2 Corinthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:26-27, do you hear the promise, not a new coat of paint, a new heart, not a behavior modification program, a new spirit, the prophets were not promising that God would help people try harder, they were promising that God would change people from the inside out. Here is the detail that connects everything, in Ezekiel, the new heart and the new Spirit are given by the Spirit of God and when Paul writes about the new creation, he points to the same Spirit, 2 Corinthians 3:18, transformed from glory to glory by the Spirit. So, how does the new creation actually happen in a real person, not by willpower, not by self-discipline alone, by the Spirit of God doing inside you what you could never do for yourself.
The same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is the Spirit making you new, this is not a human project, it is a supernatural work and that is why 2 Corinthians 5:17 can be a declaration and not a command, because the work is God’s, he began it, he is sustaining it and he will finish it. Now, here is something worth sitting with, the man who wrote these words is himself the living proof that they are true, because Paul was not always Paul, before he was an apostle, he was a persecutor, his name was Saul and he hunted Christians for a living. Paul stood by approving as a mob stoned a man named Steven to death, he dragged men and women out of their homes and threw them into prison.
Paul was on his way to Damascus with letters authorizing him to arrest more believers when something happened, Acts 9:1-18, a light from heaven flashed around him, he fell to the ground and a voice said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And the man who had spent his life trying to destroy the church was blind and broken and led by the hand into the city and three days later, a believer named Ananas came to him, laid hands on him and said, brother Saul, the Lord has sent me. And something fell from his eyes like scales and he got up and he was baptized and the persecutor became the preacher, the man who wrote, you are a new creation, is the man who had been a new creation. Paul did not write 2 Corinthians 5:17 from a comfortable distance, he wrote it from his own skin, he knew what it was to have the old self pass away, he knew what it was to be remade by the God he had been fighting and he is telling you this is not a theory, this is what God does, he does it to the persecutors, he does it to the people who seem too far gone and he does it to you.
The same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is the Spirit making you new, this is not a human project, it is a supernatural work and that is why 2 Corinthians 5:17 can be a declaration and not a command, because the work is God’s, he began it, he is sustaining it and he will finish it. Now, here is something worth sitting with, the man who wrote these words is himself the living proof that they are true, because Paul was not always Paul, before he was an apostle, he was a persecutor, his name was Saul and he hunted Christians for a living. Paul stood by approving as a mob stoned a man named Steven to death, he dragged men and women out of their homes and threw them into prison.
Paul was on his way to Damascus with letters authorizing him to arrest more believers when something happened, Acts 9:1-18, a light from heaven flashed around him, he fell to the ground and a voice said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And the man who had spent his life trying to destroy the church was blind and broken and led by the hand into the city and three days later, a believer named Ananas came to him, laid hands on him and said, brother Saul, the Lord has sent me. And something fell from his eyes like scales and he got up and he was baptized and the persecutor became the preacher, the man who wrote, you are a new creation, is the man who had been a new creation. Paul did not write 2 Corinthians 5:17 from a comfortable distance, he wrote it from his own skin, he knew what it was to have the old self pass away, he knew what it was to be remade by the God he had been fighting and he is telling you this is not a theory, this is what God does, he does it to the persecutors, he does it to the people who seem too far gone and he does it to you.