Concerning the believers’ present, we have covered God’s calling, the Spirit’s sanctification, and our repentance, our believing, and our being baptized. We have also seen that the believers have been joined to the Triune God and redeemed. Now we need to see that, as believers in Christ, we have been made a new creation. First, God called us, separated us, and turned us to Him. Then we repented, believed, and were baptized. As a result, we have been redeemed and joined to the Triune God to be made a new creation.
The most crucial matter in God’s full, all-inclusive salvation is His making us a new creation. Our being made a new creation is, therefore, a vital part of God’s salvation. We may even say that God’s making us a new creation is the lifeline of His salvation.
The term “new creation” is not a symbol. Rather, this is an expression conveying the plain and real fact that we have been saved to be made a new creation. Furthermore, this new creation, like the old creation, is not something individual but something corporate. In the old creation God did not create millions of men; on the contrary, He created one man, Adam, who includes all men. The principle is the same with God’s new creation. In the new creation we all are parts of the new man (Eph. 2:15), the church, composed of the many sons of God.
God’s intention is to make us a new creation, and this new creation is composed of sons. In a very practical sense, the corporate sonship is God’s new creation. Those in the old creation are sons of Adam in the fall. But through God’s redemption, regeneration, and dispensing of Himself into us, we who once were sons of Adam have now become sons of God. Here in this divine sonship we are corporately the new creation.
There is a basic difference between the new creation and the old creation. God’s life and nature are not wrought into the old creation, but the new creation does possess the divine life and the divine nature. Although the old creation came into being through the work of the mighty God, He Himself does not reside in it. Hence, the first creation has no divine content. The divine nature does not dwell in the old creation, and that is why it has become old. Adam did not have the life of God or the nature of God. We can receive the divine life and nature only by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and being regenerated by the Spirit. When we believed in Christ, God’s life and nature were imparted to us and caused us to become a new creation.
Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, they have become new.” Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The old things of the flesh have passed away through the death of Christ, and all has become new in Christ’s resurrection. To be in Christ is to be one with Him in life and in nature. This is of God through our faith in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 3:26-28).
The words, “Behold, they have become new,” are a call to watch the marvelous change of the new creation. The word “they” refers to the old things. The old creation does not have the divine life and nature, but the new creation, the believers born again of God, does (John 1:13; 3:15; 2 Pet. 1:4). Hence, the believers are a new creation, not according to the old nature of the flesh but according to the new nature of the divine life.
Galatians 6:15 says, “Neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” The old creation is our old man in Adam (Eph. 4:22), our natural being by birth, without God’s life and the divine nature. The new creation is the new man in Christ (Eph. 4:24), our being regenerated by the Spirit of God (John 3:6), having God’s life and the divine nature wrought into us, with Christ as its constituent (Col. 3:10-11). It is this new creation that fulfills God’s eternal purpose by expressing God in His sonship. Whereas circumcision is an ordinance of the law, the new creation is the masterpiece of life with the divine nature. Circumcision is of dead letters; the new creation is of the living Spirit. Hence, it avails. The Son of God who has been revealed in us (Gal. 1:16) enlivens us and makes us a new creation, and the Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20) affords us the riches of His life to live the new creation. Therefore, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation with Christ as its life.
The new creation spoken of in Galatians 6:15 is the old creation transformed by the divine life, by the processed Triune God. The old creation was old because God was not part of it; the new creation is new because God is in it. We who have been generated by the Spirit of God are still God’s creation, but we are now His new creation. However, this is real only when we live and walk by the Spirit. Whenever we live and walk by the flesh, we are in the old creation, not in the new creation. Anything in our daily life that does not have God in it is the old creation, but what has God in it is part of the new creation.
If we would be in the new creation, we must enter into an organic union with the Triune God. Apart from such a union, we shall remain in the old creation. But now, by the organic union with the Triune God, we are in the new creation. Here in the new creation neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything or avails anything. As believers in Christ, we are the new creation through an organic union with the Triune God.