A new year, a new you

2 Cor 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

New years are a good time for big changes. Time to move house. Or look for a new job. Maybe time to start a new diet & exercise routine. But - change is difficult. That’s why new year’s resolutions are so depressing. It’s so much easier not to have any changes. It’s so much easier to just give up. This is who I am, this is what I do. I’m not gonna change.

When TV ads talk about “a new year, a new you”, they mean makeup and gym classes and clothes. But it’s not actually a new us, it’s the old us, with makeup on. Or the old us, with new clothes on. That’s why the changes don’t work most of the time. It’s not actually a new us.

But 2 Cor 5 tells us we can actually have a new “us”. But this passage tells us – we actually can have a new you! It’s so new, that Paul can call it a new creation. The old person’s completely gone; it’s a whole new you. And there’s three great things about it.

First, God does it. We don't have to do this big change ourselves. When we go to the gym, we have to work out, we have to sweat and strain. But this change that Paul’s taking about is more like getting your hair and nails done. You just sit there, nice and comfortable. Someone else fusses over you, and you leave looking and feeling marvellous.

Second, the way God fusses over us is by fixing up our sin problem. We reject God; but God does the work needed to fix that. Most of the time, if someone upsets us, we get angry and wait for them to come and say sorry. And if they do, we might forgive them – slowly – because we really want to punish them. God’s not like that. He comes to us first – even before we say sorry – because he wants to fix up the relationship more than we do.

Thirdly, this change now gives us a new identity. We don’t belong to ourselves any more – we belong to God. We can give up our boring, petty, self-obsessed, world-bound ambitions and values and priorities. We can trade them in for much more interesting, eternal, useful ambitions and values and priorities. Like living for God-in-Christ, every hour of every day.

Nice for a change, isn’t it?