The New You
Colossians 3:9-10 Don’t lie to each other. You have taken off those old clothes—the person you once were and the bad things you did then. Now you are wearing a new life, a life that is new every day. You are growing in your understanding of the one who made you. You are becoming more and more like him.
Have you ever found yourself thinking, “I really need to clean up my act. I really need to become a better person”? But try as you might, you can’t change those entrenched patterns of behaviour.
Makeovers are all the rage these days – plastic surgery, cosmetic dentistry, beauty therapy. But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much you scrub the outside of a cup, it can still be filthy on the inside.
And what most of us need is a makeover on the inside not the outside.
Colossians 3:9-10 Don’t lie to each other. You have taken off those old clothes—the person you once were and the bad things you did then. Now you are wearing a new life, a life that is new every day. You are growing in your understanding of the one who made you. You are becoming more and more like him.
The Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of stripping off the old self and clothing ourselves with a new self – a self that’s being renewed day-by-day, back into the image of our Creator.
It’s an interesting metaphor because although Paul’s talking about changing clothes, trading in the old ones in for new ones – that change is actually something that happens on the inside first, and then works its way out into who we are, and what we say and do.
And as one who came to Christ over a quarter of a century ago in desperate need of a makeover, what I discovered was that the only way I could get change to happen on the outside, was to let Jesus loose in my heart … on the inside.
You can’t change the things you do, until you let Jesus change the person you’ve become.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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