"Look, I'm making all things new!"

After we got home from Good Friday services last night, my wife and I decided to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. It has been a few years since we saw it. In fact, in twelve years of marriage, I don't think we ever watched it together. The first time I saw it, I told myself I should watch it every Good Friday... then I just didn't...

 

Probably because it's hard to get through. It's not easy to watch, but it's certainly powerful.

 

There's one scene in the film I never forgot. It made an impression on me when I first saw it, and I was looking forward to it again when we watched it last night. As Jesus is carrying his cross, barely able to stand much less bear the weight of it, his mother, Mary, fights her way to the crowd to run to his side. They make brief eye-contact and Jesus says,

 

"Look, mother. I'm making all things new."  

 

Now, Jesus didn't actually say that while he was carrying the cross. But he does say it to John in a vision, in Revelation 21:5.  

 

I appreciate how Mel Gibson put those words into the Passion narrative because while it's not strictly accurate in terms of what Jesus said, it is theologically on point. That's what Jesus was doing when he carried the cross.

 

He was making everything new.

 

While we were trying to destroy him, He was busy making us into new creations.

 

This language is all over the New Testament.

 

2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"  

 

This verse is a cornerstone for understanding our new identity. It clearly states that being "in Christ" brings about a complete transformation, where the old way of being is gone, and a new reality takes its place.  

 

Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." 

 

This verse beautifully expresses the idea that our old self, the one bound by sin, has died with Christ on the cross. Now, it's Christ himself living within us, empowering our new life through faith.  

 

Romans 6:6: "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin."  

 

This verse emphasizes that the power of sin over us has been broken through our union with Christ in his death. The "old self," the part of us dominated by sin, has been dealt with.  

 

There are more verses we could point to. Taking all these together, though, we learn a little bit about how Jesus made us new. It's through the cross--we're crucified with Him. But we didn't come back from the grave with the same old sinful spirit in tact. It's now Christ who lives in us!

 

The old is gone!

 

But if that's the case, why do we continue to struggle in sin? Paul wrestles with this in Romans. The thing is, when we go on sinning, it's not our "true self" anymore. It's not who we are. Paul's argument in Romans 6 is that we should live into our new identity. Why if you were set free would you walk back into your prison cell?

 

If they let you out of prison, and you try to break in so you can see your old buddies again, I don't think the Warden will let you stay. He'd say, "the price was paid for your crime, now get out of here!"

 

In the Galatians verse Paul says this new life we live we live in faith. Christ already accomplished everything. He was truly making all things new in his suffering and death. It will be fully realized when his sufferings are complete in us in the last day, when we're finally resurrected. But there is both a "now/already" and a "not yet" element to the Christian life.

 

Everything Jesus did for us is already ours. We can live in freedom today. We don't have to go on living according to the flesh, and the answer to the flesh's temptations is to remember that they went with Jesus to the cross already. We were baptized into His death, and raised again into the fullness of new life.

 

That's why at the beginning of Acts, when the disciples ask the resurrected Jesus when his kingdom will come he doesn't give them a time or a date. He gives them a mission. In short, he tells them that with His Spirit they are to go about the work of testifying to the Kingdom of God that's already here! When they plant new churches, it's like they're planting new Edens all of the world.

 

It's in these new Edens where we truly feast from the tree of life! The fruit of the cross! His body and blood, broken and shed for us! That's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that whenever we "do this" as Jesus instituted it, we proclaim His death until He comes!

 

It's all about making everything new. It's about testifying to the new creation that we can experience now. We have a foretaste of the feast that is to come!

 

But there's also a future element to this. We have a "now" but also a "not yet."

 

The Kingdom has come among us... but it's also still coming into the world. This little blip in the history of the world seems like a long time (2000 years so far!) but in the scope of eternity, it's simply a season, what the Scriptures call "growing pangs," as we await the full revelation of His Kingdom when Jesus returns.

 

But if you are in Christ, you're a new creation already. You don't have to live bound to sin. In fact, Paul makes it clear that even when he fails, when he sins, "it's no longer I who do it, but sin that lives in me" (Rom. 7:20). That's identity language.

 

You are already new, because you have a new identity in Christ. You don't sin because that's who you are... you continue to sin because in this flesh we are still being perfected in Jesus' image. But in the Spirit, we have new names already, we're no longer called "Adam" but "Jesus." We're no longer "sinner" but "child of God." That means, we don't have to live according to the flesh anymore. That's because the Spirit actually dwells in our bodies! It's His Spirit, not the old "flesh" that moves us, that sanctifies us, that bends our heart, will, and mind, to more adequately reflect the heart, will, and mind of Christ.

 

Today is probably the most "uncomfortable" day in the Church year. It's the day where we are "between" Good Friday and Easter, between the cross and resurrection.

 

In a way, though, that's where we are every day. We live in the cross, daily putting our sinful selves to death with Christ, and we are born anew in the resurrection. But for much of our lives we're stuck in the tomb, in "Saturday," where we know the sorrow, we know the loss, we know the hopelessness.

 

It's in faith that we know Easter is coming. We know it because Jesus promised it. We have the advantage, now, of having experienced Easter Sunday for 2000 years! We have witnesses to it.

 

Have you ever had a "Holy Saturday" season of life? Where you've been through the sorrow, the shock of loss and the pain of scorn, rejection, hatred, even our failures and sins? In the wake of that, did you find yourself left in the quiet, in the tomb? Did you find yourself cowering in fear, like the disciples behind locked doors?

 

In faith, we can see everything clearly. We can look back to the crosses of our lives, to the crucifixion of Jesus, and know that He already did everything necessary to make all things new. Then, we can look forward in faith and confidence that the story isn't over yet. As surely as we die with Him, we raise with Him. The Holy Saturdays of life always give way to Easter Victory...

 

But you don't get to Easter Victory without the cross of Good Friday, without the tomb of Holy Saturday. Take heart, you who are loved by God. He showed you His great love for you already. The worst we've done will not keep him down. The grave cannot hold him. That means, it cannot hold you either.

 

In Jesus' name

Judah