A Destroyed Building

Have you ever watched a building be destroyed? Sometimes the local news will cover the implosion of a historic building that is no longer in use. I remember watching a football stadium be demolished so that the team could build a new stadium where the old one once stood.

Destroying a building is systematic. There is first a decision made that the building has to go. Whether it is unsafe or too old to do what it needs to do, it is time to remove the building. Then experts are brought in to destroy the building the safest way possible, imploding it so that it doesn’t fall into other buildings, people, or streets.

But then work begins on a new building. This new structure will do what the old one was not sufficient to do.

As a believer in Jesus you once made a decision to destroy your old way of life—what the Bible calls the “old man.” It was time to go. Enough living for self. So the Lord helped you destroy it, and then the work of building up a new man began.

What would you think of a person who ignores a new building or stadium and decides to return to an old demolished pile of rubble? That’s what Paul told the Galatian Christians not to do in Galatians 2:18.

“For if I build again the thing which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.”

In the verse prior to that Paul said we cannot blame Christ if we choose to return to a life of sin. After all, He is the one who offers to build us up as a new creation.

So if you have destroyed your old way of life, don’t try to build it back up. You destroyed it for a reason—it wasn’t safe to live that way. Forsake that pile of rubble and continue to work on your new life.