God is a God of new things. A kaleidoscope of scripture tells us so-for “behold . . . new things I now declare”, “behold I am doing a new thing”, “the new heavens and the new earth which I will make”, “I will make a new covenant”, “ a new heart I will give you”, “the new life in the Spirit”, “a new commandment I give to you”, “in Christ he is a new creation”, “behold I make all things new”, that “we too might walk in newness of life”. God is a God who cascades ‘newness’ into the world.
But in the church we see the freezing of newness, or what might be called the ‘olding’ of newness. Where the Spirit driven urges for newness to breakout are drowned in a quagmire of the ‘old’, the pathological fear of the dreadful possibility of accidentally stumbling into the second millennium since Jesus came “to make all things new”.
All except in the church that is. Where God’s “I will make you hear new things” falls on an idolatrous deafness that freezes the gospel in yesteryear’s forms and consigns the lost and their cries to the deepest terrible darkness.
The Freezing of Newness’- A musing.
unbounded church 