Your natural reaction is to lash back, to get angry. But the path of discipleship is “not my will but yours.” It is humbly submitting my will to God’s will. Instead of getting angry, we realize that God is calling us to forgive even our enemies. A verse that is becoming more and more important to me is Paul’s instructions to the church in Ephesus. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (4:32). When I am hurt, I am called to submit my will to God’s will and follow his example. This is what it means to “deny” yourself. Now, I don’t always do it. Sometimes I like to reword Jesus prayer: “not your will but mine be done.” But that’s not what Jesus said.

What does it mean to “daily take up your cross”? The cross was a horrid symbol of pain, shame, and death. A person hung on it, naked, until his skeletal structure collapsed and he suffocated to death, without air and with his body drowning itself in its own fluids. Every day we are to live in such a way that it is apparent to everyone that we have died to ourselves, to our selfish ways and ambitions, and live for God. Another translation words the verse: “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me” (NLT).

Something unfair happens and instinctively we want to get even. But we have died to that “right,” we have prayed “not my will but yours be done.“ Hopefully we humbly submit our will to God’s will, and we respond in kindness and humility. Will you always do this right the first time? Of course not, and that is, in a sense, okay. Life is a journey. God understands that over the years we have created habits of our heart that are not easily broken, and he is patient with us as we learn to walk the new path. Nevertheless, we are called daily to humbly submit our will to his.

To get back to the original question, why is the new path of discipleship different? It’s because we have been changed. We now follow Jesus, and the new longings in our heart are to do his will, not our own.

Don’t be frightened. God is not standing there with a scowl on his face, arms folded, with a whole new list of things we can do and things we can’t do. Remember the theme verse of this blog. “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11, ESV). The path of discipleship is the path of joy, but it is also a path that is different.

Because Jesus is different.

Monday with Mounce is Moving

Bill Mounce — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:47:48 +0000

Monday with Mounce

Sorry for the confusion, but I have decided to move my Greek blog to Teknia, my main website for teaching Greek. If you want to subscribe to the Greek posts, you will need to do so there. For the time being, I will continue my Life is a Journey blog here.

Change and Baptism

Bill Mounce — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:56:39 +0000

Life is a Journey

We were changed in conversion, and a changed person will live a changed life, not because you have to, but because you want to. In the Bible, one of the first things people did after conversion was to announce it publicly in a ritual called “baptism.”

In the history of the church there has been a lot of arguing about baptism, and unfortunately in some cases (and fortunately in others) it has led to dissension and division; and yet we are told to be baptized and so a young Christian needs to understand what it is and what it isn’t.

From the following you will see that I believe baptism is an intentional act of a person’s faith. For those who have a different view of baptism, this blog is not for you. But if you believe in believer’s baptism, I would like to know how the following works. Does it explain baptism correctly, simply, and convincingly? Thanks.

The practice of baptism is probably the best picture of the change that happens in the life of a new believer and the newness of the path. In case you are unfamiliar with it, let me explain it briefly. Different churches do it differently, but this is what baptism looks like for the majority of believers.

After talking with your friend, mentor, pastor, or someone, he or she will go with you into the water. Perhaps it will look like a spa or pool to you, or you may be outside in a lake or river. You will be given an opportunity to publicly tell your friends who are there how you walked through the gate, what you believe, and what God did for you. This is your “testimony.“ Then your friend will take a hold of you and lower you under the water, saying something like, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. (These words come from the Bible.) Then you will come out.

The act of baptism did not save you. No ritual can save you; God has already saved you. Baptism is simply the public proclamation of what God has already done when you walked through the gate. Baptism is not an act of salvation; it is an act of obedience. Jesus calls all believers to take a public stand. In the Bible people used to be baptized as soon as they walked through the gate. Because the two events were so close in time, they were seen as a single event and the imagery of baptism could be used to describe what happens in conversion.

This is the background of a famous passage in the Bible. Paul is writing to the church in Rome, and he says these words.

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:1-4, ESV).

Paul is discussing the topic of ongoing sin in the life of a follower of Jesus. He asks the rhetorical question, should we keep sinning so that by grace God will continue to forgive us? Absolutely not. And then he states the essence of our conversion/baptism experience. We have died to sin. It doesn’t make any sense to think that we can continue to live in sin. What does it mean to “die to sin”?

When you go under the water in your baptism, it signifies that your sins have been washed away. I once baptized a friend of mine, and she asked me to hold her under the water an especially long time. “Why?“ I asked. “Because I have sinned a lot, and Jesus has a lot to forgive.” My friend knew that her sins weren’t being forgiven by the water, but she understood the power of the symbolism. (Later on the afternoon, another person who I did not know asked me if I held everyone down that long! I assured him that I did not. As I recalled, I held her down until I saw bubbles escaping from her nose; it was time to let her up. But I digress.)

But the symbolism of baptism is more than just forgiveness. When we became followers of Jesus, we were in some way mystically joined to Christ. Paul calls this being “in Christ.” This is also symbolized in baptism. When we are lowered under the water, we are saying that we have died with Christ, that his death in some way has become our death. And just as Christ was raised from the grave to a new kind of life, a life that has gained victory over sin and death, so also as we come out of the water, as we start to walk down the path of discipleship, we too are raised to a new kind of life. Specifically, a life in which ongoing sin has no place.

Baptism is a wonderful proclamation for all to hear that Jesus changed my heart, and now as a changed person I am walking down a different path. This is something all new believers are called to do.

Hell, Hades, Gehenna, and the Realm of the Dead (Acts 2:27)

Bill Mounce — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:31:25 +0000

Monday with Mounce

Hell is a slippery concept; and no, I’m not talking about recent debates. I am talking about what the word ᾅδης means.

I was reminded of this in reading the NIV of Acts 2:27. Peter cites Ps 16:10 as fulfilled in Christ. “You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay.” Why did the NIV switch from “grave” (1984) to “realm of the dead”? (I was not on the CBT when this change was made, so I was not part of the discussion.)

ᾅδης occurs ten times in the New Testament. In eight the NIV translates ᾅδης as “Hades.” In Acts 2:27 and in Peter’s following comment (v 31), it translates ᾅδης as the “realm of the dead.” In our passage, most translations simply write ”Hades” (NASB, NRSV, HCSB, NET) or “Hell” (ESV, KJV).

Sheol, the Old Testament word, is the place where all dead go, whether righteous or unrighteous. It is a place of shadowy existence. (Can we use this phrase, “shadowy,” any more without hearing the voice of Gandalf?) This is why the rich man could see Lazarus in the parable (Luke 16:23). This is the context of Ps 16:10, and reflects David’s conviction that God will not abandon him to the realm of the dead, the place of decay, and prophetically sees that God will likewise not abandon the Davidic Messiah.

Hades, on the other hand, is a transliteration of a Greek concept (obviously), referring first to the god of the underworld, and then eventually his domain, the realm of the dead, the grave, and death. ᾅδης was chosen as the primary translation of the Hebrew Sheol.

Verbrugge explains ᾅδης in the LXX as “a land of darkness, in which God is not remembered (Job 26:5–6; cf. 10:21–22; Ps. 6:5; 30:3, 9; 115:17; Prov. 1:12; 27:20; Isa. 5:14) … [where] there is no proclamation or praise (Isa. 38:18; cf. Ps. 88:11).” (NIDNTT-A, 16). In the New Testament we see it has become an underground prison (Matt 16:18; Rev 1:18), a place of torment that will eventually be thrown into the lake of fire and destroyed (Rev 20:14).

The other word connected with the topic of hell is Gehenna. The word is the Greek form of the Aramaic name of the valley to the south of Jerusalem, “the valley of the son[s] of Hinnom.” It is a place of child sacrifices (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6), a desecration that easily lent itself as the name and picture of God’s judgment (Jer 7:32), a fiery abyss (Matt 25:41; 13:42, 50). It is a temporary place (or state) that will give up its dead in final punishment and judgment. In 1 Pet 3:19 it clearly is a place for only the ungodly.

When you hear the word “hell,” what do you see? My guess is that most see pictures of Dante’s inferno, and biblically you see Gehenna, the valley used for child sacrifice and a garbage dump, whose fires and stench were a constant reminder of the punishment for sin.

This is not what David sees. He sees Sheol as a place of shadowy existence, a place of “decay” (Ps 16:10b). By changing from “Hades” to “realm of the dead,” the NIV is helping us not be anachronistic in our images. The NLT is agreeing with the NIV when it translates, “For you will not leave my soul among the dead.” That is certainly the point of the Psalmist and of Peter.

Pray for BiblicalTraining

Bill Mounce — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:04:01 +0000

Bill and Bob’s Blog

BiblicalTraining is asking for your prayers for a meeting tomorrow (Thursday). I am sorry that I can't be more specific, but we have asked for a resource that we can put on the website that will substantively increase our ability to serve people around the world with their ongoing educational needs. There is a meeting tomorrow that will determine if the resource will be given to us. Please pray that God softens their hearts and allows this to go forward. Sorry I can't be more specific; but if it happens, I will let you know.

I believe that prayer moves God to do things that he might not otherwise do. In other words, prayer works, so please pray.

Bill Mounce

Filling Pails and Throwing Water on Fires (the Log College of William Tennent)

Bill Mounce — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:01:47 +0000

Monday with Mounce

I started this blog with the title, "The Difference a Comma Makes (Acts 5:18)." You will see why I changed it.

We all know that commas are not part of the biblical text, and yet they are required by English. To someone just starting their Greek career, it may not seem that commas deserve much attention; but Acts 5:18 gives a good example of why a comma can make all the difference.

I was reading the NIV the other day and came across this verse. “Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.” What is the relationship between the “associates” and the “Sadducees”? In English, there are two.

1. It is possible that Luke is writing that the high priest has some associates, and those associates were part of the Sadducee party. What this interpretation permits is that there were Sadducees who were not associates of the high priest. I suspect this is the most natural reading of the NIV, implying that we are dealing here with a subgroup of the Sadducee party, a doubtful interpretation.

2. If you read the comma differently, you could understand that all the Sadducee party were the associates of the high priest. This is what the NASB is trying to convey with the parentheses. “But the high priest rose up, along with all his associates (that is the sect of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy” (see also the ESV, NRSV, KJV, NET).

The HCSB neatly sidesteps the awkwardness of the parentheses by translating, “He and all his colleagues, those who belonged to the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy,” but it does leave the same ambiguity as the NIV. (Parentheses are generally considered poorer English, and writers tend to rewrite the sentence so they are not needed, unlike what I am doing right now.) Likewise, the NLT translates, “The high priest and his officials, who were Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.”

The Greek is actually a little awkward. Ἀναστὰς δὲ ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς καὶ πάντες οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ, ἡ οὖσα αἵρεσις τῶν Σαδδουκαίων, ἐπλήσθησαν ζήλου. Word for word it reads, “But standing up, the chief priest and all those (πάντες οἱ [masculine plural]) with him, the-being-sect (ἡ οὖσα αἵρεσις [feminine singular]) of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.”

ἡ οὖσα αἵρεσις τῶν Σαδδουκαίων is a nominative appositional phrase that further identifies the “all those with him.” The plural verb, ἐπλήσθησαν, then, goes back to the compound subject, “the high priest and all those with him.” Appositional phrases, by their very nature, stand apart from the rest of the grammatical flow of the sentence, and if you drop it out the sentence makes good sense.

The singular feminine ἡ is unexpected but required by the feminine singular αἵρεσις. Because it is a nominative appositional phrase and in a sense stands apart from the sentence, Luke can get away with the irregularity (if that is the right word) of a feminine singular contextually referring back to the masculine plural πάντες.

Given the historical context, I strongly suspect that the πάντες means all the Sadducees were filled with jealousy, and we need to be careful of a comma suggesting only some of them were associates of the high priest.

Amazing, isn’t it. Miracles were being done everywhere. Peter’s shadow had healing power. And yet the religious rulers were filled not with awe and thankfulness, but with jealousy. The sad fact of life is that almost everything in this world is about power, and their power was threatened.

I have been reading a fascinating book about the life of William Tennent (The Vision that Changed a Nation, by John F. Hansen). It was Tennent’s conviction that the ruling religious authorities had failed to understand the necessity of a new birth, and so formed his “Log College,” teaching students not only the rigorous of a classical education but also teaching the necessity of passion and conviction and the work of the Holy Spirit and sin and conversion. Guess how the Sadducees of his day responded? With jealously and the wielding of social and financial power. Tennent had strong connections with the Great wakening, and 60 (yes, sixty) of his students went on to found new colleges that would continue his dream.

Hansen summarizes Tennent’s core belief by quoting the poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Some things never change, and there will always be religious authorities who want to fill pails and throw water on fires. The question is, what will you do?

Changed People Lived Changed Lives

Bill Mounce — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:15:58 +0000

Life is a Journey

There are several trailheads where I live. Lots of places to leave your car, get your hiking gear ready, and take off on a hike. One of my favorite parts of the hike is right after I have started. I am not tired yet, my feet don’t hurt, and everyone is excited about getting “back to nature.” The trail is pretty open, and you can still see the cars and hear the people.

But then you make the first real turn in the trail, and everything changes. The noise subsides, you start to forget the trailhead, you start seeing nature unstained, and the mountains just seem higher. For me, though, the greatest change is in what I hear. The dull drum of city life disappears after the turn, and I start to hear the sounds of nature. Each bird with its own call. Trees creaking in the wind. Water moving. And in-between the sounds, silence. The kind of silence that almost hurts your ears it is so quiet. And the steady, soft crush of years of leaves and pine needles under my feet, muffling my every step.

And I remind myself, this is why I have come on the hike. Because it is different.

But trails where I live rarely stay easy. The mountains are high, and the trails start to wind and twist and eventually climb up the sides of the hills, then the mountains. It get difficult. My feet start to hurt, and I start to sweat. And I have to remind myself, this is why I have come on the hike. Because it is different

And so it is with the new follower of Jesus. When they first turn off the easy road and go through the gate, it generally is fun and exciting and rewarding (unless of course you live in an area where persecution is instantaneous). But eventually, it is going to get difficult, and the new follower of Christ needs to know what will happen.

f our conversion sermons are full of nothing but bliss and glory, we take the dangerous chance of misguiding people. Yes, forgiveness of sins, regeneration, adoption — all the things we talk about last week — are true bliss and glory. But I am deeply convinced that the new Christian needs to know that they were changed at the gate, and eventually the path of discipleship will lead them down a road that Jesus says is hard and difficult.

Changed people will of necessity live changed lives.

Paul had just started a church in the city of Thessalonica. Because of the jealous opposition of a group of people, he had to leave. Two of his most trusted friends stayed behind to help the young church, but Paul was genuinely concerned that the opposition would be intense and damaging. He was concerned that the new believers would not continue on their journey. A few months later he heard from his friends that the new believers were doing well, and he wrote a letter to rejoice with them as well as answer some of their questions. He talks about their reputation and says people know they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9).

They “turned.” The path on the other side of the gate very quickly became different from the easy road they had been traveling. Why? Because they were changed, and changed people live in changed ways, and that change will bring them into conflict.

So if you are a new believer, do not fear the future. As we will see later, God is with you, he has strengthened you, and you will walk this path with other pilgrims on the same journey. But please understand that you were changed, and the new path you took will not look like the easy road you just left. Its end, Jesus says, is destruction.

But the end of your journey is life.

Phil 1:5 and Joy

Bob Mounce — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:24:23 +0000

Bill and Bob’s Blog

Dad is journaling his way through Philippians, and I asked if he would share some of his thoughts with us. So from time to time, in Bill and Bobs' Blog, I will post his thoughts. Here is the first on Phil 1:5.

The cause of Paul’s joy is the partnership in the gospel that he shares with the believers in Philippi. It appears to have been one of those unique relationships that develop almost instantaneously. It was “from the first day” and continues “until now.” When the first citizens of Philippi opened their minds and hearts to the gospel there was established a strong bond of spiritual camaraderie with the apostle. I am reminded of the day my wife Jean met Rachel, a family counselor, a truly Christian person. They looked deep into one another’s eyes and a lasting friendship sprang into being. Even today, some thirty-two years later, the bond is as strong as it has ever been. Just to mention Rachel brings a momentary expression of joy to Jean’s face. They are one in everything they hold precious. It appears that Paul had somewhat the same unique relationship with the believers in Philippi who came to faith in Christ under his guidance.

Oh, that this would be the atmosphere in which today’s church went about its ministry.

The Beginning of the Path

Bill Mounce — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:47:44 +0000

Life is a Journey

We are talking about how to mentor a new believer, how to help them get started on their spiritual journey, and how to help them move in the right direction.

We started by reviewing conversion. You want to make sure that someone who thinks they are born again are truly born again, that you both have the same starting point. But where do you go next?

My recommendation is that you help them see how life is going to be different, and eventually difficult. I am so concerned that a new follower of Christ will think that life is going to be a bed of roses, that pain is going to go away, and life is going to get better and better. The problem is that difficulty will most certainly come, and some (many?) people will fall away from their spiritual path.

Of course, we don’t want to go too far and make them think that the Christian life is nothing but pain and sorrow, that along with the pain in life experienced by all human beings they now have the new pain connected with spiritual growth. But the risk, I believe, is worth it since we know that many young converts fall away from their faith when difficulties arise. But how do we do this?

My suggestion is two-fold. I find it helpful to talk about all the changes that happened in conversion, many of which they were probably unaware of. Secondly, I talk about how the path itself is different. You were changed at the gate and so it is only natural to expect that life after the gate will be different as well. If you liken it to a regular hike, it can all makes sense.

One of my favorite parts of the hike is right after I have started. I am not tired yet, my feet don’t hurt, and everyone is excited about getting “back to nature.” The trail is pretty open, and you can still see the cars and hear the people.

But then you make the first real turn in the trail, and everything starts to change. The noise subsides, you start to forget the trailhead, you start seeing nature unstained, and the mountains just seem higher.

For me, though, the greatest change is in what I hear. The noise of the parking lot (where I started the hike) disappears after the turn, and I start to hear the sounds of nature. Each bird with its own call. Trees creaking in the wind. Water moving. And in-between the sounds, silence. The kind of silence that almost hurts your ears it is so quiet. And the steady, soft crush of years of leaves and pine needles under my feet, muffling my every step.

On many of the trails, it is not long before the path itself starts to change. Back at the trailhead it is was wide open, painted lines telling you where you have to park your car. But here, there are no lines, with freedom to explore. It’s different. The path gets narrower. It starts going up and down, twisting left and then right. It starts to climb, and I start to sweat. And I remind myself, this is why I have come on the hike. Because it is different.

And so it is with our journey of life. We were called off the wide and easy road and invited through the gate. As we went through the gate, we were changed. But we didn’t stop there. There is a path ahead of us, continuing to lead us away from the old street, further away from destruction and closer to life.

The path starts to change. It is different from the easy street. We are walking with God now. We are walking with our new family. We are headed toward our new home. And because the path is different, it is inevitable that we come into conflict with the old ways. It’s okay at first, since the joy of coming through the gate is still so fresh in our mind. But as time passes the path becomes more and more different, and it becomes more difficult because it leads us into conflict.

The difficulty starts as a little tension, our old friends and perhaps family members not understanding why we walked through the gate. Then the tension slowly turns into conflict (or in some cases, not so slowly). But there is also conflict from within. It used to be that when we did something wrong, it was no big deal. Everybody did it and you really didn’t care. But now you care. You have this new sense that some things are right and good, and other things are wrong and hurtful. Why does it have to be like this?

The point of this extended metaphor is that we left the easy road and started traveling down the path because it was different. But sometimes, when people encounter the “different,” they start to wonder what they got into. So isn’t it helpful to let them know clearly, up front, that life is going to change, and in fact it must change, and in fact that is why we went through the gate. Isn’t it helpful to let them know that it is natural for life to change?

(By the way, I have an entire chapter later in this new believer's curriculum that is dedicated to talking about the challenges of living as a Christian. All I want to do here is introduce the topic.)

What Actually Happens at the Gate?

Bill Mounce — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:54:50 +0000

Life is a Journey

Last week I introduced the topic of change, that after the gate (conversion) a new believer is going to start down the narrow path, and things are going to be different. I think it is important to alert a new believer to the fact that things will change; it is also important to tell them why.

So many people think of Christianity as a list of do’s and don’ts. Their view of God is that he is frowning in heaven, terribly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. So he has all these things we must do, and things we can no longer do, and the only reward he holds up is heaven — not a bad reward, but wholly inadequate for most people.

How much better to help people understand how fundamentally they were changed at the gate, how change in life is natural, and that they should embrace the change with all the implications.

What did you understand when you became a follower of Christ? Certainly you came to the gate understanding that you had sinned and therefore were separated from God. You acknowledged that you had done what God called you not to do, and that you had not done what he had asked you to do. In turn, what happened? Did not God bring you near to himself? Did he not begin to fill the emptiness in your heart with himself? In a word, things were “different.”

Did you know that before conversion, it was God who was drawing you to the gate? Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them” (John 6:44). When you started to feel guilty over things you had done, things that previously produced no feelings of guilt, that was God working in your heart, making you aware of the seriousness of your sin. He was drawing you to himself by showing you your weaknesses. When you started to feel empty, when you started to feel that something significant was missing from your life, that was God. He was helping you see that you had been created for him, and without him there would always be a deep longing. In this, God was starting to change you.

What else happened at the gate, truths that a new believer may not understand?

You were rescued from the kingdom of darkness and brought into God’s kingdom of light.
You were justified. This is a legal metaphor by which you are declared innocent of all guilt and all wrongdoing in the law court of God.
You were freed from all condemnation. Because God is judge and jury, and because he has declared you justified, there is now no condemnation for those who follow Jesus.
You were redeemed. This metaphor is often associated with the slave market. If you were to redeem a slave, you would pay a price and freedom would be granted. The price was the precious blood of Jesus, and you were brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God, freed from the mastery of sin.
You were sanctified, declared holy, separate from all sin. This is a metaphor from the sacrificial system of the temple. As you continue to walk down life’s path, you will do some things that are wrong, but as far as our basic relationship with God is concerned, you remain holy, a saint.
You were adopted as a child of God. You were brought into a new family, with a new father, new brothers and sisters, a new home, and a new inheritance in heaven where it can’t be spent or lost.
You were given God the Holy Spirit, who comes into you life and stays with you, encouraging and helping you to walk the path, guaranteeing that you receive your new inheritance.

And the list goes on. But the point is this: as you passed through the gate, God fundamentally changed you, and it just makes sense that the path you walk from here on out is going to be different. Changed people live in changed ways.