There is something very desirable in having something new. Things get worn out. Concepts of a former time no longer seem to work for us. And sometimes we just get bored with the same old things. Failures need to be left behind and new efforts made to bring us success in life. This is the hope of every new year with new resolutions made and a new resolve formed in our mind. We have confidence in new things and in a new determination to make the new year better than the old. New ways of doing things sometimes are successful but often discarded in the next new year. Sometimes our resolutions do not make it through the New Year’s party. We determine to change our bad habits but the old hang on with great tenacity until we can form new habits with repeated new behavior. What can change the yearly frustration of self-expectations not met? Take truth into the new year.
But truth is eternal and so never has the shine of newness. And thoughts that seem new to us are as old as the dust of the earth. Solomon in his wisdom stated, “There is nothing new under the Sun.” Eternal truth may seem very new to us if we have not encountered it before or if we have not thought about it for a length of time. Jesus had a meeting with one of the most educated and powerful men of His day; a man whom people called “teacher”; a respected Pharisee named Nicodemus. He wanted to know something about Jesus and came to him at night so that he might talk to Jesus without the interruption of the crowds that thronged Jesus during the daylight hours. Nicodemus admitted that Jesus was a “teacher come from God for no one can do the things that You do, except that God is with him.” But Nicodemus did not understand what Jesus was doing by his miracles and good works. Jesus ignored the complement saying, “You must be born again; born from above; born of the Spirit of God, or you will never comprehend the Kingdom of God or understand what I am doing.”[1] Nicodemus thought that was crazy, “Can a man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again when he is old?” Jesus said that this would be a spiritual rebirth that would produce a life that would extend beyond death and exist in the timeless realm of God forever. Then Jesus gave him old truth to carry forward that would truly change the life of Nicodemus forever.
For God so loved
the world, that He gave His one and only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn
the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not condemned; he who does not
believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of
the one and only begotten Son of God. John 3:16-18
This is the old, old story that seems so new to people these days. But the truth that Jesus gave to Nicodemus is eternal; evergreen. If we will carry this truth into the New Year and act on it with faith and true repentance unto God, we will be saved, and our life truly changed for the better—eternally. Receive Jesus today and carry old truth into the new year.
George Cargill
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[1] Gospel of John 3:1-21 (paraphrased, emphasis mine)