A New Creation
Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
John Paton was a missionary to the New Hebrides Islands. After he had been there for some time, critics back home in Scotland were saying that there was no real change taking place. In answer to those critics, Paton wrote, “When I have read or heard the shallow objections of the irreligious scribblers and talkers, hinting that there was no reality in conversions and that the mission effort was a waste, oh, but how my heart has yearned to plant them just one week on Tanna, with the natural man all around in the person of the cannibal and heathen, and only one spiritual man in the person of the converted Abraham; nursing the others, feeding them, and saving them for the love of Jesus – that I might just learn how many hours it took to convince them that Christ in a man was a reality after all! All the skepticism in Europe would hide its head in shame; and all its doubts would dissolve under one glance of the new light that Jesus, and Jesus alone, pours from the converted cannibals eye!”
Jesus changes lives. He makes men new. The proof is in the life.
