2 Corinthians 5:17

“Therefore, if anyone is found in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and look, new things have come.”

As we move into a new year this verse popped came to mind where Paul is telling the church at Corinth that when a person’s comes to faith in Christ he is made a new creation. When I think of “New Year’s” I always think of the “new” part, and nothing can be more “new” than a new creation.

Paul isn’t simply saying that when we come to Christ He just cleans us up a little bit, whips off the dirt from us, rinses us down, and we good to go. Nope! Paul is saying that when a person comes to faith in Christ, that person is made into something completely different. How amazing is that. One minute you’re a sinner that is doomed for hell, then when you place your faith in Christ, you are instantly transformed into a son of God. You go from being an orphan to being a biological child of the Almighty God!

Pastor Rick Warren, when explaining this verse used the illustration of a butterfly. “Can a butterfly go back into a cocoon after it’s come out as a caterpillar? Of course not. It can’t happen. Once the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it is what it is – a butterfly.”

What a creative and meaningful illustration. Not only does this verse tell us that we are made into something totally new, it gives us the reassurance that we are going to be totally new forever. Even when we look at the second part of the verse we see that the “New Creation” is no longer concerned with what it used to do, instead it is heading in a new direction.  It has totally forsaken all of the old sinful ways that it used to go, and now it is focused on serving God.

Now this make take a little time to get used to being a new creation. I believe it is very hard sometimes for a sinner to totally forsake all of the sins that they have struggled with before they came to Christ. As an example John Newton, the famous writer of the hymn “Amazing Grace” struggled with running a slave boat even after he had come to faith in Christ. He eventually turned from the sin of slavery, but it didn’t happen overnight.

The importance is not in the timing of the transformation, but more so in the fact that the transformation took place.  When we look back on our lives some of us might not know the exact day and time when we came to faith in Christ, it may have been a slow transition, for others of us it may have been a huge event that totally changed everything in one day. Either way, the transformation happened, or we placed our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.