by Howard Watson
America is a place of change. Many people move to distant places
for a change of job or climate. Others make personal changes such
as getting married, getting divorced, or going for a new job or
vocation. Some people change churches every few years or start attending
church services.
Some of our changes are involuntary, including aging and death.
Whatever changes occur in our lives, voluntary or involuntary, we
have to relate everything to our time of living/being. We must face
the questions of who am I and where am I going. I remember asking
my freshman psychology teacher about adjusting to college and how
better to understand my fears and uncertainties. He advised that
I just be myself. I needed to accept myself or face myself.
Jesus told people to love their neighbor as [themselves] {"if
you don't love yourself how can you love your neighbor?"}.
This is one of two major commandments from God the Father. We must
love one another. A change needs to be made about attitudes toward
our brother/neighbor when we fail to feel and to show our concerns
about his well-being. In my study in I John, here on this site,
loving one another is a major emphasis in the Christian life. And,
if we don't love our brother/neighbor, our Christian faith comes
into question. John questions how can we love God whom we have not
seen when we don't love our brother.
The great change which needs to come into a person's life is transformation
of the inner person, "the who am I". The Bible shows who
we each and all are. There we find we are created by God for a special
purpose on earth: to populate the earth, to teach our children the
law of God, and to live in peace and comfort together under God's
rule in our conscious lives. Because of our fallen condition, sin
comes more and more to enslave us. This is because our hearts are
being driven by the darkness of evil lusts in our carnal and worldly
minds.
The problems are so great that simply changing our looks, our location,
our spouse, our church or club, or our physician won't bring true
lasting change. Only the transformation brought by the Holy Spirit
to our total life can bring real newness and fresh living with solid
hope for the future (see II Cor. 5:17).
When I think of this passage in II Cor. I understand the need for
a total change of each person. We are body, soul and spirit. Paul
spoke about the body in terms of fleshly limitations, what we see
and observe with our senses. But when we are reconciled to God through
Christ's death for our sins, we are given the Holy Spirit's presence,
and then we see things as we have never seen them before. We are
given the mind view of Christ our Lord. And the great love of God
from God empowers us to live above/beyond fleshly/carnal/sensuous
worldliness. "So if anyone [is] in Christ [he is] a new creation,
the old things passed away, behold they have become new [kaina]
from [kaninos], meaning new or recently made."
Such a change is a transformation from our old former self to our
new self in Christ.
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