Easter Makes Everything NewSample

A New Creation

You’ve come to Jesus. You have new life in Him. But how new, really, is your new?

The most meaningful verse in the Bible about being new is 2 Corinthians 5:17. It tells us what Christianity is supposed to be about. But maybe 95 percent or more of all Christians—people who are truly born again, not just churchgoers—are not living anywhere near what God intended when He gave us this verse through the apostle Paul: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

For anyone who is in Christ, God’s intention is a new creation. He’s not interested in fixing up the old. The old is gone! The new is here.

A lot of us, though, are oxymorons in the sense that we’re Old Testament Christians. The Old Testament covenant from God was “Here are My laws. Now obey them.” But nobody did obey them, because the law only brought a knowledge of sin. It couldn’t change anyone. The law, written on stone, had no life in it. The commands were right—“Don’t kill; don’t commit adultery; don’t lie.” The problem was with us, with our carnal nature. Who we are will never change; we were messed up from the jump. So God said, “I won’t work with that. Instead, trust in My Son, and I’ll make you a new creation.” A new species, almost, of life.

We have grass and trees. That’s life. Above that are animals, from insects to the most developed animal life. That’s life. Above that is humanity; we can think, write symphonies, develop computers, go to the moon, do all kinds of amazing things. That’s life too. But God says, “Now I’m going to make a new creation, above all the others. People who are in Christ won’t be regular men and women anymore. They will be new creations. The old is gone.”

The old what? The old person. In Christ, we have a new kind of life. The Holy Spirit now lives inside us, joined with our spirits, and when we yield to the Spirit, we have a new way of living. We can be like Christ! We don’t live with our old failures, our old ways. That’s living in the flesh. That’s living under the law.

The new life is much more than going to church, having a Bible, trying to do right. That has nothing to do with Christianity. Zero. Christianity is a new creation. It’s Jesus dying for our sins and washing them away—but it doesn’t stop there. It’s being born again, as Jesus comes to live inside us by His Spirit, into a new kind of living. It’s a joy and a peace that you and I scarcely think about once in a year—what we could be, what we should be, what God purposed us to be.

Draw near to Jesus today. Let Him renew your life.