Many electronics and small home appliances that are returned to their manufacturers due to problems are worked with, tested, dusted off and sent back out for sale as “factory refurbished.”
Perhaps they are a reasonable deal, but I have always had a deep distrust of such “refurbished” items. Damaged or defective outer parts might be fixed, but what about the interior – the running of some of these items? It seems to me that a refurbished item just isn’t as trustworthy as one made new and made right.
Apparently, God follows that same line of reasoning with us. After all, I suppose it would be possible for a spiritually “malfunctioning” individual to be repaired, then sent back out into the world again, but God’s word seems to indicate that’s not a good idea. Jesus spoke a parable specifically relating to the wisdom of going with a new product:
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins” (Mark 2:21-22).
God did not issue a refurbished or revised edition of His Covenant, but introduced a totally new one (Hebrews 8:13). In a similar manner, the One who originally formed the human mind prefers to renew our outlook completely rather than just to affect an attitude “adjustment” or “refurbishment” (Ephesians 4:23). He prefers totally remade characters, too: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). In fact, he calls us to “… put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).
Ultimately, we are told, God will establish new heavens and a new earth (Revelation 21:1-2), so it seems clear that He really prefers the new to the refurbished in every case. In fact, He says: “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:5).
If the One who has called us will remake everything in His quest for the renewed and perfected, shouldn’t we look at our own lives that way? God clearly does not call us to be refurbished – with just the outer visible problems fixed – but with no real remaking of the inner person we are. So it’s a question we can ask ourselves as we go further into this new year: Are we content with just being refurbished each day, or are we striving to be truly made new?
If you are a regular visitor at this site, you know that we put up new material regularly – every few days. With the RSS feed (to the right of this update) you can have an easy method of checking to see if there is a new blog posting and new material on the site. But to make things even easier for our readers, we are changing to a regular publication schedule on both our sites. Starting immediately, new material will usually be added twice each week – every Monday and Friday. Announcements such as this one will still be added whenever appropriate, but will not affect the regular Monday / Friday schedule of new posts and/or articles. If you are new to the site, you may want to come back more frequently to catch up on past posts and articles, but from now on all our readers will know when there will be new material here and on LivingWithFaith.org. You may want to put a note in your planner!
The sixth chapter of the Gospel of John tells of the miraculous feeding of the great crowd of 5,000 people who were following Jesus in the area of Galilee. Within a day or so of this miraculous event, we find the same crowd (John mentions it was the same people) asking Jesus what seems like a very strange question. When Jesus said “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:29), notice what the people answered:
“What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’ “ (John 6:30-31).
This response of the people is often said to be strange to the point of being unbelievable. Not only had these people just witnessed a great sign, but specifically one in which they were miraculously fed, so why would they ask for a sign – especially one involving being fed? Some Bible commentaries even suggest that perhaps John’s account reflects a patchwork of original sources not agreeing with each other.
A far simpler answer is found in the fact that the verbs used in the people’s reply to Jesus are actually in the present tense in the Greek of John’s account. The Greek word poieis literally means “are doing” and ergaze means “you are working.” In other words, the people’s reply was not “What sign will you give us” (emphasis added in this and the following instances), as we read in the NIV and KJV, but, more literally: “what sign are you doing … What work are you working” or “what sign do you do …What work do you perform?” (as they are translated in the ESV). This literal translation makes a great deal of difference, because the people were evidently not asking for another, future, sign, but for explanation of the sign Jesus had just given them – and which they realized was of the same nature and importance as the manna given from heaven to their ancestors in the wilderness.
We must look at the context of these verses. John tells us that after the feeding of the 5,000:
“After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself” (vss. 14-15).
The people were fully aware of the sign they had been given and were asking Jesus for confirmation of its meaning – they were saying in effect: “what is this sign” or “what does this sign mean” – and rightly guessing that it suggested this was the prophet like Moses (who had fed the people manna) who would come (Deuteronomy 18:15-19): the promised Messiah. This is why they wanted to make Jesus their king.
This week, on both our websites, we will begin a new series of interspersed blog postings, aimed at increasing Biblical understanding. On our sister site, LivingWithFaith.org, the new series will be called “Scripture in Question” and will look at what are sometimes claimed to be “contradictions” in the Bible.
The new series on this site will be “Scripture in Focus” and will examine scriptures that are puzzling in some way, or difficult to understand, perhaps because of historical, cultural or translation issues. Usually you can find clarification for such scriptures with extensive study in Bible commentaries and other resources, but that can be time intensive and sometimes confusing when different answers are found. We save you time and trouble with this new series – each explanation is carefully researched and if there are varying opinions on a topic, we will compare them for you.
We think you will find both the “Scripture in Focus” and “Scripture in Question” series of posts interesting and also helpful. Look for them here and on our other site starting in a day or two.
Readers on this site may be interested in a book review we posted on our sister site today: Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus was just published a few days ago, and it is a book that will resonate powerfully among the Christians and Muslims who read it. It’s a moving and inspiring account that you might well enjoy and find profitable. You can read the review here.
We will also be posting a new selection of books on this site in the coming week or so. Update, 02/22/’14: New books are now posted to our Books in Brief page!
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