Title: New existence, new hope
Contents
New existence, new hope (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
Jesus said in Luke 5:38, “New wine must be put into new wineskins” and taught that the Lord would come into the world and renew life. Christianity is a renewing religion, spiritually and culturally in every way. Just as water becomes wine, it is a religion that has a completely new history that does not exist in the world that changes the quality and quantity.
When Paul, who was respected as a Jewish law teacher in his day, met the Lord, the purpose of his life changed completely. Everything about him has been completely changed.
As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come”.
1. We must conclude that the world is nothing new
When you become a Christian, you first have to look at the world in a negative way, rather than in a positive way in the words of some people. People feel the need to look at the world in a very positive way with the will to live well. But the Bible still tells us that the sinful world always awaits judgment in corruption.
Christian wisdom and worldview begins with the revelation of the Bible. To borrow a philosophical word, it means that the beginning of thought begins with the revelation of God. Even if I do not understand, if it is the word of the Bible, I will recognize it as it is. Considering the world's experience, it may be foolish, but accepting and living as it is is called the biblical life.
Verse 16, “Therefore, we do not lose heart, for we do not lose heart when we say, “The outward man is perishing, but the inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” The premise is that things are. What is new day by day is the inner man and is spiritual. The world is nothing new, but only things that decay and perish. Ecclesiastes 1:9 “What has been, will be again later, and what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.”
Therefore, if you become a true Christian, you must first have a clear judgment on the futility of the world itself before becoming a person of any experience. Otherwise, the powers of the world may draw you away from the teaching of Christ
In the Bible, in many words, the field of worldly life is judged as futile. Psalm 90:9 “All our days pass by in Your wrath, and our whole days are spent in one eclipse.”
Isaiah 40:8 “The grass withers and the flowers wither, but the word of our God stands forever.”
1 John 5:19 “And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the evil one.”
For this reason, believers are people who realize that the world is useless, incompetent, and without hope leading to death after meeting Jesus from the worldly and worldly values. However, if this fact is not clearly interpreted, we will bet on the worldly hope again. Ephesians 4:22 “Put off the old self, which is corrupt according to the lusts of deceit.”
However, it is not the dualistic idea of the Stoics. It is not the notion that the body and matter are evil compared to the spirit, but rather that the Christian's hope is not secularism.
In that sense, the evangelist tells us well.
Ecclesiastes 12:1 “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of affliction come, before the year nears when I will say that I have no pleasure in it, before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars become dark, and before the clouds rise again after the rain. Do it,' he said.
It means that you have to know God from a young age before you know the futility of life until you are old. The older you get, the more you realize that life isn't a big deal and you think it's meaningless.
In the text, Paul clearly tells us that our outward man, that is, the life of the flesh, grows old and decays. Even if you have plastic surgery, you can't live your life with your looks if you grow old for a while. Even the money and fame that accompany it will come to an end when you get older. What we can wait for is our renewed inner man.
2. New Beings Have Hope Through Suffering
17 “For our light affliction, which is for a little while, works for us an exceedingly great and eternal weight of glory.”
When you become a Christian, you will face persecution no matter where you live, in any region and in any environment, because of a completely new goal of life and a new way of life that comes with it. This is essential. You have to understand and accept it.
Acts 14:22 "'... To enter the kingdom of God, we must go through many tribulations...'
The hope that Christians have is not of the earth. Indeed, the hope that Christians have is ideological. Therefore, conflicts arise because of differences of opinion between parents and brothers and neighbors and even nationally. The ultimate hope of Christianity is the resurrection of glory. Peter says that the true living hope of Christians is the resurrection. 1 Peter 1:3 “He hath begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”
Christians hope for a glorious resurrection through hardships just as the Lord became the Redeemer through His death on the cross and the Lord of life through His resurrection. So Christianity was delivered much more powerfully during the tribulation and was faithful in the hope of heaven. If they fall into the world and become profane, from then on, the saints voluntarily do not engage in evangelism, are not grateful, and become lazy.
If you do not have the will to become a Christian and understand the world in a whole new way, there will be no persecution as a new being. So there is no biblical living hope?
Therefore, as a new being, it is natural to face difficulties from the world in order to live with a new way of life. Believers who live without suffering have problems. No matter how much we try to make the world understand, our nature is a will cultivated under the control of Satan, and our values are held in harmony by the god of death.
The world is an object of missionary work, not simply an object of harmonious friendship. We embrace it, but we always see it as an object of mission, but it is not something we can rely on for our will. Talking, but not with whom you live.
The hardships that believers experience when they try to live according to the Bible testify that they are children of God and provide the motive to establish true hope. Therefore, we must fight well, aiming for God's rich reward with the eternal Spirit without becoming discouraged.
Colossians 1:24 “I now rejoice in the afflictions that I suffer for you, and fill the rest of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for the sake of his body, the church.”
3. What the New Being Sees is the Unseen
18 “It is not what we see, but what we do not see; what is seen is temporary, but what is not seen is eternal.”
Verses 16-18 emphasize the hope for eternal blessings in stark contrast between temporary and eternity, light and heavy, visible and invisible. If you believe in Jesus, your life begins anew with new things. Everything is being recognized and changed.
To be seen here does not mean simply to be negated as physical things, but to anything that has a worldly goal. When you become a Christian, you live with new hope as a new being. Its novelty is not at all comparable in the world. As a novelty with a purpose in heaven, just as Christ is different from all the teachers, the existence of the saints and the view on life of the saints are completely different from all philosophies.
It is not the scientific world and values that are experienced, but the values of the invisible and eternal world. The newness of the word that our insides are being renewed day by day is ajnakainovw, which is a compound word that overlaps with the new word ajnav and the new word kainov, meaning something completely new.
When you become a Christian, it becomes difficult to sympathize with the will and goals of the world. Become a person of new will, sympathize with the purpose of Christianity and rejoice. This is not the spirit of a fanatic, but a perfectly normal Christian sentiment. But the sad thing today is that Christians easily form sympathy with the wishes of the world. The Bible tells us about the new concerns we have.
2 Corinthians 7:10 “Godly sorrow produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly sorrow produces death.”
Shouting hallelujah as if chanting Amen is an act that denies the name of God and what is holy. The saints live in the world in the true sense, but now they worry about the things of the world.
I am worried about how to turn according to God’s will and make the world right, and I work hard on missionary work, education, prayer, and effort. This is the will of the church to embrace the world.
Not only is the world in chaos, but the church ideology of the last days is also in chaos. We need to make clear what our identity is, so that we can express our will to live for what is right and to make it clear and conscious of our own true wishes.
From the moment we meet Christ, we become new beings with a new purpose to live in God's forgiveness of sins and hope for the kingdom of God. As members of a community called the church that lives under God's management system, they have come to live a life completely different from the world.
If we forget this fact, we do not live as saints. It must resemble Paul's view of life. Romans 8:18 “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” Philippians 3:14 “I am pressing toward the goal for the reward of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
In any case, the saints living in the present age, where selfishness and secularism are rampant, must live by confirming the existence of the self, and the people of heaven who cry out and confess like a slogan in their lives what is the true new hope we have. You will have to live with willpower.
Too many people see the church as a Jesus who makes the world live well as an extension of the world's life, and the church as a Jesus who helps the world culturally by becoming a big church.
However, Jesuitism is a place where we create a fundamentally new human being and announce a new hope to the world. It is not a worldly place that is visible, but a place that wants to convey and make known eternal life that is invisible.
Are you new? Then you should have a new hope. I hope that you and I will meditate on whether you are a person of new hope as a new being by looking back at yourself.