Vol.
XLI
A New You for the New Year
by Tom
McLemore
Perhaps you, like countless others, are considering
the coming of the new year. You are contemplating what you hope to
accomplish in the days of 2009. Wise
people realize that it is possible to achieve goals when we set them for
ourselves, and it is possible to make progress toward our goals if they are
well defined and specific. Best wishes
as you set your specific goals for this year.
In the midst of our setting goals for
accomplishing tasks, let us not overlook the ultimate meaning of the
process. That is to become more like the
person God has created us to be and desires for us to be. All of us have sinned, and we fall short of
the glory of God (Romans 3:23). However,
in Christ, God creates us anew...recreates us (Ephesians 2:10). We inhabit a new world and are to live
anew. “So if anyone is in Christ, there
is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new!” (2
Corinthians 5:17).
The Christian life is a process of
becoming in practice what we are in Christ by faith. The Bible describes this new person or
self. In a word the new self is exactly
like Christ. The new self is like
clothing that we are to put on. The
description also identifies the primary parts of the self upon which we need to
concentrate.
Paul reminds us of these things in his
epistle to the Ephesians. “...[Y]ou learned Christ!
For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is
in Jesus. You were taught to put away
your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your
minds, and to clothe yourselves with the
new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and
holiness” (Ephesians 4:20-24).
Paul gives further insight on the new
self in the letter to the Colossians.
“But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice,
slander, and abusive language from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old
self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is
being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and
Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but
Christ is all and in all! As God’s
chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a
complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven
you, so you also must forgive. Above
all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect
harmony. And let the peace of Christ
rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be
thankful.” (Colossians 3:8-15).
The Old Testament prophets help us to
understand the areas of concentration, namely, the spirit and the heart. Just as Jesus had identified the fact that
people’s hearts are far from God (Mark 7:6; Matthew 15:8; quoting Isaiah
29:13), the new covenant relationship which God has brought into reality concentrates
on the heart. “The days are surely
coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and the house of Judah. It will not be
like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was
their husband, says the LORD. But this
is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,
says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or
say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least
of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and
remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
Ezekiel foresees God’s concentration
on both the heart and the spirit of the person.
In Ezekiel 11:16-21, he is commanded, “Therefore say: Thus says the Lord
GOD: Though I removed them far away among the nations, and though I scattered
them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a little
while in the countries where they have gone.
Therefore say: Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the
peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered,
and I will give you the land of Israel.
When they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things
and all its abominations. I will give
them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of
stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow
my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people,
and I will be their God. But as for
those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I
will bring their deeds upon their own heads, says the Lord GOD.”
Through Ezekiel, the LORD calls us to
“Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me,
and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of
Israel?” (Ezekiel 18:31). He promises,
“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I
will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
(Ezekiel 36:26).
In the coming year, let us strive to clothe ourselves in
Christ. Let God’s word be written on our
hearts. May our hearts be sensitive to
God’s direction and to the needs of others. Let our spirit or attitude be that of Christ
Jesus. In the midst of the new year, and at its end, the Lord willing, may we see
ourselves becoming the new self in Christ.
“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as
though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one
degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2
Corinthians 3:18).
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