Written by Vicky Ng, Art by Christine Hwang
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was with God…Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:1, 3) God has created this world through Christ because Christ was there with God right from the beginning. After the Fall (when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s commands and were cast out of His presence), God wanted to recreate us. Salvation is the initial step of such re:creation! “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) God wants to recreate us through Christ. We are to be like Mary bringing Christ into birth through our speech, actions and the choices we make.
A lot of people think accepting Christ as our personal Savior is all it takes to receive eternal life. But God’s re:creational plan doesn’t stop there, in fact, it starts as soon as we confess our sins and ask Christ to enter our hearts. God certainly wants us to spend eternity with Him in heaven, but He also desires to bring eternity into our hearts or our spirit. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, everything on earth will deteriorate with time, but our hearts are the only thing not subjected to this law. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16 “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
So how does God renew us? Like many recreational activities that refresh and renew our spirits, body and mind, spiritual activities like daily devotions and spiritual disciplines have the same purpose. They will help to recreate us so that we will be more like Christ. In fact, every experience in your life, good or bad, could be used by God to shape us to be more Christ-like. Transformation or the process of becoming like Christ, takes time. Although we are not the ones performing the transforming work which stems from our heart, we can make the changes more effective by actively participating and willingly cooperating in the present moment. Each present moment serves as a surgical step in the transformation process. I like the way Henry Cloud, a clinical psychologist, explained in his book Change Your Life with Changes that Heal (Zondervan, 1990), “time is God’s way of bringing about the wholeness lost in Eden.” He has called the time we are living in now the “redemptive time” or “an incubator that exists for the purpose of redemption” (24-26).
So how can we be recreated? First, we must determine for ourselves once and for all that God created the heavens and the earth. Second, we must make ourselves available to transformation through the present experiences God has brought into our daily lives. Third, we need to bring Christ-like principles into each of our decisions. Then, in due time, we will notice how truly and wonderfully we are being recreated in the image of Christ.
Missed a class? Take a look at Salvation 101: The Creational Past to catch up on what you missed or speed on ahead to Salvation 103: The Actualizational Future.
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