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.

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