“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” – Ecclesiastes 1:9
New Year! What is really new about it? One second it is 2020, the next, 2021. What truly changed? The biggest change, perhaps, is remembering you now date your checks 2021, not 2020 anymore!
Some people do make some New Year resolutions; allegedly “new” changes in their lives, but they quickly forget them. Yet, thinking about genuine newness in life is still a thought process worth your time, especially as the Bible addresses newness when it says surprisingly in Ecclesiastes “there is nothing new under the sun!”
Is this true? Not quite. But this is not specifically what Ecclesiastes is referring to anyway. There truly are authentically “new” people in life who were not before, as babies are born anew into the world every day. The fact of this life pattern may be common place, but these are unique babies born each day who are new to the world. They have their own DNA, and their very own fingerprints; different from all others who have ever lived.
There is very much a “same old, same old” about life in general as we experience it. However, the Bible expresses a newness of life in Paul’s epistle to the church in Corinth. He speaks of people, who become, through Christ, “new creatures.”
Paul tells us, “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). While the physical universe largely remains to your perspective the same, there are “new people” who have truly been “reborn.”
So the two new things we are certain of are new people on the earth, and, among those people, “new creatures” in Christ. The future population of the new heavens and new earth is ever growing bigger as God calls more and more of His children to Himself.
Your mission is two fold: insure by His grace that you yourself are “in Christ,” before you ever take your last breath or, instead, Jesus returns; and, second, do everything in your own power to assist others to come to Christ, and be made new in Him.
Make these the supernatural products of your chief end: which is, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. You glorify Him most by resting in the joy of your being “in Christ,” and, consequently, by dying more and more to self, and living more and more to Him. Your sanctification increases when you earnestly seek others to bring to Jesus.
As you make this your primary purpose in life, Happy New Year as you eagerly anticipate the ever closer return of your King. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
“Bring near thy great salvation, thou Lamb for sinners slain; fill up the roll of thine elect, then take thy pow’r and reign: appear, Desire of nations, thine exiles long for home; show in the heav’ns thy promised sign; thou Prince and Savior, come.”
(4th verse of Henry Alford’s hymn, “Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand Thousand,” 1867)
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