If you are in Christ, you are not who you were. You have been chosen by God into the family of God. Mercy has made you new. As John Newton, a slavetrader turned pastor, once wrote, “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”