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 I'd like to think with you a few minutes just now about some words that we read earlier in

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! 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

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 The old has gone, the new has come.

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 The old has gone, the new has come. Well, that's the way we may feel at the beginning of a new year.

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 The old year, with all its sorrows and mistakes, is gone. The new year, with all its potential

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 and new opportunities, has come. We may look forward with optimism, but it may be that we feel the

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 opposite. We may feel very pessimistic and anxious. The old year perhaps had many joys and successes

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 for you. The prospect of the new year can fill us with dread. The effects of Russia's war against Ukraine,

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 the hike in the cost of living, especially energy, the bungling by governments, and perhaps also personal

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 challenges as well. But our text, of course, isn't speaking about old years and new years, or about the

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 passing of time in general. It's talking about a personal revolution in your life, a spiritual revolution

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 that changes your attitude that changes your attitude to everything, including the passing of time and

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 worries about the future. It's talking about the radical change that happens when someone becomes a

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 Christian. Now, we may use different expressions to describe that. Conversion, coming to faith, being born

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 again, becoming a believer, becoming a follower of Jesus. But here Paul uses an expression that really gets to

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 the heart of it, that expresses the radical nature of this change, new creation. If anyone is in Christ,

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 he is a new creation. Now, creation and creativity are wonderful things. The great artist,

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 Pablo Picasso, said, others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

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 Of course, the primary use of the word creation in the Bible refers to the original creation of the

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 universe by God. Now, here it's not used in exactly that sense because it's not been used in the sense of

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 creation of a recreation. It's like Michelangelo's statue of David that stands in a museum in Florence.

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 It's 17 feet high and is widely considered to be the greatest statue ever made. But when Michelangelo started

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 work on it in 1501, the huge piece of marble had already been badly blocked out and had lain neglected for 26 years.

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 In the same way, God takes a human being that has been badly marred by sin and evil and creates someone far more beautiful and precious to him than even the greatest statue ever made.

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 Michelangelo's work was amazing, transforming what seemed an impossible thing to create this beautiful statue out of a block of stone that seemed impossible to use.

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 God has done something that seems even more impossible to take sinners like us and make new creations of us.

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 How does this come about? Well, there are various expressions used here in this passage that we need to look at.

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 And the first one is this whole idea of creation or recreation or as it is used in theological terms, regeneration.

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 Regeneration is the theological term that's used to describe this recreation.

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 What before was dead has been brought to life.

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 Ephesians chapter 2 from verse 4,

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 But because of His great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.

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 It is by grace you have been saved.

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 Now, this is a work of God. We cannot make ourselves alive.

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 We cannot recreate ourselves any more than that marred block of marble could make itself into that amazing statue of David.

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 Only Michelangelo could do that.

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 And only God can make you alive in Christ.

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 If you're a Christian today, it's not primarily because of some act of yours.

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 It is because God has worked in your life.

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 He has created you a Christian.

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 He has given you new life.

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 This is where the Christian gospel radically differs from the world's religions.

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 They all in one way or another emphasize what we have to do to please God or the gods before they or he will accept us.

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 By contrast, the gospel tells us what God does to make us acceptable.

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 And part of that, the start of it in our experience, is regeneration.

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 Now, this is tremendously liberating.

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 If you love the Lord Jesus and you trust in Him, it is the Lord's doing.

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 And no matter how you may fail Him, and we all fail, that new creation cannot be undone.

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 It is God's work, and He will bring it to completion.

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 It's also tremendously inspiring.

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 George MacDonald, who was a huge influence on C.S. Lewis, said,

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 I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of.

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 For to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest,

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 grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.

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 But how is it that the dead can be made alive?

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 How is it that sinners can be transformed into this new creation, that what was marred and spoiled can be recreated?

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 Well, it's because there's something that comes before regeneration, and without which regeneration could not take place.

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 And for those of you who like alliteration, it's another word beginning with R.

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 Reconciliation, as we have it here in our passage.

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 In verses 18 and 19 here,

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 All this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

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 That God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.

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 And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

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 Reconciliation means that peace is made between two parties that are at odds with one another, or hostile to one another.

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 Well, people may say, but I'm not hostile to God.

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 I have no worries about God.

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 I have nothing against Him.

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 But what is our reaction when God tells us that what we're doing is wrong?

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 When He tells us not just that what we're doing is wrong, but that by nature we are sinners,

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 and we cannot really change ourselves, we cannot save ourselves.

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 Well, we don't like that very much, do we, on the whole?

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 Because we like to think we're captain of our own destiny.

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 And the very fact that we are breaking God's law, and we're not putting God at the center,

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 means really that we are hostile to God.

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 It speaks here in this passage of sins, not counting men's sins against them.

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 And that is the huge problem.

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 So, there's a problem on our side of sin, of not really putting God at the center, putting ourselves at the center.

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 But the problem is not just on our side.

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 An even greater problem is on God's side.

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 Because God cannot tolerate sin.

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 Sin is absolutely contrary to His nature.

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 So, there can be no reconciliation until sin somehow is dealt with.

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 And we know it's the same in human relationships.

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 If there's to be reconciliation, if there's to be a coming together,

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 then the problems have to be thrashed out and sorted out in some way.

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 But the problem here is that we have neither the inclination nor the ability to deal with our sins.

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 It's not enough just to say, well, I'll turn over a new leaf at the beginning of a new year.

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 I'll make new year resolutions and so on.

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 Because what about all that we've done in the past?

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 And what about the ways in which we're going to fail in the future?

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 And what about the fact that our very mentality is going to be wrong in all of this, thinking that we

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 somehow can do something that will set things right?

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 It is God who brings about this reconciliation.

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 And again, the first emphasis here is on what God has done. He has taken the initiative.

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 Martin Luther King said, there's something about love that builds up and is creative.

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 There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So, love your enemies.

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 Now, he's echoing there the words of Scripture. We are to love our enemies, Jesus told us,

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 because God has loved His enemies. It's out of His great love for us that He has done something to

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 bring peace where there was hostility. This is exactly what God has done. He has loved His enemies

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 with this great creative love. Notice it says, God was reconciling the world to Himself. That means

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 not only all kinds and classes and colors of people, and that's true because God's love comes out to all

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 sorts of people. There's no one who's excluded because of their background or their upbringing or the kind

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 of person they are or where they come from or whatever. But also, it means the world that is at enmity

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 with God. That's often the way the expression, the world, is used in the New Testament. It's a world

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 that is hostile to God. In fact, it's describing us in our sinful condition. But what God does, we're told

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 here, is He doesn't count our sins against us in verse 19. Now, that basically means that He is cancelling

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 our debt. If you're counting something or reckoning something up, it's totting up a kind of total.

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 And on one side of the account, you might say, there is all our sins, all our debts, all our debits.

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 But God, in His great grace, cancels our debt. And not only does He cancel our debt,

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 but He transforms our account by putting it into the credit, putting it into the black. And He has done

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 all this in Christ. Notice how often in this passage, verses 17, 18, and 19, the words,

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 in Christ, are used. It is only in and through Christ that this has been done.

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 And here we come to verse 21, which sounds a very mysterious verse, but it's one of the most

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 important verses in the Bible. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might

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 become the righteousness of God. And that leads us to the third and final R, redemption. There could be

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 no regeneration without reconciliation, and there could be no reconciliation without redemption.

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 God made the sinless one to be sin for us. This is what happened at the cross. Now, the cross,

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 in this sense of understanding it as the New Testament understands it, is offensive to sinful human beings.

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 Yet, people might think of the cross as a symbol of love and so on, but when they understand exactly

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 what the New Testament is saying it becomes offensive, just as it did in New Testament times, 1 Corinthians

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 chapter 1, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

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 And you know, it's still offensive today. The great playwright George Bernard Shaw said,

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 he said in his will, that he did not want to be commemorated by the form of a cross or any other

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 instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice. So, he didn't think that the cross was a great thing.

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 And the present-day Baptist minister, Steve Chalk, refers to the belief that Jesus died on the cross for our

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 sins as child abuse, the idea that God was sacrificing His Son. He rejects the whole biblical idea of atonement for sin.

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 For him, the cross is just Jesus showing His love for His enemies. But the question is, how

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 what Jesus did on the cross, how did it do anything for His enemies? Was it just a sort of pointless act? Did it achieve anything?

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 The answer is, as we're told here by the Apostle Paul, that God made Jesus to be sin for us. Or as Peter says in his letter,

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 He bore our sins in His body on the tree. God lovingly gave and Jesus lovingly took that burden of sin to redeem us.

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 It's our sin. Our rebellion against God, our self-centeredness instead of God-centeredness.

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 He did that to pay the ransom price to set us free. He dealt with the root of the problem that stands

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 between God and us. And it's not just that our sins are paid for and removed, but in Christ we're also

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 accounted righteous, declared not guilty, and set on the road to living a righteous life.

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 So, it's an exchange. Our sins and the responsibility for them are transferred to Jesus.

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 And He bears the price of that sin as He cries out on the cross,

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 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But He transfers His righteousness. No one has ever lived

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 a more righteous life than Jesus. He fulfilled every law and especially showed love to everyone.

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 But that righteousness is transferred to us in exchange.

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 This is the road to becoming a new creation. Redemption leading to reconciliation, leading to

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 regeneration. And these are the first steps on the road to the great new creation spoken of in Revelation

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 chapter 21, the new heavens and the new earth. I am making everything new, God says.

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 So, that's what God has done. But what must we do? Is there anything for us to do? Or do we just say,

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 well, that's it, it's up to God? No.

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 No. Here in this passage, it's very clear, we have to respond. In verse 20, Paul says,

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 be reconciled to God. We have to come to a new view of Christ. In verse 16, he talks there about the

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 fact that he regarded Christ once from a worldly point of view according to the flesh. He viewed him not

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 as a good man or a prophet like many people today might look on him, but he looked on him as mistaken

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 and misleading the people. Someone who was a blasphemer, someone who should have been got rid of and was

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 got rid of and he wanted to get rid of all those who followed him.

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 We have to accept who Jesus is. He is the Son of God and accept the redemption and reconciliation

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 freely offered in the gospel. Be reconciled to God. By doing this, you show that you are united to Christ,

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 as it says in verse 17 here. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.

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 And in the beginning of the next chapter, chapter 6 and verse 2, it says,

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 now is the time of God's favor. Now is the day of salvation. So, here at the beginning of this new year,

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 if you are not a Christian, if you have not yet placed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ or you are unsure about it,

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 there is a certain urgency about this. Now is the time of God's favor. Now is the day of salvation.

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 This is the opportunity where the gospel is being preached. This is the opportunity where you are being assured of

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 God's love towards you, that God is reaching out to you and God is promising new life to all who trust in Jesus.

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 But then also there is a response that should be in the heart of every Christian, and that is that we are to

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 live a new life in response to this. The old has gone, the new has come. The old is the old sinful and selfish ways

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 of looking at life, of looking at God and looking at other people. We have to realize that that is all gone.

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 It may try to push back into our lives. In fact, every day it will try to. But we must reckon ourselves new

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 creatures in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must turn away from that idea of living our lives merely to please

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 ourselves. The old has gone, the new has come. New priorities. Living by faith, not by sight,

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 as it says earlier here in verse 7. In other words, trusting in the words and the promises of the Lord

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 Jesus Christ to us, not trusting in what the appearances may be or other people may say.

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 And looking forward to being at home with the Lord, as it says in verse 8. In other words, we all know

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 that we don't live here forever. We're passing through this life. And the question is, where are we going?

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 Those who are Christians can look forward to being at home with the Lord. It's a great thing to be at home,

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 isn't it? That's our experience at this time of year when families tend to get together and be at home

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 together. It's a marvelous thing. But you know, all these things will pass in this life, in this world.

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 But where is our ultimate eternal home? The Lord has promised us that in the Lord Jesus Christ. And

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 we are to look forward to that eagerly. It will also give us new purposes. This new life that we've

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 been given, we are to be ambassadors for Christ, as Paul says. Now again, that's a marvelous thing,

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 isn't it? That God in His great grace should choose us to be His ambassadors. An ambassador has a very high

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 role to play. The representative of a king or a country or a government, He is there in that foreign

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 country as the home country or the home government. He represents that authority. And so, in the same way,

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 we are to live in this world as those who are ambassadors for Christ, with authority to speak

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 what the king says, and nothing but what the king says in what the message that he's wanting to get

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 across to the world. So, we have an important role to play in this new life that He has given us.

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 So, the Christian can surely say in truth the words of the hymn, I am a new creation, no more in condemnation.

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 Here in the grace of God I stand. And I will praise you, Lord. Yes, I will praise you, Lord. And I will sing

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 of all that you have done. We have a new nature, new priorities, new purposes, new direction in life,

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 new hope, new faith, new love, above all a new attitude to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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 Thanks be to God that He has done these things in Jesus on our behalf.

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 Amen.

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 Amen.

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