A New Beginning

By Tol Burk

The birth of a baby is a wonderful thing—a new person begins their life with the potential to do/be many things. As they grow and develop they write upon the blank slate that is their life. Some actions will be good, while others may not be good. They may look back at some point in their life and wish they had the ability to “start all over” and avoid the mistakes they’ve made.

Christ offers each of us this new beginning—when we rise from the waters of baptism we are a “new creature”. The mistakes we’ve made in the past are forgiven and forgotten. We no longer have to feel the guilt of those things. God is just and the consequences of our sins may still remain with us, but when we are forgiven we stand pure and justified in His sight. It really doesn’t matter what you’ve done, God can forgive you of EVERYTHING. He showed this clearly when He forgave a man who denied that Jesus was God in the flesh and did everything in his power to crush the new sect called Christians—he imprisoned them and even agreed to their murder. But when the apostle Paul turned to the Lord all this was forgiven. What hope this should give each of us.

If you’re not a Christian, you are still in your sins. But God sent his Son to die that you might have a new beginning. If you’re honest, you must acknowledge that you’ve sinned—not always done exactly what God commands. Such sins separate you from God and from the hope of heaven that Christians have, but He gives you the chance to make a new beginning by being obedient to His plan of salvation.

Even after we become Christians, we still sin—we cannot live in sin (let sin rule our bodies), but we do sin. Such sins separate us from God. After we have died to sin and been buried with Christ in baptism we need a new beginning from time to time. God offers that also to His children—by repentance and prayer we can be forgiven of our sins and begin again.

Do you need that new beginning? Why not make YOUR new beginning today? There is no better time than the present.