Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5: 17, ESV)
Transforming the golf swing from one move to another is usually hard-fought. Taking the time to adopt a new move that fits the overall mechanics of your current swing can be hazardous to your mental and emotional health. Furthermore, assuming you’ve adopted the right idea, you must commit to the number of “reps” it will take to make it second nature.
Nick Faldo took significant amounts of time to rebuild his golf swing. Throughout his career, we watched Tiger overhaul his swing again and again. Even now, we tend to scratch our heads while watching Jordan’s commitment to change as we observe his pre-shot routine. Transforming a golf swing that you can take from the range to the course is not for the faint of heart.
Changing our swing is one thing; adopting change in our life is a new ball of wax. One of our colleagues recently remarked, “no one likes change except a baby with a wet diaper.” That’s funny!
When Paul says, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come,” he is arguing, on the one hand, that something has changed instantaneously, and on the other hand, from the surrounding context, he is arguing for progressive change.
What Paul is after here is much grander than we initially expected. In the original language, this verse reads as follows: “…if anyone is in Christ, new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Paul is teaching us that a whole new world has dawned with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul’s more specific point is that when someone is “in Christ,” they immediately find themselves in the “new creation.”
It might take a few moments for that idea to sink in but stay with it. Paul’s point is that when we are born again, we are ushered into the “new creation” that began two thousand years ago when Christ conquered Adam’s sin-cursed world of sin, death, and the grave.
Biblically speaking, the “age to come” dawned when Jesus walked out of that tomb. Many scholars now say that we are in the “already-not yet” of Christ’s reign. That’s a mind-bender. Nevertheless, it’s true. The objective world-to-come has been inaugurated at Messiah’s first coming and will find its consummation at his second coming.
Christians now live in “two worlds.” Practically speaking, we live in an “age that is passing away.” In principle, we live in an age that never ends. We are, indeed, citizens of a heavenly kingdom that has come and will, one day, fully manifest.
What does this have to do with personal change? One way to answer that question is as follows: We are becoming what we already are “in Christ!” That requires Spirit-enabled insight by beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ found in Scripture.
So, who are we? According to the surrounding texts, we are those who no longer live for ourselves but for him, who died and rose again for our sake (2 Cor. 5:15). We also know that living to please him is learned over a lifetime (2 Cor. 5:9). We are also ambassadors of Christ, imploring those committed to the present age to abandon their loyalties to an old regime that is cursed and dying (2 Cor. 5:20). A whole new way of existing has arrived through Jesus Christ. That’s a change worth pursuing!
Links Players exist to come alongside golfers so that they might see themselves as Christ sees them—as ambassadors deputized by the King himself to live as ministers of reconciliation.
Prayer- Jesus, open our eyes to see ourselves as you see us. Open our eyes to who we are “in Christ.”