Ginny Burgin ends her book "Overpowering Nemo" with these words: "We are those who now have a voice and never has there been such a time as this to invest our lives in his promises and let our voice be heard … Whatever you have gone through, however you feel, those things are neither your reality nor your hope; they no longer need to shape you. Your reality and your hope lie in the fact that now you are hidden in Christ Jesus, now you have been made a new creation, now you are adopted into his family and now you are part of a chosen generation, a holy people, set apart for him … and there is a new day coming to rejoice in. This is the real truth that will set you free and give you a voice."

There are two things that stand out for me here, and they are prominent throughout her book. The first is that from the moment we accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour we have been a new creation. We are not becoming one; we are one. "Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!" (2 Cor. 5:17) We are no longer who we were. That person is dead and buried. Nothing of who we were should dominate or influence who we are now. All our thinking and feelings should emanate from our new identity. Anything that doesn't do that needs to be taken captive and brought into submission to the truth as it is in Jesus.

The second leads on from this. "Jesus said to those who believed in him, 'If you obey my teaching, you are really my disciples; you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free'" (John 8:31-32). A reading of the whole section shows that Jesus was actually addressing those who believed and yet did not really believe; as Leon Morris says: "They were inclined to think that what Jesus said was true. But they were not prepared to yield to him the far-reaching allegiance that real trust in him implies."

Only genuine disciples of Jesus know the truth: that is, the Person who is the truth and the full extent of the truth, including all that flows from being a new creation with a new identity. But in order for this truth to set us free in practical and tangible terms, we must believe it with all our hearts. The devil's lies combine to form the sort of net used to trap and immobilize wild animals. We can only destroy it and escape from it by a constant ap