When we moved back to Cadillac a few years ago, we had to make a decision about where to live.  In contrast to the cookie cutter tract home neighborhoods of southern California, Cadillac has a wonderful diversity of housing options.  You can live in the country on some acreage.  You can live in the city in a historic estate.  You can live on a farm.  You can live in the woods.  You can live on a river or on a lake.  Decisions, decisions…

            One thing we knew for certain is that we would not be moving into a fixer upper.  Now this is not because we are in any way “above” living in a house that needs some work.  As a matter of fact, I daydream about one day buying a historic home in our city’s center and renovating it.  They are so full of character and potential.  But I know better.  You see the problem is my utter inability to fix anything.  Even the simplest of home maintenance tasks can quickly become expensive disasters when I take matters into my inept hands.  A fixer upper would simply not be an option—not in my house, and not in my life.

            You see we tend to look at our lives as fixer uppers.  We see qualities that we wish were different and we set out to renovate them.  The belief is that if we can just do enough renovating we will someday become the people we hope to be.  We make resolutions.  We turn over new leaves.  And we fail.  The problem is that our lives are in far worse condition than we realize.  It is like buying a fixer upper, putting down some new flooring and realizing that the very foundation of the house is bad.  No amount of laminate is going to fix that.  We are money pits—sinful at our very core.  We’ve been trying to put a fresh coat of paint on a condemned building.

             So we call in a renovation expert.  We invite Jesus to come and “fix” us.  Surely His divine power will correct what is wrong with us and make us the people we ought to be.  And as noble as this sounds, as spiritual as this seems, and as commonly as this is taught, this is not what Jesus came to do.  Jesus didn’t come to fix the old.  He came to make us completely new.  Our foundation is so bad, so sinful, that we are beyond fixing.  Our only hope is for the old self to die and for a new self to be resurrected.  2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  This is the message of Easter.  Our old sinful selves were nailed to the cross and died with Jesus.  And when He rose from the dead, we too were raised to a brand new life.  This is the beauty of baptism that we read about in Romans 6:3-4:  “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” 

            Today Jesus invites you to put down the hammer of self-effort and to stop striving to fix yourself.  Instead, recognize that you are beyond fixing.  Your only hope is to surrender to His work of demolition, so that He can build something completely brand new—a masterpiece beyond anything we could ever imagine. 

            This Resurrection weekend, may God richly bless you as we celebrate the God who brings new life.