When New is Better
I liked cycling. It was a great source of low-impact exercise, socializing with fellow riders, and it gave me a hobby (rare for me). So sometimes I miss it. But several concerns made me reconsider the activity. I started thinking twice about wheeling along roads dominated by large, menacing vehicles with impatient and domineering drivers, all this while perched atop a lightweight frame balanced on two narrow tires. Then there was the frequency with which those tires deflated. I seemed to have more than my fair share of flats.
You can only patch an inner tube so many times. Patching an inner tube is the less expensive means of tire repair. I didn’t mind fixing rather than investing in new inner tubes. So I patched a lot. To me, it was kind of a challenge to repair a tire and see if it stayed inflated! If the tire stays firm overnight, there’s a sense of victory. But of course, there is a limit to everything. Patching has its limits. No matter how good you are at patching successfully, sometimes only a new tube will do.
You can only fix, repair, and prop up something old and used for so long before you have to admit it’s no good anymore; the new thing is all that will work. At some point, it forces you to let go of the old and embrace the new for excellent reasons! Sometimes, it’s only at that point that you realize how superior it is to go with something new rather than merely repurposing the old.
When Jesus came, it was time to let go of the old and embrace the new. No “patching and pumping up” the old religion. There was to be no recycling of the old traditions. It wasn’t a matter of dressing up the worn-out customs and tired rituals. Jesus wasn’t just another holy man in different attire. What He represented and what He offered was new. Jesus could not have been more explicit about that. He talked about things like not putting “new wine into old wineskins;” not simply mixing their customary practices with His new way. Christ presented a “new covenant” in His blood, a covenant of grace through faith in His ultimate sacrifice. He gave a “new commandment” about loving one another as He has loved us. He talked a lot about new stuff.
It was all new, and those who carried on His ministry knew it. In Acts 17, when Paul taught about Jesus at a place called the Areopagus, they wanted to know about “this new teaching” he was proclaiming. They were all about hearing what was “new,” and the Gospel was new (Acts 17:19, 21).
Paul wrote in Romans that we are raised into “newness of life” (Romans 6:4) and “that we serve in newness of the Spirit not in oldness of the letter (Romans 7:6). We are part of a new family, having “received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ (Romans 8:15).
Paul went on to tell the Corinthians that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). He told the Galatians that it wasn’t about things like circumcision, but being “a new creation” (Gal. 6:15). Paul told the Ephesian believers to “lay aside the old self” and “put on the new self” (Eph. 4:22, 24). He reminded the Colossians of the same thing as he encouraged them to act like the new people they were in Christ (Col. 3:9-10).
Of course, all this talk of newness doesn’t stop with Paul. The writer to the Hebrews has a lot to say about the “new covenant.” He writes about a new lifestyle, a “new and living way” (Heb. 10:20). John writes of our “new commandment…that we love one another” (1 John 2:7; 2 John 5). And an exciting thing to consider is that the new aspects of our faith don’t stop here. “New” is part of our future too.
The New Testament (no coincidence: “New” Testament) looks into the future, and there’s much new there. Peter writes, “we are looking for new heavens and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:13). We can look forward to having a “new name” (Rev. 2:17; 3:12). The four living creatures and twenty-four elders before the throne in heaven will sing a “new song” (Rev. 5:8, 9). Again, a “new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1) and a “new Jerusalem” (21:2). To top it off, it doesn’t get any newer than this: “He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’” Eventually, it’s all new!
So start practicing now. Stop trying to retread your old life. Recognize that as Paul wrote in Romans that we were buried in Christ and raised in Him so that we “might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). Don’t patch the old inner tube. Don’t put new wine in an old wineskin. He has made “all things new.” Thank Him for it! Live like it!
“But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.” —Hebrews 8:6