The Inside Edge for the New Year

Editorial by Jerry Lutz

If you’re thinking that things in this world don’t appear to be making much sense these days, you’re not alone, and it’s because they don’t. The confusion and societal upheavals we are witnessing and experiencing today—which may seem new and unheard of—are just the current versions of what has been going on long before any of us came onto the scene. The difference today is that, unlike previous generations, we have instant, digital access to virtually everything in real time, including what’s happening around the world.

As we know, since sin was allowed into this world by the first humans millennia ago, nothing on this planet has been what God originally intended it to be. And while thousands of generations have come and gone, the root problem remains the same: Sin has never made much sense in light of the great controversy between good and evil. Living contrary to God’s will has brought incomprehensible heartache and sadness to this planet and has destroyed the lives of countless millions. The bad news is, as God’s Word makes clear, this pattern of destruction will continue and intensify until Jesus comes and eradicates sin entirely.

The apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:13, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God” (NASB). And that’s why things in this world don’t make sense. There is excellent news, though, for anyone who is in Christ Jesus. Here it is in 1 Corinthians 2:14–16: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (NIV).

In that last phrase, Paul is essentially saying that we, Christians, have the inside edge when it comes to truly understanding where we are in earth’s history, why things are the way they are, and where all things are going to ultimately wind up. So, let us live in the Spirit and by the Spirit this new year.

Jerry Lutz serves as the president of the Chesapeake Conference.