Have you ever tried to repair something that was broken? Some people have a knack for being able to fix anything. My grandfather was one of those people, but not me. If something stops working, I either replace it or pay someone else to fix it. But some things are unable to be repaired—the house has been condemned, the car is a total loss, or the cell phone that went through the washing machine cannot be revived in a bag of rice. Sometimes we need to know when to throw in the towel and cut our losses.
Do you know something else that cannot be repaired? Us.
That’s right. The original us, what the Bible calls the old nature, is irreparable. We are born in sin and separated from God, and we cannot be saved with a little behavior modification or completing some multi-step program.
In his book titled Rightly Dividing the Word, Dr. Oliver B. Greene wrote, “Do not try to repair what God gave up as unfit for repair.” In our original state, we are enslaved to sin and are enemies of God. Some will brush this off, saying they are not that bad, but James told us that breaking just one part of God’s law renders us responsible for breaking the entirety of God’s law (2:10).
The old nature is unfit for repair, and thus needs to be mortified. Colossians 3:5 says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” And here is the good news: once we do that, the Lord transforms us into something better than a repaired version of the old nature; we become something brand new.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul famously wrote these words: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
We do not need to be repaired, we need to repent and become renewed.
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