Re-created

I tried not to make it obvious I was unimpressed with the home my brother and his wife were considering buying.

My sister-in-law saw potential in the home that I couldn’t see. “We’ll just knock out this wall here, put a doorway there, open up this area over here …” They bought the home and, sure enough, transformed it into something I would never have thought possible. As impressive as it is, this is not what God does in the life of a sinner. A renovation improves an existing home. Start with an old home, add new windows, new floors, a new roof, and fresh paint, and you have … an old home with new windows, new floors, a new roof, and fresh paint. It may be a beautiful home.

It may be an expensive home. But it’s the same old home —remodeled. God does not renovate fallen human beings. He re-creates them.

A home renovation project under God’s direction would see the old home totally demolished, the lot completely cleared, and an entirely new home built where the old home used to be. In the plan of salvation, “our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” (Romans 6:6). In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul stated that God unites a sinner with Jesus and makes, out of the two, “one new” person (Ephesians 2:15).

It isn’t God’s plan to modify, renovate, or improve a fallen sinner. Instead, God intends to take a fallen sinner and remake him or her as a saint, as described in Revelation 14:12. Sinners come to God with their unrighteousness and receive in its place the righteousness of Jesus. Christ’s perfect righteousness is credited to the fallen sinner, and by faith, the sinner receives that righteousness and is made new through Jesus Christ, growing ever more into His likeness. God gives the repentant sinner a new heart and puts a new spirit within that person. The stony heart is taken away and replaced with a heart of flesh. God does not renovate. He re-creates.