Look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth, and no one will even think about the old ones anymore (Isaiah 65:17 NLT).
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT)
And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true” (Revelation 21:5 NLT).
Why do we speak of a “new” year? Are we going to have June as the first month followed by April as the second? Is spring going to precede winter? Of course not. This year is going to be just the same as last year, with the same months, the same seasons, following one another in the same sequence as they always have. This isn’t a new year, it is just the old one starting over. The “Preacher” says it well, “There is nothing new under the sun (Eccles 1:9, and about a dozen times more).
But the key term here is “under the sun.” Yes, if that is our only vantage point, there is nothing new and no possibility of anything genuinely new ever occurring. That is so because the world is incapable of altering itself. Differences, yes, but something absolutely new? Never. So, can you and I ever transcend our conditioning and environment? No. The best we can hope for is self-realization.
But Yahweh, the I Am, who exists in himself, is the Creator, existing apart from what he has created. Having brought it into existence, he can alter that creation in any way he chooses.
So, he can do a new thing, such as taking a people home from captivity when no one has ever gone home from captivity before. In the same way, Yahweh can take a life that has been locked in a recurring cycle of despair and do a new thing. Through his power, we can transcend our conditioning and environment and become a new person. Of course, he is working with the same basic stuff of our personality, but he can come up with radically new results. He can save us and it can be a new year!
