Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
- 2 Corinthians 5:17
On December 21, about an hour before our church’s candlelight Lord’s Supper service, I left my laptop sitting on my desk while I went to the bathroom. When I returned to my office, I was greeted by a sight no one wants to see: the dreaded “blue screen of death” indicating a major system failure. Over the next few days, our church’s point man for all things related to technology worked his magic, but to no avail. Regretfully, he announced that my computer had bitten the dust and it was time to go shopping for a new one.
So as I type this, I am doing so from a brand-spanking-new machine. It’s more powerful than the old one, its hard drive is less cluttered with programs and files, and I haven’t yet put any fun stickers on its exterior. It runs faster, it has a more advanced operating system, and its graphics are crisper. It is objectively a better computer than the old one.
Nevertheless, I am dealing with a few growing pains. Microsoft Office isn’t installed yet. Passwords that were saved on my old computer’s browser are having to be looked up or reset. The trackpad’s sensitivity is just a hair different from what I’m used to. Little things…but things that make me long for what was when I ought to be grateful for what is.
As the flush of New Year’s Day gives way to the return of routine, I’m reminded that newness always seems to work that way. You greet it with excitement, you revel in those things which are better than before, and you are hopeful for what you have yet to discover. But it doesn’t take long for you to start missing some of the things that are now gone–even when they’ve been replaced by something better!
But if there’s one area where that kind of nostalgia has no place, it’s in your spiritual life. The apostle Paul describes life in Christ as being made new–the old, sinful self has “passed away,” buried in the waters of baptism, and you emerge as a new creation in the Lord. Conversion isn’t a matter of a few cosmetic changes, it’s a total spiritual transformation.
And the promise of Scripture is that you can greet that new life with unreserved joy. You need not look back with fondness to the days when you were enslaved by sin, because in Christ you are set free! You have no reason to be nostalgic for the days when you were lost, because now you are found!
Jesus makes you new, and that is reason to rejoice. So don’t let the enemy convince you things were better before you knew the Lord–because the truth is, in Christ, you are given new mercies every morning, and the best is yet to come.
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