In the two preceding messages we have seen that the believers are made a new creation by being regenerated, by receiving the Spirit of God, and by having the eternal life. In this message we shall see that the believers are made a new creation also by being renewed and by being transferred.
Titus 3:5 speaks of the renewing of the Holy Spirit. Through regeneration the believers have a new birth. The Spirit we have received is eternally new, and the eternal life which we have also is new. As believers in Christ, we have had a new birth, we have received the Spirit, who is always new, and we have a new life. Therefore, we are renewed, and are still being renewed, in order to be made a new creation.
The believers are renewed by the Holy Spirit. In ourselves we are the old creation both in nature and in appearance. Because we are old inwardly and outwardly, we need the renewing of the Holy Spirit that follows regeneration. The Holy Spirit renews us in the divine element to make us a new creation with the divine nature. Day by day, the Holy Spirit is renewing us to make us a new creation.
The renewing of the Holy Spirit is related to the washing of regeneration. The Greek word for “regeneration” in Titus 3:5 refers to a change from one state of things to another. The washing of regeneration begins with our being born again and continues with the renewing of the Holy Spirit as the process of God’s new creation. It is a kind of reconditioning, remaking, remodeling, with the divine life. The washing of regeneration purges away all the things of the old nature of our old man, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit imparts into our being the divine essence of the new man. In this is a passage from the old state we were in into a wholly new one, from the old creation into the status of the new creation. Both the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit are a continual working in us until the completion of the new creation.
The renewing that is by the Holy Spirit and related to the washing of regeneration is to make the believers a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). This is God’s intention. In the old creation God did not work His life and nature into any of His creatures, not even into man. In the new creation, however, God’s life and nature are wrought into man to make divinity one entity with humanity. By being renewed we are transformed by the divine life to be the new creation.
The believers are renewed in order to be created into one new man (Eph. 2:14-16). We have been made a new creation, and in this new creation we are a new man. The new man, which is the church, is corporate and universal. There are many believers, but there is only one new man in the universe. All the believers are components of this one corporate and universal new man.
Ephesians 2:15, referring to the Jews and the Gentiles, tells us that Christ created “the two in Himself into one new man.” The phrase “in Himself” is very significant. It indicates that Christ is not only the Creator of the one new man but also the sphere in which and the essence with which the new man has been created. Christ is the element of the new man. After we were terminated through His crucifixion, in Him we received the new essence. Christ Himself became this new element to us. Nothing of our old man was good for the creation of the new man, for our former essence was sinful. But in Christ there is a wonderful essence, in which the one new man has been created.
We all need to be deeply impressed with the fact that we, the believers, have been created into one new man in Christ. Apart from being in Him, we could not have been created into the new man, because in ourselves we do not have the divine essence, which is the element of the new man. Only in the divine essence and with the divine essence were we created into the new man. It is possible to have this essence only in Christ, who Himself is this essence. Hence, in Himself Christ created the two into one new man.