A New Creation

London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior.
As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage.

"Forget about the repairs," the buyer said. "When I buy this place, I'm going to build something completely different. I don't want the building; I want the site."
Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God's, the old life is over (2 Cor. 5:17). He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build.

Read 2 Corinthians 5:12-21

God reconciled sinful man to Himself by making His Son bear the sin of the world and dying in the sinner’s place. Jesus paid the price for humanity so that God could set the sinner free. God did more than just forgive us of our sins but He attributed the righteousness of His Son on us. Christ took on all the sin and guilt while giving us His perfect righteousness.

As Paul was writing this epistle he wrote in verse 18, "Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”. The word "reconcile" in the original Greek is the word – katallasso. It is the old word for exchanging coins. This indicates "to change, exchange" especially money, then of individuals "to change from enmity to friendship, to reconcile."

Paul writes in Romans 5:10 that, "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life". God’s love provided the means and foundation for man’s reconciliation to God against whom he had sinned. God’s own sense of justice had to be satisfied. We deserve the wrath of God.

Yet, we know God has given us the opportunity to be created new. All we have to do is give permission to build just as the introduction story states.
Take some time to acknowledge the ways God has taken all of your old broken ways and life and doesn’t just want to try to rebuild that, but has made you a completely new creation. In this remembrance of what God has done, let that continue to move you and draw you into gratitude and love for a God that has done that for you.