Born again

There cannot be many people who do not feel some sort of emotion at the return of Spring. Winter can be very dreary and depressing: waking up with the sun shining and feeling the stirrings of a fresh breeze that does not make you run for a thicker coat or a pair of gloves can be a real relief. Similarly, it is hard not to feel some sort of pleasure at the first signs that the cold earth has woken after months of silence and deadness, and that the wounds of Winter are beginning to heal: the ground is not so hard; the showers are refreshing; the buds are beginning to show green against the bark of the trees; the first green shoots pierce the heavy soil; some mornings when the sun rises and picks out the green promises of summer to come you can almost feel life and vitality in the air.

The hearts of men and women are naturally very similar to the world’s Winter. They are hard and cold. There is no life, and no sign of life. There is nothing that the earth can do itself in Winter to cause life to spring up, and there is nothing that the human heart can do in and of itself to bring about a change in its dead state. The Bible likens our hearts to ‘tablets of stone’ (Ezekiel 26.26), and nothing living grows in stone: the capacity for life does not exist in it.

But we have a hope: in the same way as the return of the sun brings life to the earth, so there is hope for the human heart. The heart needs to be melted – there must be new life given. The Bible informs us that we must be born again, that we must be made anew, that what was cold and dead must be made living and healthy. How does this change come about? The only way for the heart to thaw, for men and women to be born again, is for ‘the Sun of Righteousness’ to arise, ‘with healing in his wings’ (Malachi 4.2). Who is this Sun of Righteousness? It is the Lord Jesus Christ.

However, unlike the Spring, we cannot simply wait for this to happen in us. There is no automatic change of season in our hearts that brings new life. The Scriptures teach that the Sun of Righteousness shall rise and heal ‘you who fear my name’ – the name of God Almighty. To fear God is to repent of sins, and to humble yourself before him for salvation, a salvation that comes only through Jesus.

Without Christ, without being thawed by the Sun of Righteousness, without being drenched in the tears of repentance, the heart remains dead, and will remain forever dead. We must be born again by the Spirit of God (John’s Gospel, chapter 3, verse 3), and only in Christ does the heart of stone become a heart of flesh, able to experience the true joy of life, able to rejoice and bring forth good fruit. The Sun of Righteousness heals the wounds of a barren heart, and brings newness of life to that which was dead.

New beginnings

Can you remember your last set of new year’s resolutions? Did you make any new resolutions for the millennium, just a few years ago? Have you managed to stick to all of them? Some of them? Any of them?

We often make big plans for a new beginning. Sometimes we take advantage of a change of location or vocation. You go to a new school, start a new job, move to a new area. You might hope that this time round it will be different, that the problems that might have dogged you before will disappear, that you won’t have to face old frustrations again. But don’t we often take our problems with us, and find that – although things around us have changed – we haven’t changed very much ourselves?

Sometimes we attempt a deliberate change to our way of life: a new diet, a new “lifestyle”, a new exercise regime, or something else that promises ‘a new you’. But how often do we find our resolve weakening quickly, old habits dying hard, and the ‘old you’ pushing to the surface?

If things get really bad, perhaps we would even like the opportunity to “start over” – to leave everything behind and start from scratch. Perhaps you have even tried that – family failures, broken marriages, criminal activity, wrecked lives and crushed hopes – and you haven’t really escaped yet?

Genuinely new beginnings are desperately hard to make, and the most important one – one that lies at the root of all lasting change – is a change of our relationship to God: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. . . . God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses against them” (the Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5, verses 17-19).

This is a genuinely new beginning, a radical change in our relationship with God. We are sinners, cut off from God and hope, but when we are reconciled to God – brought back into a right relationship with him – then all things become new. This lies at the root of all new beginnings: this is the starting point for a genuinely new life on earth, and eternal life in heaven.

How does this happen? “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.” Such a new beginning takes place through believing in Jesus Christ: “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” The genuine hope of a new beginning is not found in you, but in Jesus Christ. Come to him, and you will have new life and real hope, now and forever.