“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
They now call him, “The king of the grill!” But they used to call George Foreman, “The meanest man alive!” If you are a boxing enthusiast, you recognize that name; however, if your taste runs more to croquettes and crumpets, you may not remember Foreman as former World Heavyweight Boxing Champ. Foreman’s career really came in two phases, and in phase one, he was mean, angry, and a formidable foe. Then on March 17, 1977 Foreman was defeated in a match he was expected to win easily.
According to Foreman, he was immediately plunged into despair. Then he felt a giant hand carry him out of the emptiness he felt. Thinking that his head and hands were bleeding, he ran to the shower as his handlers tried to pacify him, telling him he was OK.
In the shower he began to shout, “Hallelujah, I’m clean! Jesus Christ is coming alive in me!” Leaving the shower, he hugged and kissed those in the room, telling them that he had heard God’s voice and that he loved them! They thought he was head injured! “Heat prostration,” was how they explained it to the press. He wasn’t crazy. In the terms of John’s Gospel, he was born again in about as striking a conversion as Paul experienced on the Road to Damascus.
Today George Foreman is a pastor, preaching without pretence the Gospel that Paul preached. Speaking of the old George Foreman, Frank Gannon, a secular sports writer said, “That George Foreman died a long time ago.” A year later Foreman went back into the ring and proved that the new George Foreman could still win, but Foreman has succeeded outside the ring far more than he ever did in the ring. His name on a host of products, from barbecues to what have you, has made him a rich man.
Bert Sugar, a boxing historian, calls it “one of the great turnarounds in history in terms of persona and likeability. He went out like a roaring lion, and he came back a pussycat.” (AARP, Sept-October, 2003, p. 59).
Paul put it like this, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Psychologists describe it as conversion. Long ago Jesus couched it in terms of being born again. He told a man who was religious that unless he was born again, he would not see the kingdom of God, but the change that takes place when you meet the Lion of Judah, who became flesh and lived among us, is not psychological. Jesus changes everything about your life.
Talk about new beginnings! You literally become a new person, changed from within by the power of God. A lot of people, perhaps you as well, make New Year’s resolutions, fully intending to do things differently. They fail, miserably and persistently. The only way to really change is to be humble enough to say, “God, I need changing from within. My attempts to reform and make myself over just don’t last. Will you change my heart and make me into the person that you want me to be?”
That’s what happened to George Foreman. I can assure you that you will be a happier, better-liked, more peaceful person than you are right now.
When George Foreman was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame, he was asked which picture he preferred: the scowling bad man or the chubby grandfather? He laughed and said he didn’t care. He knew who he was—a new person in Christ whose message is that your life can be different. Let God make you anew from the inside today.
Resource reading: John 3:1-21
