Living As A New Creation
My preschool friends and I headed out for a walk. First, we descended down the slippery slope, we stopped at the two tall trees, and then we crossed over the “bridge” (currently buried in snow). At last we had arrived - we were at Pine Tree Patch! This is a frequent destination for my young friends who will spend their time pretending to be animals or finding sticks and building shelters or making up games where they take turns chasing each other.
On this particular day, we reached the bottom of our slippery slope and headed to the patch. I stayed in the rear of the line, making sure that everyone made it through the snowy drifts. From the front of the group, I begin to hear shouts of glee and the single distinguishable word, “Grass!” Sure enough, there was a patch of melted snow surrounding the trees and grass has begun to push through the brush and debris from the fall. We live in Vermont where grass hasn’t been seen since Christmas Day, so it’s a pretty big deal to finally spot grass. As we explored our community over the next week, we began making a list of the signs of spring: melting snow, bugs, trees without snow on them, tiny green plants poking up from the ground, mud puddles...we were all eager to explore our world with the snow slowly melting away.
For my tiny humans, the grass and the melting snow serves as a reminder that we’ll be putting our snowsuits and ski gear away to splash in the stream, catch tadpoles and climb trees. We’ll be napping outside and eating lunch outside and running through sprinklers. I love all of those moments with them. If you’ve never watched a three year old run through a sprinkler, you’ve never seen pure joy.
But for me, the true magic of the melting snow is the reminder of God’s promise for new creation.
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”- 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
We have this clear promise in 2 Corinthians and it’s mentioned again and again in the New Testament, but what does it mean to be a “new creation?” And how do we live like a new creation?
Shift your worldview: So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.
Again and again in the Bible, we are told to reject the world (1 John 2:15, Romans 12:2, Titus 2:11-12, James 4:4, 2 Peter 1:4). But this verse asks more from us. Here in 2nd Corinthians, we are told to regard no one from a worldly point of view. As we read, we understand that the disciples and early Christians had a hard time teasing apart Jesus from his human form. For us, living 2000+ years removed from that situation, we have a harder time thinking of Jesus in the human form.
Looking at our friends and neighbors, though, all we see is the flesh. We see their acne-pitted skin and the shoes they wear and how much they weigh. We see the cars they drive, their ACT scores, and how fast they run. But Paul is calling us to look at people differently. He’s calling us to shift away from that worldly - fleshly - point of view and consider this new perspective. And despite how much or how little someone has, they are inherently valuable to and loved by God. But this all starts when we...
Let go of the old: The old has gone
This doesn’t mean those old acne scars or the scores from your first attempt at the ACT (SAT, GRE, Praxis, Bar Exam…) will go away. Instead, it means that the old sins sitting in, and on, your heart will be taken away. The way of life that you knew, filled with pride and obsession with “doing good” and resenting neighbors, should be gone. God is taking all of that itchy stuff off of your body and making it new. And once you are new, you have to...
Believe that you are reconciled: The new is here!
Reconciliation means, in the simplest of terms, becoming friendly again. All of that “old” kept us apart from God. When we let him sluff it all off, we can dive back into a relationship with him!
Wait a minute. Did I just say “back into a relationship with him?” Yes, I did. God will never leave or abandon us. This isn’t like your friend who keeps diving back into a messy on-again/off-again relationship with some guy on the football team. Because we are human, we will continually sin. It is in our nature. But as Christians, we believe in the power of reconciliation.
And because we are Christians who have been made new, we want that reconciliation. Our new self should shudder at the thought of our old habits surging back up. We should display humility when we go to God - again and again - acknowledging our faults and asking him to make us new. We should celebrate this reconciliation and maybe even take it a step further.
Practice the ministry of reconciliation: We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors
We are reconciled. We are filled with joy and hope because we know that we are not left to wallow in our old, sinful ways. Instead, we are made new day by day. And that should give us a reason to celebrate.
I’m not a very celebratory person. I keep big moments to myself and celebrate by eating my favorite ice cream (moose tracks). But instead of picturing my personal celebrations, I want to take you back to my preschool friends.
You know that tiny plant that we found? Do you think we kept it to ourselves? NO! We told every other teacher we saw on our way back to school and we told the afternoon teacher that came in after naptime and we wrote it on our calendar and we drew it in our “pictures of the day.” It was worth celebrating and worth sharing.
How much more magnificent is God’s reconciliation?
WHAT NOW?
After I pick apart a passage like this, I have to sit back and figure out how it all fits back together. You remember those friends and neighbors that we’ve viewed through a worldly lens? Maybe it’s time to look at them through a different sort of lens. Consider the power that reconciliation might have over their lives. And consider how God has called you to be an ambassador of reconciliation.
How can you lean into life as a new creation this week?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Elizabeth spent the past six years doing life in Nashville, TN…from grad school to working in a pie shop to running after school programs. But then she got a little antsy. She’s currently in a season of “wandering”…exploring the people, tastes and experiences that the country has to offer. As she set out on this journey her hope was to engage with people in more authentic ways and to hike everything possible.