Stick around for a while and you’ll find I have a lot of favorite verses in the Bible. But this one? It rocks me every time.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
-II Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
Camp out there for just a second. New.
What you did in the past? Gone.
What you feared in the past? Gone.
Who you used to be? Gone.
Casting Crowns said it: I don’t have to see the man I’ve been come rising up in me again.
Big Daddy Weave said it: I don’t have to be the old man inside of me, ’cause his day is long dead and gone.
Do you know how excited that gets me? I mean, really? That who I was simply no longer exists? Do you know how much it unglues me when Jesus looks at Mary in The Passion and says, “See, mother? I came to make all things new.” That was the reason he made the long, torturous march to the cross. To make me new–to make you new–so that we can look him in the eye one day and feel the kind of love this earth can only shadow.
Hear me… Our God pursues us. Maybe you’ve felt Him chasing you. And Jesus did not come to show off on earth and then leave. He came to change everything. Everything. There is nothing about you that he can’t change if you’ll give it to him. Will it take work? Yes. Will you walk that road of change alone? No. Never.
Oh, the freedom of being new. Of no longer being who we used to be, not in thought or word or deed.
I don’t know about you, but that? That’s the greatest thing I know. Not having to be who I was. Because when Jesus looks at me, he sees who I can be. Who I will be. Who he made me to be. And he does the same for you.
And that? That’s worth getting excited about.
-JB