Petaluma Christian Church

I love March in Northern California.  The daffodils and jonquils have already been blooming.  The trees are putting on leaves – and my allergies can tell!  But the beauty of God’s creation is so amazing after the deadness of winter.  It truly is a transformation.

This year, March has another reminder for us about the wonderful creative and transforming power of our supreme Lord.  The last Sunday of the month (March 28th) is Palm Sunday, which celebrates the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey – and the people acclaimed Him with Hosanna’s.

But the rest of the week – and going into the first part of April – is Holy Week, when we remember the last days of Jesus’ life on earth before He died.  Fully one-third of the Gospels are written about those events because Christ’s “Passion” is such a pivotal event not only in Christianity, but in all of world history.

But along with the events that happened that week, there is another creation that we look to.  It has little to do with the first creation of the earth or its re-creation (renewal) in the Spring, but with the beautiful truth that we who were dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) are made new by Christ.  We’re even called a new creation: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19a).

This is amazing!  Can you see the beauty in taking something that’s dead and making it live again?  That’s what we are as a result of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  That’s why we worship a supreme Lord.  No one else and no other religion can promise that we are being made new with the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.  But Philippians 3:21 says the Lord Jesus Christ, “who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.”

Do you want to be transformed?  There’s a saying that goes, “everybody wants to be transformed, but nobody wants to change.”  But this is a creative change that I glory in ñ my new life in Christ today and my new body in the future.

Revel in this; delight in it.  God’s transforming power is making us into a beautiful new creation in Christ!

Loving you in the Lord,

Pastor Bill Linton

Tags: 2 corinthians 5, beautiful truth, creation of the earth, jesus chris, jesus life, jonquils, last days of jesus, palm sunday, resurrection of jesus, resurrection of jesus christ
Filed under: From Our Pastor