New is Usually Different

ALL – Psalm 36:1-12
ALL – Proverbs 10:1-2
OT – Leviticus 4:1-5:19
NT – Mark 2:13-3:6

The unexpected can be annoying—perhaps even offensive.

But when Jesus came, He didn’t apologize for His unexpected new ways. In fact, He defended them. When the Pharisees implied that His disciples ought to be fasting along with theirs and John’s (the Baptist), Jesus said,

It is like patching an old garment with unshrunk cloth! What happens? The patch pulls away and leaves the hole worse than before. You know better than to put new wine into old wineskins. They would burst. The wine would be spilled out and the wineskins ruined. New wine needs fresh wineskins. – Mark 2:21-22

The old and the new often don’t work well together. Everything about Jesus was new, and new is usually different. Jesus was surprising. Jesus was unconventional. Jesus was different. Why? Because Jesus was new and brought a new reality with Him from heaven.

As Christians, we have to be careful how we apply this lesson. We want to be new like Jesus—there’s no question about that. But to some people, “new like Jesus” means that we must shake up the traditional ways of the church at every opportunity. “New like Jesus” can be used to justify people’s whims to be different, unconventional, even slightly rebellious against church practices and traditions. That’s not what being new like Jesus is about. We must remember that Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. For Christians, there is much about following Jesus that should be tradition by now. Why? Because we can never become newer than Jesus. He is the Father’s final word.

On the other hand, our behavior and teachings will always be new to the world around us, because people perpetually follow the world’s tradition of sinning against God. That is the tradition we must aim most passionately to break as we stand with Jesus in the newness of the covenant He sealed with His blood. We are not to differ from Jesus’ followers, but from the world and its patterns. New is usually different. Let’s aim to be different in Jesus’ way—not from Jesus and His followers, but from those who oppose Him.

What is new in your life because Jesus lives in you?

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