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Under New Management

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

While studying for my class, New Testament Survey, I was reading about Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul was instructing the new Christians that had come out of Idolatry about what was acceptable and not acceptable as Christians concerning different rituals and whether or not meat sacrificed to idols was fit to eat. On my way to work the next day I saw a sign in front of a well-known restaurant that read, “Under New Management.” Workers were busy painting and cleaning up the outside, and I wondered, would they do anything to the inside? As I drove on, I thought about that sign and the work being done as the new owners tried to give the old restaurant a new and appealing look. I thought about the work that is done in our lives when Christ comes into our hearts and we are under new management. Except Jesus doesn’t worry about the paint and spackle on the outside, He is only interested in the inside.

Just like the Ephesians of the first century, today we are challenged to be set apart from the world. The Ephesians were surrounded by temples to pagan gods and goddess and they had no idea how to be different, so they needed all the instruction they could get. We are the same. Paul wanted to teach them so that they could grow and become stronger through Christ. In order for that to happen they had to be changed on the inside first. Their attitudes and ideals that they had developed from the pagan world around them had to be cleared out. We are surrounded by a world as pagan as Ephesus was then and we have to undergo some internal renovations ourselves.

If the new owners of the restaurant only paint the outside and don’t clear away the 30 plus years of grease and grime, revamp the menu, is it really a new establishment? No. In order to be new in Christ you must allow the new owner to completely renew you from the inside out.

This week as you pray, ask God to clear out the rubbish and old attitudes and equip you with His new and improved reformation.

25 Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Ezekiel 36:25-27