All Things Become New
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor 5:17).
What I’ve been describing is called all sorts of things in the Bible, but one of my favorites is new birth. Jesus told Nicodemus that unless he was born again, he couldn’t see the Kingdom of God (Jn 3:3). And the things we’ve been talking about describe how a person is born again. He hears the good news about Jesus (the Gospel), acknowledges his need (sinfulness) for the essence of the Good news (the sacrificial death of Jesus), and believes (throws his life into following Jesus). At the same time God is granting or giving all this to the person who is being reborn: the preacher (Rom 10:15), conviction of sin (Jn 16:8), Jesus as the sacrificial lamb of God (Jn 12:27; 1 Pet 1:19), our faith (Rom 12:3), and our salvation (Eph 2:9).
The major point here is that salvation is a death and resurrection right inside our person. We die, which is what Jesus meant when he said, “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mt 16:24). We lay down our lives, for the sake of following Jesus, he is our savior and that means also that he is our Lord. We’re saying, in effect, “I realize that I’ve made a shamble of my life, I’ve rebelled against the God of glory, which earned me an ugly place in Hell. But God sent Jesus to be a sacrifice that paid for my guilt and shame and by accepting, acknowledging that gift, therefore, I am offering myself to God to be his servant forever.” We’re bowing our head to God, believing that he will not lop it off because he lopped off Jesus’ head in our place. That describes our death.
Then, God says, because I accepted Jesus’ death in your place, I accept you in his name. And here’s the greatest part of the good news. God then sends his Holy Spirit to live inside us. He gives us new life. This new life means that whereas before we didn’t have the desire to serve God, we now joyfully serve him. Before we couldn’t have served him if we had wanted to; we were impotent to do his will, now we not only joyfully serve him, we are able to serve him.
All of this comes in a context. Here are a number of things the Bible says happened when we believed. These are all ways the Bible tries to share with us how truly great our salvation is. I said tries because salvation is so great, and we are so small that it is very difficult to accurately tell us everything God has done for us. We were justified, sanctified (made righteous, made holy), redeemed, forgiven, and delivered from the clutches and ultimate consequence of our sin; born again. We have been reconciled to God, adopted unto his family, made sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of Christ. We have been placed in Christ, are members of his body, under his headship, and citizens of heaven. There’s so much more it is difficult to even begin making a list. Books have been written about what it means to be a Christian and to be saved. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of what the Bible says about what has happened to each of us when we believed the Gospel of God.
The major thing we need to get out of all this is that now that we have been reconciled to God. And reconciliation means that we now have a living vibrant relationship with the living God. Consequently, we literally know him. We know God. As I knew my wife and I know my daughter. And even better, we are known by God (1 Cor 8:3). And it is good! Let me say that again. We know him, and he knows us, and it is good! Really good!
Image by Avi Chomotovski from Pixabay