The Daily Word

 

At the weekend, Geoff spoke to us on the word ‘new’. There are two different Greek words in the New Testament which are translated as ‘new’. One is related to time, the other is related to change. We will consider some examples of the word ‘new’ in the Bible and how that should be effective in our lives.

The first, certainly in terms of our life in Jesus Christ, is found in 2 Corinthians 5 v 17, “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, old things are passed away and behold all things made new”. The word ‘new’ here has both implications in terms of time but more in terms of change. We know that there was a moment when we accepted Jesus as our Saviour and that moved us into Christ in terms of our future life, work and ultimate destination. But by far the strongest sense is change.

The verse is so strong when it says, “old things ARE passed away”. The implication is that anything that could offend our new Lord and Saviour would not be found in our new lives. YET, we know from experience that this is not the case. What has faded is the DESIRE for the old life, yet as Paul explains on Romans 7, he found that the old things that he no longer wanted to do, being in Christ, he found himself doing because he wasn’t relying on the indwelling Holy Spirit to work and prevent him from these sins. And make no mistake, if we are demonstrating any of the old bad characteristics of our old life, these are sins, not just slip-ups. If we swore, overindulged, demonstrated bad temper, were over critical of people, these are characteristics of the old things which should have passed away in our new life.

In a new year, we need to take stock of whether the old life characteristics have regained a stronger control in our lives and re-dedicate ourselves to eliminating their control in this new year And tomorrow we will consider what the ‘new things’ should be.

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church