Topics: Change; Christian Life; Conversion; New Life; Redemption; Regeneration; Repentance; Sanctification; Spiritual Formation
References: 2 Corinthians 5:1–17; Ephesians 4:20–32; 5:1–17; Philippians 3:7–16
In the late 1920s, my grandparents married and moved into Grandpa’s old family home. It was a clapboard house with a hall down the middle. In the ’30s they decided to tear down the old house and build another.
Much to my grandmother’s dismay, many of the materials of the old house were recycled into the new house. They used old facings, doors, and other pieces of lumber. Everywhere my grandmother looked, she saw old doors that wouldn’t shut properly, crown molding that was split and riddled with nail holes, and unfinished window trimming. It was a source of grief to her. All her life she had longed for a new house; now all she got was a recycled one.
When God brings us into the kingdom, the old way of living must be dismantled and discarded.
—Len Sullivan, Tupelo, Mississippi