Articles
New Things
Most everyone enjoys new things: a new car, new clothes, new travel locales, new relationships, etc. There is a sense of freshness, novelty and excitement in a new object, experience or person.
Why this universal love affair with newness? Perhaps it is a subtle reaction to the mundaneness and decline of the everyday human experience. We take for granted the familiar; we tire of struggling with decay; we become disenchanted with the flaws and weaknesses of things and even people. That which is new brings the promise of ease, intrigue and fulfillment. We think that something new will restore the joy and satisfaction that this world constantly erodes.
Perhaps this is why we place so much stock in the beginning of a new year. On the one hand, it is merely the flipping of a calendar page or the reminder to write a new number. But a new year is more than that. It is a new start, a reset of life that we hope brings improvement from the previous year which now seems passé and threadbare.
But man himself is the author of the degenerate, the tired, the empty, the vain, the broken, the pointless, the diseased and the dead. We live amid the squalor we help create, not only at the beginning in Eden but with every subsequent individual, society and freewill choice thereafter. So much of what we blame on God is our own doing. Even though this world was fundamentally altered as a consequence of the first sin, a good, happy and meaningful existence would still be possible if we would stop further corrupting it. What God has done through the ages is preserve, manage and renew what we continually ravage, wreck and ruin. God is the God of regeneration, freshness and fulfillment. He specializes in the restoration not only of the physical, social, political environment we live in but even our own selves. The truth is, we corrupt our own thoughts, morals and values. Godless principles are so pervasive it is impossible to re-main completely untainted by them, and we fall into an exhausted, empty, degenerate way of thinking and living.
So, what newness does God offer that is more lasting than that new car smell, more liberating than moving to a new community, more meaningful than a new job and more exciting than a new patch of earth to explore?
A new spiritual life. “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). It is axiomatic that life precedes death, and then life springs from death. We witness this regularly with the changing of the seasons; with the growth of plants and flowers; with carnivorous food cycles wherein the living are killed and eaten in order to bring new life to the eater and its offspring.
But a similar thing happens on a spiritual plane. We enter the world spiritually alive and pure. But eventually each of us chooses to sin against God and is estranged from Him: “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died” (Rom 7:9). Now in a state of lingering spiritual death, we are unable to restore ourselves, to cobble together some tattered spiritual life that can save us by our own makeshift virtues. Until Christ, mankind was utterly hopeless.
But Christ Himself followed the pattern of life/death/life, and through His redemptive self-sacrifice and victorious resurrection He provides a foundation for our spiritual renewal. This was God’s gracious plan, imagined and engineered by Him throughout the annals of history and brought it to fruition in His Son. Jesus came and lived among us, taught us, endured our ignorance and abuse and died to renew us and restore us to God (Eph 1:3-14; 2:1-10; Col 1:19-22; 1 Pet 1:3-12; etc.).
A new identity. A corollary of decay is a human inertia that gradually becomes content with mediocrity, filth and imperfection. We create our “comfort zone” that accepts what is rather than working toward what might be. This kind of apathy can infect our souls; we accept our flaws as normal aberrations of otherwise decent and commendable human beings.
But this is not acceptable to God, for He calls us to repent of our sins, to rebuild our value structure to match His own standards and to revamp our character so as to think and act more like Him. God demands a cosmic makeover, not some feel-good faith or mindless, external ritual.
This scares many people, thus causing them to avoid or reject the gospel. But to those who “labor and are heavy laden” and are looking for “rest for [their] souls” (Mt 11:28-30), it is a joyous, hopeful and welcome proposition. I clearly remember in earlier times my excitement in moving to a new location, thinking that I could start over, avoid stupid mistakes and be free from the flaws that others had already seen in me. And while there may be some validity to such new beginnings, change of scenery is usually just that … an alteration of the external. Our true selves will eventually arise to corrupt new opportunities and taint new relationships. It is only in Christ that we learn to work on the real problem: our inward character.
A new family. Jesus foresaw the implications of bringing such newness into the world; viz., not everyone would embrace it. He spoke of His disciples being alienated from their families (Mt 10:21-22, 34-39) and rejected by society (Jn 15:18-21; 16:2-4). But Jesus also foresaw the creation of new relationships, new “families” of believers not related genetically but by spiritual convictions: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit everlasting life” (Mt 19:29).
These new relationships are irrespective of nationality, gender, economics, education or other irrelevant differences that spur murder and mayhem in the worldly. God’s global family embraces the differences, values the like-mindedness and shares the love that emanates from God Himself. We find family wherever we go; we are instantly drawn to new acquaintances of faith who are filled with grace, compassion, kindness and eternal hope.
With the onset of 2022, do you feel you need a change? Are you weary or disgruntled or jaded? Do you think a new job or salary or congregation would renew your soul? The idea of newness fosters false hope of instant improvement. Perhaps the change you need most is not outward. The inescapable challenge to each of us is the hard work of inward renewal.
