New Creatures in Christ

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

The hour before dawn is the coldest and the greyest, and it is also the hour when nothing whatever looks like it is about to change. The field is the same field. The fence is still down where it went down.

Paul's phrase reaches back further than most people hear. New creature is creation language, the word Genesis uses, and he has already set it up a verse earlier: henceforth know we no man after the flesh. He is talking about how a person is now to be read. Not renovated. Not a better draft of the old one. The old identity has stopped being the thing that names you. Notice what he does not claim. He does not say the habits are gone by Tuesday or that the consequences have been lifted. Light does not drain the mud out of a field.

What it does is change what the field belongs to. It is a different day, and the day has a different name on it, and the work in front of you is the work of a morning rather than the work of a night.

Do one thing today that the old name would not have done. Make the call you would have kept avoiding. Small is fine. It is still daylight.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 253 is Anguish of Spirit (Exodus 6:9).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna