“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

You’ve experienced it before yourself. If you have children, you now have the joy of seeing it through their eyes. I’m talking about the delight of Christmas morning. The glad anticipation of what waits under the tree builds and builds until everyone finally rushes in there for the great moment of discovery. Yet what is it that most thrills us in that moment? It is the gift of something new. We delight in new things. The season of Advent is a celebration of something new coming into our lives. Let’s talk this morning about the gift of new and just how it transforms us.

A new baby is always exciting. It’s a little scary too. (Okay, more than a little scary when it’s your first go-round, but I didn’t want to say that.) There’s so much hope. So much promise. So much potential for good. There is literally no way of fully imagining all the joys, all the adventures, all the blessings, but also all the pain and frustration and heartache that little baby will experience over the course of her life. We don’t even know how long that life will be. She is a completely blank slate. She could learn any language to perfection. She could master any trade. There are not skills that are outside her grasp. All of this because she is just so new.

When Jesus was born, He came with this same glorious newness. When Mary first held Him in her arms, all of the same thoughts that every first-time parent thinks were swirling around in her head. Of course, she had all the additional thoughts that being the mother of the Messiah uniquely brought to mind, but my guess is that in that moment those were overshadowed a bit by the new-parent thoughts about the little bundle of potential she was holding in her arms. He may have been the Savior of the World, but He was still experiencing human life in all of its glory for the first time. Everything was new.

The newness of this particular baby, though, was even greater than that. What Jesus brought with Him when He arrived on Earth was the promise of new life for all people everywhere. As we talked about yesterday, His arrival was good news of great joy for all the people. The life we lived up to that point in history was old. It was tired. It was broken and tarnished by sin. We experienced nothing but those bitter fruits all the time. Life was little more than one big snozzcumber (go look it up).

The life Jesus would one day offer us, though, was something new. It wasn’t just that life in Him would be new, when we gave our life to Him, we would be made new. This is what the apostle Paul was trying to help the Corinthian church to understand. In Christ, we are new. Our old nature is removed and replaced by a totally new nature. Jesus, trying to help the Pharisee Nicodemus get his head wrapped around what God had planned through Him, described it as being born again. The change His followers were going to experience was so profound that it was like they were going to be born completely anew. Their lives would be reverted to a state in which all of the newness and potential of a newborn baby was restored to them. There would be no imagining the incredible things God had planned for and through them as they followed Him into this glorious future.

There’s something even more here than that, though. When we entrust ourselves to Christ and receive this gift of new, not only are we made new ourselves, but we are invited into the process of helping others to be made new as well. We are given the ministry of reconciliation. Once we are reconciled to God in Christ, we are given the great (and I mean that in both senses of the word) task of helping to see the people around us reconciled to Him as well. Of course, we can’t reconcile them ourselves, but we can point them to Jesus who is the one who accomplishes it.

Perhaps you are living in a place where you feel like your potential is lost. You’ve accomplished all that you’re going to accomplish. You’ve wasted so many opportunities that there just can’t be anything left for you out there in the world. Let me invite you to come to Jesus. In Him, you can be made totally new. All of that potential can be restored. Your opportunities will multiply exponentially. There’s an eternal kingdom’s worth of things left to do, and God wants to accomplish many of them through you.

If you are feeling that way but have already given your life to Christ, then my invitation to you is to wake up and see with fresh eyes what you have in Him. Renew your hope. Renew your kingdom vision. Engage more fully and intentionally with the Scriptures and prayer and the body of Christ to bring fresh life to your rhythm. You are new in Him. Live like it.

The glorious hopefulness of the new of Christmas morning doesn’t have to be limited to that one day of the year. It is something we can live with each and every day when we live fully alive in Christ. The potential for eternally impactful actions lies thickly on your path each day when you get out of bed. All you have to do is to follow Him into it. It won’t always feel that way in a given moment, but the hope we have in an eternal kingdom is that the impact of our actions goes far, far beyond what we can see. Live with that newness as you receive the gift of new today.