BROKEN OR DEAD?

If you listen to much contemporary Christian music these days, you might notice a common theme running through many of the choruses—the theme of brokenness. Over and over the singers are saying something like, “Jesus, I’m broken. Please come and fix me.” Not exactly those words, but the same idea.

There is even a gospel presentation of “the three circles” that teaches this concept. In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zau_Pam4qM), the speaker says that when we sinned, brokenness entered into the world. He refers back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. You remember that God commanded them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Speaking of that tree to Adam, He said, “in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” He did not say, “You shall surely be broken.”

The Apostle Paul also referred to this in Romans 5:12. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Brokenness did not enter the world through sin and spread to all people. Death did. He reiterated this in Ephesians 2:1. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,” before coming to Christ to be made alive. In verses 4 and 5 he said, “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.” He did not say that God fixed us, or even that God healed us. He said God made us alive who were dead in trespasses and sins.

Before coming to Christ, a person may be physically alive but spiritually dead. When we receive Christ, we are born again and are physically alive and spiritually alive. Eventually, all of us who are alive will die physically, but believers will still be spiritually alive. (John 11:26).

In John 5:24, Jesus said, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” Whoever hears his word must be physically alive to hear the words. When people believe, they pass judgment and move from being spiritually dead to becoming spiritually alive. Jesus is talking about spiritual life and death. He did not say that people move from a state of brokenness to a state of repair.

There have been very popular programs on television about renovating houses. A remodeling crew finds a home and moves the family out while they oftentimes gut and rebuild the house from within. The transformation is fabulous. It amazes the family as they return to the former shell of their home; they can hardly recognize it.

Jesus did not give his life to renovate ours. Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) This is not just a remodeling of your old life. You are a completely new creation in Christ. Jesus does not just fix up your old life with a few cosmetic changes. He gives you a brand-new life. Paul said earlier in the same letter, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16 NIV). While our bodies are physically changing, even deteriorating or “wasting away,” Jesus renews our spiritual being every day. That is the part that will live forever, not our bodies.

But that is not the end. One day each of us will lay our bodies aside physically in death. In 1 Corinthians 15:35-44, Paul compares our bodies to a seed. When a seed is sown, it changes into the plant. He says that our bodies are “sown” perishable but raised imperishable. We place bodies in the earth in one form or another. One day Christ will raise those bodies in glory, and he “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).

The Good News is that Christ does the work for us. He begins the work in us, and he carries it on to completion (Philippians 1:6), from justification, through sanctification to glorification. What we do is hear his word, repent of our sins, and believe in him. Every other religion tells you to trust in your own religious works. Only Christianity tells you to trust in the completed work of Jesus on the cross.