A New Beginning

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh … Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through our Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:18,24–25)

Authentic Christianity demands honesty. Honesty is the first step we must take to be saved — we must admit our need to our self and to God. Honesty is the first step we must take for renewal after we are saved — for when things begin to go wrong in our hearts we have begun to live in deception and not in the truth.

But honesty alone is never enough. It is one thing to be honest enough to admit that the ship one is on is sinking. It is another thing to get on the lifeboat. Honesty should lead also to faith in Christ. The apostle asked, “Who will rescue me?” and he answered affirmatively, “Christ will rescue me!”

Many efforts to come to Christ have fallen short, simply because they came to people rather than to God. Some have come only to the community of faith thinking that would be enough. I recall the testimony of a young businessman called out of the competitive world of finance into the ministry. Uprooting his family he moved them all to seminary, thinking he had found a spiritual Eden. He soon discovered that rather than finding a new way, he had simply come to the same old way in a different setting. There was as much ego and self-seeking there as in the bank where he worked earlier.

We decide to get active in a church and find that the attitudes of the world have also infiltrated the people of God. Everyone is struggling with something — and most often it is simply the fallen human nature, the “flesh” that Paul wrote about. Those who are sincere are often pulled down by others who are not sincere.

A new beginning cannot be merely the same old beginning in different clothes.

The true new beginning in life through Christ is always about coming to him personally, and surrendering our hearts and lives to him. It can never be to merely come to a community, or to a new philosophy, or to a new ethic. Christianity involves all of these things — a new outlook, a new family, a new hope — but these are the results of his work in the world, the fruit but not the root.

The new life is found in him, in coming to him like a prodigal son returning to his father, like a lost sheep letting the Good Shepherd find him and draw him close to his heart. God said to Israel, “If you return … to me you should return” (Jer. 4:1). And he says to us, If you will come to new life, then you should come to me. Paul wrote that the Spirit forms in our mind an understanding of Christ as a person.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 4:6)

Through the gospel God gives us the witness in our hearts of a specific Person, Jesus Christ who calls us and to whom we come. Come always to him, keep coming to him, speaking to him, trusting in him, for he is the one who gives true life. The new beginning is found in him.