Radically, Comprehensively New

What does it mean to radically, comprehensively cut ties with who you used to be? 

Have you ever thought about that? A woman might marry, taking the name of her husband. Her social security card, her driver's license, everything right down to her auto club membership are altered to reflect the change of her name. But she maintains all those things she had prior to marriage --her family and friends, the clothing she wore, her job or her degree. Her identity does not change though her identification has. A person might join the military --a significant life change there. Property of the United States Government. They will undergo training that will alter the way they function, the things they know to do, even the way they care for their bodies. Nevertheless, they have not necessarily removed every trace of who they once were, nor have they completely severed all ties with their past identity. As Christians, do we know what it means to turn away utterly, unapologetically, eternally from who we used to be? 

To even begin to understand the totality of it, I have to look to a young man living with us. He came to us with a carload of possessions, the remnants of a past composed of many houses, actors, neighborhoods, methods, goals, and means. It was a hodgepodge of a life, and he was adding to it more components: a new address, new parents, a new school, a new neighborhood -- even the sounds and smells he would encounter in our home would be different from those with which he'd lived before. He was asked to sleep in a place he'd never seen much less slept, eat with people he'd never met, be a part of a family into which he'd not been born, succeed at a school the likes of which he'd never attended, obey adults who'd not even been given an opportunity to gain his trust --adults he wasn't the least bit sure were trustworthy. Eventually he'd be assigned "new parents"-- How does one even process the thought of that? --and be given an opportunity to take their name. Legally, he would be one of us. But what would his feelings tell him? He is willing to find out. Is this bravery? foolishness? or hope?

When I heard the Gospel presented in childhood, the fear of hell had me scribbling my name on the dotted line. As I got older, I struggled with doing all of those things "good Christians" do: the want to just wasn't there. At forty, I prayed Jesus would give me the willingness to love Him as I should. I didn't say Amen and immediately turn to God's Word with zeal and understanding; I'm not even sure I prayed later that day or even the next. I didn't change my weekend plans from barhopping to church attendance or my cussing to speaking in tongues. But the Holy Spirit placed that desire in me and gradually He is transforming me, radically and comprehensively cutting ties with who I used to be; gradually, the desire to love Jesus more and more is surpassing the desire to hold onto those parts of me --unhelpful or ungodly as they are --I have grown to depend on or cherish. What will happen if I defer to this person? But this is who I am! 

2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. We are made new, not just different, because of the hope we have in Jesus. We have a clean slate, an open road to all life --eternal life which is more of a quality than a quantity --presents us, endless possibilities in service to our King, and freedom beyond measure through Truth. We can pack our bags, move to a new place with new sounds and smells, walk away from everything we have known in the past, sleep with greater security on a pillow of stone than we did on the finest down, become new with the assurance that that which we leave behind will one day seem utter foolishness, drudgery, and emptiness to us. We can serve others generously and forgive immediately, do the things we would have never risked doing before. Because of the hope we have in the One who went before us --living as a man, dying unjustly at the hands of His own people, coming forth from the grave, and sitting enthroned in Heaven --we will become new. Only the hope of Jesus can incubate and bring to fruition the kind of radical, comprehensive transformation that cuts all ties with who we were in the past and develops in us a new identity for all eternity.