Just a few days into the new year, we still have an opportunity to focus on making a fresh start, closing the door on 2023 and being excited about some new beginnings in 2024. We might want to continue and build on some of our accomplishments over the past 12 months, but most of us have things we’d like to do differently or take a totally new approach.
New things you’d like to do are probably different from mine, but whatever they are, there’s no time to begin like the present. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say. Hope you find much success in whatever your new endeavors might be.
But have you ever considered that God is all about making things new? We see this in the very first chapter of the first book of the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). I believe the “big bang” scientists often speak about can be summed up in three powerful words: “And God said.”
That simple phrase appears eight times in that opening chapter of Genesis, God speaking and creating: Light. Sky, earth and water. Vegetation. Sun, moon and stars. Myriad kinds of living creatures. And finally, man and woman. The Lord conceived what He wanted to create – brand new things – then spoke and it became so. Sounds simplistic, but I’m sure it was anything but that.
God’s desire to make new things didn’t stop there. That was just, well, the beginning. He’s been conceiving and creating new stuff ever since. Take the Ten Commandments, for example. Until then, humankind was governed by an inner moral compass God had instilled, but those succinct commandments embodied how we’re to live and relate, both to Him and one another.
As we study the Scriptures, however, we discover the foremost “new” thing the Lord desires to create is you and me. When Jesus went to the cross to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, that wasn’t the end of the story. Not by the longest of shots. His resurrection not only announced victory over death but also the promise of new life for all who would place their faith and trust in Him.
Nearly 40 years ago I was wrestling with what is often referred to as “the Christian life.” I couldn’t seem to get it right, no matter how hard I tried. Then during one life-changing weekend, a friend helped me understand a foundational truth: The Christian life isn’t difficult – it’s impossible! That is, in our own strength there’s no way we can measure up to God’s perfect standards. Or even close.
My good intentions and determinations to do better in my own strength would never succeed. As is true for every one of us. This is why Jesus said we must be “born again” (John 3:3,7). Becoming children of God doesn’t demand a “makeover” or some type of improvement program, but an entirely new life. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 we're told, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Up to that weekend, I had been wrestling with that latter verse as well as another, Galatians 2:20, which says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” I knew those two passages intellectually, but not experientially. Somehow, they didn’t seem to apply to me.
Although I still struggled “in the flesh,” God wanted me to understand that in Christ I had been made new spiritually. Another verse, Titus 3:5, expresses it this way: “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
I already had new life in Jesus Christ but hadn’t appropriated it. It’s still a challenge at times when, as Jesus said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). It’s a day by day, moment by moment process of learning how to follow Him in the power of His Spirit that lives in us.
This brings up another biblical reference to becoming new. Romans 12:2 offers the admonition, “Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Every day can be a battle, being bombarded with “the pattern of this world” through what we read, hear and see.
The only way we can win this battle is to “set [our] minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2). And we can do this consistently only through the power of God’s Spirit. Every day the Lord is busily doing new things – both in us and through us. If we were to ask Him, “What’s new?” I suspect He’d respond, “You have no idea!”
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