We Don’t Need a Fresh Start—We Need New Life

October 10, 2025/Le Ann Trees/
Photo Credit: AscentXmedia / iStock.com

Photo Credit: AscentXmedia / iStock.com

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The thought of a new start, a new beginning, is appealing because we have more wisdom and insight as we age. We can look back with greater clarity and contemplate choices we might have made for not only our own benefit but also the benefit of others.

We don’t need a fresh start; instead, what we need is new life.

The problem is that, no matter what choices we make, we are still dealing with the sin nature we all have from Adam’s fall in the garden of Eden, as well as a cursed world (Gen. 3:17-19). No matter how “right” we get things along the way, we never do them perfectly. We will never attain a perfect state of being in this world.

Even worse, no mere human or created thing can redeem us from the decay we all experience or the future judgment awaiting every single person. We don’t need a fresh start. What we need is new life, and the only way for us to escape all the decay in this world and God’s coming judgment and receive that new life is by Jesus taking our deserved punishment upon himself at the cross.

The “old” to which the apostle Paul refers in 2 Corinthians 5:17 is the state of being “in Adam”—dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), without hope and without God. The new start we need is new life—life that is imperishable and without sin, and we only receive that new life through faith in Christ as our Savior—by being “in Christ.” When we are saved to new life in Christ, we are attached to Christ, the Vine (John 15). We have communion with God by the power of the Holy Spirit, who indwells every believer (John 14:15-17; Rom. 8:9-11; 1 Cor. 6:19). Our desires change; we no longer crave the old life of following our selfish urges. Instead, we want what God wills for us. We want to be like Jesus and find our happiness in God alone.

When we have new life in Christ, the old life of our hopeless state is no more.

New life in Christ isn’t merely a change in location, a new occupation, or a good feeling of some kind. This new life is an entirely new existence; believers are a new creation! The newness of life we have in Christ never changes or ages; it never grows old. It is constant and eternal; it is perfectly true, good, and beautiful in every way.

No one would ever want to go back to the old after receiving the new life Christ gives to all who trust in him alone for their salvation. And they couldn’t go back anyway, because every believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit and belongs to God forevermore (1 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13; 4:30). Furthermore, God is at work conforming his children to the image of Christ, having saved us so that we would be holy like he is holy (Rom. 8:29; Heb. 12:14).

Even more wondrously, the believer’s existence as a new creation will be an embodied one. God’s children won’t be wispy souls floating around for eternity but will instead, upon Christ’s return, be eating and drinking with physical bodies and living in eternal bliss with God our Creator in his kingdom that will never end.

We’re not going back to Eden; instead our destination is the New Jerusalem.

Christians are called to be salt and light in this world. We remember and rejoice in our rest in Christ each Sunday as we hear God’s word faithfully preached, and then we go out in the world to do good works—to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. But we’re not going back to Eden. We’re not restoring this earth that is passing away for Christ. As new creations in Christ, we have a new destination—the New Jerusalem:

“Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.” (Isa. 43:19)

“I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
and the cry of distress.” (Isa. 65:19)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband….And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Rev. 21:1-2, 5)

Leave the old behind and receive Jesus as your Savior today.

We can’t fix the “old”—the fallen state of our hearts. We need the new—new hearts to love God, new bodies that can never sin, and a new heavens and earth that are incorruptible in which to live. As the apostle John exhorts us,

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15-17)

Even though we will continue to struggle in our mortal bodies against the desires of the flesh in a fallen world, death no longer has the victory over God’s children (1 Cor. 15:55). Jesus came to save us from the ravages of death, sin, and the devil. New life—life that comes only from God and exists forever in glory—is found in Christ alone. Jesus said that he would never cast out whoever comes to him (John 6:37). If you haven’t already done so, leave the old behind, receive Christ as your Savior today, and walk in newness of life by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This article is adapted from “New Life in Christ: New Creations with a New Destination” in Beautiful Christian Life’s April 2025 monthly newsletter, “New Life.“

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