What’s New?
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
The beginning of a new year automatically suggests thinking about new things. Some will think about new resolutions for the new year. Others may think of changes they want to make, calling this the turning over of a new leaf.
Some may look back regretfully at prior resolves made at the beginning of previous years when good intentions fell by the wayside. By His grace, God has given us a new opportunity for renewed resolutions at the outset of another new year, which happens also to be the beginning of a new decade.
Nothing new under the sun?
Thus it may afford a good time for some long-range resolutions that stretch beyond the next 12 months and even span the next 10 years should God be gracious to give us that many.
A focus on new things stands in contrast to the thinking of Solomon in the beginning of Ecclesiastes. After reflecting on the monotony of the old, such as the repetitive cycles of nature and human generations, he concluded: “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new?’” (1:9–10a).
One can hardly escape a note of despair or hopelessness that sounds in those ancient words when they are taken at face value.
Upon further reflection, however, we must remind ourselves that we have a completed Bible, which is something Solomon did not have. In the searching of the sacred Scriptures we discover a number of things that can properly be labeled as new.
In fact toward the end of the Bible we hear a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). From this sacred book we learn of a number of things that are new or will become new. So we might ask ourselves, “In light of the completed canon of Scripture, what’s new?”
In the next several weeks of this new year Theology 101 will explore some of these things made new, such as a new covenant, a new commandment, a new creation, a new song, a new name and a new heaven and new earth.
Hopefully the outcome will not only be an intellectual exercise or doctrinal inquiry but an increasingly meaningful and hopeful experience of anticipating what God is up to in our lives and in His plan for His creation.
On a personal level the goal might be captured in the language of Romans 6:4, that “we also should walk in newness of life.”
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