Thank God for the Lowe’s credit card; without one, I would have overstayed my welcome at my parents’ house like Eric Forman from That 70’s Show. The puny plastic card allowed my wife and I to purchase the plethora of raw materials required to remodel our first home. And boy, did it need it. Patches and putty couldn’t repair the years of erosion and negligence that had rendered it uninhabitable. Everything old had to be removed and replaced with something new.

And thank God for the Carpenter, who does the same for everyone who is being remade in His image. That is why the Scripture says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17, KJV). Jesus does not merely patch up the old you—He makes you a new person. For He said:

“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins” (Mark 2:21-22).

Jesus tears out our rotten and sin-eroded heart and replaces it with a new one that loves Him: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26). He cleans out the living room of our hearts to make it a suitable dwelling for His presence: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20; cf. Eph. 3:17).

He sets us upon the sturdy foundation of His truth, delivering us from the deteriorating foundation of disobedience: “[We are] built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). And one day, the remodel will be complete when Christ appears in the sky to give His children a new body: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).

Bible Gleanings is a widely-read weekend devotional column, written for the Murray Ledger & Times in Calloway County, Kentucky.