Your life isn’t a “Seinfeld” episode …

Becoming a follower of Jesus Christ is not the same thing as doing the “Costanza Opposite.”

The what?!

You remember the George Costanza character on the TV show “Seinfeld” don’t you? Nothing ever worked out for George, he failed at most of the things he tried. He finally realized that fact and decided to start doing the exact opposite of what he would naturally do.

Putting into practice this principle of doing the opposite, George started experiencing success … for a while, anyway. He just didn’t stick with it.

Many Christians think becoming a disciple of Jesus is simply doing the opposite of the sinful behavior that has characterized their lives. If that’s all it took, we wouldn’t need a Savior. But becoming a child of God requires more than that. It requires an entirely new birth!

“Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God’ … Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life,” John 3:3, 6.

By trying to apply the “Costanza Opposite” as a means of living spiritually, we have human beings trying to reverse the sin of their lives from human power. That’s an effort, much like the efforts of George, that will always end in failure. We’ll never be free from sin until we die to self, are buried with Christ, and are raised to walk in newness of life in His likeness.

“When you came to Christ, you were ‘circumcised,’ but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision — the cutting away of your sinful nature. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead. You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins,” Colossians 2:11-13.

Are you trying to reverse the devastation of sin by attempting to do the opposite on your own power? Or have you been born again, free from the power of sin and its consequences through the sacrifice of Christ?

Scotty