And the one who sat on the throne spoke to me and said, “Consider this! I am making everything to be new and fresh.” Revelation 21:5
One of the things that runs through our New Year celebration is Hope. Somehow, starting again gives us hope as we consider all that God has for us in 2018. God promises us that He is continuously making things new for His glory and for our good.
1) God restores us to a right relationship with him through the gift of forgiveness and new life in Jesus. He restores relationships between people. And He even restores days and years that have been lost due to our own sin (Joel 2:25). That’s one of the greatest evidences of the extravagant nature of God’s mercy. Not only does He renew our lives and redeem our future, but He also redeems our past.
In the New Testament, we see Jesus live out a lifestyle of restoration. He restored sight to the blind, the ability to walk to the crippled, hearing to the deaf, and new, clean skin to the diseased (Mk 8:22-26; Matt 9:2-8; Mk 7: 31-37; Lk 5:12-25). In all of these accounts, Jesus didn’t just heal a physical condition. He restored lives, giving hope to broken people.
2) God gives us a new identity in Jesus. In the Bible, God sometimes even gave new names to people to symbolize the new identities he provided for them. He changed the names of Hosea’s children from ‘No Mercy’ and ‘Not My People’ to ‘My Loved One’ and ‘My People’ to symbolize the new identity that He was providing for them and all of His people (Hosea 1-2). Simon became Peter, and Saul became Paul when they became followers of Jesus (Matt 4:18; Acts 13:9). They received new identities in Jesus as they forsook their former lives and entered into restoration—all things became new.
We probably won’t get a new name, but we do get new identities in Jesus as we follow Him.
3) God resurrects. God makes dead things alive again. Literally. He has power over death in every sense. He demonstrated this when he raised Jesus from death. Paul proclaims (Rom 8:11) that, as believers, we have that same resurrection power dwelling in us. It’s what gives life to our dead mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in us.
As we lay down our weak, flawed existence (Rom 12:1), we God resurrects our reality with new life and new grace.
When we are committed to hope in God’s mercy and His power to make things new, we can depend on Him to restore lost time, bestow new identities, and create new life. He offers renewed mercy to His people each day (Lam 3:21). He promises good plans for his people, plans that include a hopeful 2018 (Jer 29:11).