Dec
31
2009
All Things New
Beginning tonight people all over the world will intensify their celebration of newness. Below is a brief meditation from my book Do I Know God? on why Christians are the ones who should be celebrating newness louder than anybody.
When God saves us, we gain a new beginning, a new family, a new purpose, and a new power.
A New Beginning (Justification)
One of the reasons people celebrate the beginning of a new year is because it promises a clean slate. That’s why we make New Year’s resolutions, out of our desire to start over. Sadly, though, most of the resolutions we make on January 1st are long abandoned by the middle of February.
But God promises that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). That is, when we trust in Christ, God gives us a permanent fresh start, an everlasting new beginning, regardless of what we’ve done or who we’ve been. Our deep desire to “begin again” is satisfied once and for all because of what Christ has done for us on the cross.
A New Family (Adoption)
“You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household,” Paul said. In other words, when God adopts us, we not only gain a Father, we gain a whole new family: the Church. The biblical word for “church” does not mean a building or institution, it means “the called out ones.” It refers to those whom God calls out of slavery and into sonship. The Church, in other words, is people: people adopted by God, people who know God as their heavenly Father. When God saves sinners he saves them into a whole new community — the “family of God.” As Frank Colquhoun wrote in his book Total Christianity, “When Christ saves a man he not only saves him from his sin, he saves him from his solitude.” He brings us into meaningful fellowship with others who will help us along the way in our relationship with God.
A New Purpose (Mission)
Paul wrote, “Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do it all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). When God saves us, we no longer have to settle for manufacturing our own fleeting legacies. He gives us a new reason to live—to glorify him. We live, in other words, for something huge and significant — to display God, to spread his fame, and to build his everlasting Kingdom. We become part of an infinitely larger story than our own personal history. We no longer have to work for our own puny causes, but for God’s universal cause. Paul said, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesteron wrote, “How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.” Nothing makes you more aware of your smallness and life’s potential bigness than being in relationship with the Living God. God promises a big purposeful life to everyone who knows him.
A New Power (Sanctification)
When God enters into an everlasting relationship with us, he not only promises to pardon us for the past, he promises us a new power for the present. Just before Jesus ascended back into heaven after his resurrection, he told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8).
Most of us know we’re imperfect and need to change. Most of us want to live better lives. But no matter how hard we try, we can’t. We don’t have the power to change.
But God does. In The Contemporary Christian, John Stott writes, “Is God really able to change human nature … to make cruel people kind, selfish people unselfish, immoral people self-controlled, and sour people sweet? Is he able to take people who are dead to spiritual reality, and make them alive in Christ? Yes, he really is!” And when God’s Holy Spirit enters us, we receive all the power we need to become the people God always intended for us to be. The Bible makes it clear that in Christ, God provides us with everything we need for godliness.
C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.”
New, unimaginable changes await all God’s children because God promises a new, unimaginable power.
Because God has given us a new beginning, a new family, a new purpose, and a new power, let us celebrate true newness tonight. And in doing so we will point a watching world to the only One who can “make all things new.”
Happy New Year!
10 Comments
Are you doing this so I will buy your book?
Just kidding. Too bad my sermon is done for this Sunday. This would make a good one however, I am “Here I Stand on Salvation” in a few months so this will definitely make its way to the file. Thanks once again for some good food for thought. Wishing you a new year filled with God’s blessings beyond your wildest dreams.
Tullian,
I sent this to your email, but wanted to send it here so you are sure to see it. I got this from Mark Driscoll’s facebook fan page. He posted this up. You may want to check it out. Happy New Year!
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“What The 86 Year Old Pastor Said”
I was recently visiting a friend who pastors another church and he introduced me to an older pastor who has encouraged him for many years. This eighty-six-year-old preacher had lots of gas still in his tank, and speculated out loud whether he thought he could take me at racquetball. He was a genuinely happy man filled with joy and still dreaming new dreams for ministry.
At one point in our brief conversation, I asked him what the “secret” was to his lifelong ministry, good health, and joy.
Of course, the old preacher rattled off three points:
“Read the Bible every day.” I asked him how many times he had read the Bible, and he said he was finishing up his 358th reading of the entire Bible!
“Mumble prayers throughout the day.” He explained that it is vital to pray in the morning to connect with God and confess sin, but that we also need to mumble prayers throughout the day, talking to God about everything.
“Refuse to have any enemies.” He said that if you choose to forgive everyone of all their sins, then no matter who or what is against you, your heart will not become hard and bitter because you treat everyone like a friend.
Which one is most convicting for you? Me? Easily number 3.
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Tullian,
I love your statement, “God gives us a permanent fresh start, an everlasting new beginning, regardless of what we’ve done or who we’ve been.” How amazing to contemplate!!
How shallow is my understanding of the cross, who He is, and what He’s done!!! Cheers to a year of plumbing the depths (really scraping the surface) of God’s infinite mercy and grace.
Tullian,
Happy New Year!
I am so grateful to really know my Heavenly Father, been adopted into a new family, and been given God’s power by His Holy Spirit. I can’t wait to see what God is going to do this year through Coral Ridge!
Blessings,
Tammy
Pastor Tullian
We are almost on the same page. I have just read from “Mere Christianity” chapter 10 “nice people or new men.”
the chapter begins: ” He meant what he said. Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect—perfect in love, wisdom,joy,beauty, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.”
“But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: (fly that is)
and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders— no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings—may even give it an awkward appearence.”
according to C.S. Lewis it is not mere improvement but Transformation. The Apostle Paul said in Romans
chapter 12v2 do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.NIV
God bless you Pastor and all the rest of the body of believers at CRPC, my prayers are with you that God will continue to bless and keep you all in His care.
Pastor Tullian
I came across Tim Kellers book ” The Reason for God, Belief in an Age of Skepticism.” I have been scanning different parts. I love the part where he talks about the resurrection of Jesus as an explosion of a new worldview. “They believed that Jesus had a transformed body that could walk through walls yet eat food. This was not simply a resuscitated body like the Jews envisioned, nor a solely spiritual existence like the Greeks imagined. Jesus’s resurrection guaranteed our resurrection and brought some of that future new life into our hearts now.” This book helps me to dispel any doubts I may have.
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