By Rev. Wayne E. Wattman, ca 1999
2 Corinthians 5:17… “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come.”
I remember my very first Vacation Bible School well. The place was the elementary schoolhouse in the little wee spot in the road called Bennett, WI, there because it was geographically in the very centre of the area pastoral charge to accommodate all the kids and besides it had a ball diamond. It was on this ball diamond that I slid into 2nd base and tore up my left knee pretty badly, courtesy of a rusty nail and I still hav the scar to show for it. It was also the time I memorized more Bible verses than anybody else in my class, 72 of them to be exact and I got some medal or pin, long gone; and 71 of those verses are long-gone, too, except one, 2 Cr. 5:17, a verse that has been like the scar with me ever since and like “our song” that lovers cron this verse has become a part of me, guiding and shaping my life for the past 60 years, “my verse” and I share it with you today.
Its power, life-changing power, is of course based upon a might “if”: “if anyone is in Christ.” And that’s a big “if”; why, it’s the centre, the fulcrum, the what it’s all about. The new life depends upon our being “en Christ”; “in Christ.” The eminent theologian Dr. John Bailey wrote a whole book on those two words as he seeks to show us what being “in Christ” is, too long to read today even if we took all day, but basically it’s a condition much different than going to church or following the Christian rules or being a nice guy or gal; it’s the whole shaking-up and shaking-down of the life so we can dare to say with Paul, “Christ in me the hope of glory” tied together with Jesus’ own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Nevertheless not my will but but Thine be done.” It’s turning one’s whole being over to the power of God, like Jesus said of the blessed meek who will inherit the earth, and uses the word that is like a wild stallion now bridled and under the control of the rider. Being in Christ is giving yourself, opening yourself completely over to Christ. We studied the Sermon on the Mount in seminary as being the portrait of the ideal person of the Kingdom, coming to the conclusion that we didn’t have a prayer of making it without first walking thru Matthew 6:33 that is the key to it all: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all these things will be yours as well.”
The closest I ever came to being “in Christ” was one cold night in early February 1984 when alone in my rec room in Summerland I had the visitation from the Holy Spirit of God, who was my need for deliverance from near-despair and gave me the precious one-time gift: “the peace that passes all understanding.” But from that moment on I realized I had turned a corner and life would be from that moment on would be new and the old was to soon pass away.
You could tell your story to me as well, when as Ivan Cumming tells it, the “God-Moment” happens and you are poised on the cusp of the new life.
Paul’s own experience on the road to Damascus bears this verse out. Blinded by the Christ whose people he was seeking to hunt down and imprison, he is led into the city and as Ananias gives him the touch of healing the scales of his blindness drop from his eyes and sight is restored but more than that in giving his life to Christ he becomes a new person, and that experience can be ours as well.
You and I are just into the new year that will mark the close of the 20th century. We may have made resolutions which psychologists say last about two weeks and we’re just past that now. Resolution like diets just don’t work, do not have staying power; but being in Christ does and will last. His Holy Spirit will close the door on the old and open us up to the new life. Science tells us that we get a new body every 7 years, as old cells die and new ones are born and that’s just the way it is, we have no say in this, it just happens. But we do have a say as to whether we will continue in the old or submit ourselves to the offer of the new life by Jesus Christ Himself, saying to us as to the church in Laodicea: “I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20)
There’s that “if” again. An “if” that will make of us a new creation, with the old gone and the new come, who could ask for anything more? Amen.