2 Corinthians 5:16-18: A New Year and a New Start

We are told that when we are in Christ we are a new creation.

When we are ‘in-Christ’ we are able to have our lives transformed so we can see and do the good things that God wants for us and others (Romans 12:2). Being ‘in-Christ’ is no longer thinking about ourselves.

One night I received an e-mail from an old friend of mine who works in a BC prison; I myself volunteered in the chapel in Stony Mountain Penn. We agreed that many of the fellows there who are stuck, unable to change; the ones who don’t get along with their fellow inmates and are threatening and litigious, are the people who act upon ‘a perverse sense of entitlement.’

It is this sense of entitlement, among other things, that embodies the old life for each of us. It is this way of thinking that traps us. The new life is experienced only as we change our minds to put God, rather than ourselves, first. This is what it means to be ‘in-Christ.’ It is a simple idea - this new life.

Jesus has already provided this new life for us. It is very much like the New Year. When the New Year comes, it is like a new start. Many people stay up to midnight to celebrate this opportunity with parties, noise, making plans or resolutions for the year to come…

Today as we are coming up to a new calendar year I invite us to commit or recommit ourselves to the new lives that Jesus provided for us between the manger, the cross, and the empty tomb of being God-focused rather than self-focused.

I encourage us all in our new lives this New Year in praying, meeting together, and reading our Bibles and to welcome in the Lord like we do the New Year with celebration as we let the Lord continue to transform us into a new creation.

www.sheepspeak.com

www.facebook.com/salvogesis

Comments

Hosanna! The Triumphal Entry into Holy Week (Matthew 21:1-11)

Today is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is when we commemorate the Sunday before Jesus’ death. Jerusalem was occupied then, like it is now; now it is occupied by the Israelis, then it was occupied by the Romans. The Judeans in the first century didn’t like being occupied then any more than the Palestinians like it today. The Romans were harsh, not nearly as brutal as modern Israel, but harsh enough that the first century had their version of … (Remember the suicide bombers of the ‘70s and ‘80s?) …suicide bombers: the Sicarii (zealots), Judean terrorists / revolutionaries would walk into crowds with daggers looking for Romans to kill –. One of Jesus’ followers, Simon, was arguably a Sicarii or zealot. Passover is the commemoration of ancient Israel’s birth as a nation. The Angel of Death passed over Egypt and the nations of Isreal and Judah were created through the Exodus. Passover, in the Roman period, was a time when many people of Judean descent descended upon Jerusalem. I ...

Luke 24:38-34: Revelation of a King

James V, the King of Scotland used to go around the country disguised as a common person. That is because he wanted to meet the everyday people of the country not just the rich and powerful. He wanted to see how the normal people lived. One day he was dressed in very old clothes and was going by a place known as Cramond Brig, when he is attacked by robbers who don’t know who he is. There is a fierce struggle and he is nearly overcome when, at just the right moment, a poor farm worker - Jock Howieson - hears the commotion comes to the disguised king’s aid. Now Jock, the poor labourer, who works on this portion of the King’s land, Cramond Brig, unawares takes the undercover king home and gives him a dinner of broth and Jock - as the king is recouping – naturally asks the man who he is. The King responds ‘I’m a good man of Edinburgh.’ ‘And where do you live in that city and where do you work?’ ‘Well,’ says James, ‘I live at the palace and I work there too.’ ‘The palace, is it?...

Lanterns (Matthew 25:1-13, Psalm 146)

The topics I chose from our Lenten list for today are “God has rescued us from the Dominion of Darkness”; “He has Freed Us from the Power of Sin”; the Kingdom of God is at hand. Do we believe that? Do we live that? In theology we use the term ‘prolepsis’ to refer to the time when the Kingdom of God begins, which is now, the time between the resurrection of Christ and His return at the eschaton. This is the time in which we are living and as Christians it is our responsibility to be willing instruments of God to display what it means that He has rescued us from the Dominion of Darkness; He has Freed Us from the Power of Sin, that the Kingdom of God is at hand. But do we even actually believe that He has already done this? And if He has why does it not seem that the Sin and Darkness still reign? We know the parable of the bridesmaids (holy ones) in the Bible who needed to keep their lanterns lit – because lit lanterns were to be there when the Bridegroom Jesus returns...

Salvogesis

Search This Blog