I recently had an article published in the Newfrontiers magazine. I thought I’d share it here. It’s much longer than most blog posts so I’ve broken it up into four sections: (part 1)

The promise of a new you

What do you do if you’ve made a mistake and need a fresh start? Where would you turn and who would you go to? How about Gok Wan? If you don’t know who he is, Gok Wan has made a TV career in Britain out of hosting a makeover show. During every episode the same story is played out with different women. At the beginning in come the tired, the ugly and unhappy and by the end they leave renewed, beautiful and fulfilled. It’s the incredible power of the fashion makeover. It is a moving journey with all the classic elements of a good testimony, what my sad life was like before, the discovery of something new and what my life has now become. There are inevitably tears, pain, struggle and sacrifice along the way but in the end these women are reborn.

You can move to a new place and start over or you can get a new look and rediscover your dignity, self-worth and value. In order to distinguish between the mostly indistinguishable, companies try and associate their products with values that they hope their customers will see as desirable. Those values are often expressed in spiritual language, so for example, if you use the right hygiene products you don’t just wash but instead enjoy ‘deep cleansing’ and emerge ‘pure’ and ‘spotless’ and ‘clean.’

The problem with this offer is that it is a message of law. If I choose this path then a whole new set of rules emerge because I must buy the right products, wear the right colours, have acceptable clothes to the people I want to be accepted by and I must spend more time at the gym. I must because my identity depends on it. I must make new sacrifices every year and the older I get the greater the sacrifices! In the end in my search for happiness and acceptance, I have become a slave to self worth through consumption.

The Gospel however is not one of self improvement but of God’s gift of grace. His offer of a fresh start through Jesus Christ rests on His work of re-creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2Cor 5:17-18). When God makes us clean we are clean, when God acts we are made new, beautiful, spotless, clean and freed to enjoy Him, it is the glorious liberation of grace.