Message Eight

A New Creation in Christ

Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 5:17; 4:16; Gal. 6:15

1. As believers in Christ, we have been made a new creation—2 Cor. 5:17:
   1. The most crucial matter in God’s full, all-inclusive salvation is His making us a new creation in Christ—Gal. 6:15.
   2. The term new creation is an expression conveying the plain and real fact that we have been saved to be made a new creation—2 Cor. 6:2; 5:17.
   3. Like the old creation, the new creation is corporate; in the new creation we all are parts of the new man, the church, composed of the many sons of God—Eph. 2:15; 1:5; Heb. 2:10-12.
   4. God’s eternal purpose is not just to redeem, to repossess, the fallen old creation but to regenerate man to make him the new creation—John 3:3; 1:12-13; 2 Cor. 5:17.
   5. We are a new creation through our organic union with Christ—v. 17:
      1. To be in Christ is to be one with Him in life and nature; this is of God through our faith in Christ— 1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 3:26-28.
      2. Apart from this organic union, we remain in the old creation, but by the organic union with the Triune God in Christ, we are in the new creation.
   6. The new creation is a person regenerated with the life of God and living in the inner man, not in the outer man— John 3:3, 5-6, 15; 2 Cor. 4:16.
2. There is a basic difference between the old creation and the new creation—Gen. 1:1; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15; Rev. 21:2:
   1. The old creation does not have the divine life and nature, but the new creation has God within it as its life, nature, appearance, and expression.
   2. The old creation as an empty vessel has no content of God, but the new creation as a corporate vessel has God as its content—Eph. 1:22-23; 3:19b.
   3. The old creation was old because God was not part of it; the new creation is new because God is in it—4:22-24.
   4. God’s goal is to produce the new creation out of the old creation; the new creation is the old creation transformed by the divine life—2 Cor. 3:18.
   5. The new creation—the mingling of God with man— takes place when the Triune God in Christ as the Spirit is wrought into our being; this is the mingling of divinity with humanity—1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 3:16-17a.
   6. The New Jerusalem is new because, as God’s new creation, it has God’s nature of newness—Rev. 21:2, 5a:
      1. Since newness is God, to become new is to become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead by having God wrought into us—Rom. 6:4; 7:6; Eph. 4:23-24.
      2. The New Jerusalem will be the ultimate consummation of the realm of newness, which is Christ— 2 Cor. 5:17.
3. Christ dealt with the problem of the old creation through His crucifixion, His all-inclusive death on the cross—Luke 23:44-46; Heb. 10:20; Exo. 26:31:
   1. The main item terminated by the death of Christ was the old creation.
   2. Because Christ died on the cross as the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15), His death terminated the old creation.
   3. In the sight of God, the entire old creation was crucified with Christ and buried with Him—cf. John 20:5.
4. The new creation comes into being by resurrection— 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 15:20, 23, 45:
   1. In His work in His resurrection, Christ rose up on the first day of the week to germinate the new creation— John 20:1:
      1. The fact that Christ rose on the first day indicates that the universe had a new beginning in Christ’s resurrection.
      2. Whereas the Lord’s death was the termination of the old creation, His resurrection was the germination of the new creation.
      3. When the old creation is germinated with the divine life, it becomes the new creation.
   2. The germinating element of the new creation is the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit—1 Cor. 15:45b:
      1. In His resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit to germinate some of those in the old creation to be the new creation—John 20:17.
      2. First Corinthians 15:45 implies the old creation with the soul as the center and the new creation with the Spirit as the center.
      3. The life-giving Spirit is the center and lifeline of the new creation—v. 45b; 2 Cor. 5:17.
5. We are made a new creation by being regenerated— 1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:6:
   1. Regeneration causes us to become a new creation, something which has the element of God within it—1:12-13; Ezek. 36:26.
   2. Regeneration causes us to have God’s life and element, thereby making us a new creation—2 Pet. 1:4.
6. In our experience we are in the process of becoming a new creation by being broken and renewed—2 Cor. 5:17; 4:10-12, 16; Eph. 4:23-24:
   1. Although our spirit has been regenerated, our soul with its faculties of mind, will, and emotion remains in the old creation and needs to be renewed.
   2. To be renewed is to have God’s ever-new essence dispensed into us to replace and discharge our old element— 2 Cor. 4:16; Rom. 12:2; Titus 3:5.
   3. Through the process of renewing, we are transferred from the realm of the old creation into the realm of the new creation to become the New Jerusalem—Col. 3:10; Rev. 21:2.
7. We need to overcome the old creation by living in the ascension of Christ in resurrection—S. S. 2:8-13; 4:6-9; 6:10a:
   1. The physical things are part of the old creation; if we desire the physical things of the world, we are living in the old creation.
   2. A Christian who lives in the old creation cares for physical things.
   3. The old man cares for physical things, but we should be the new man living in ascension as God’s new creation in resurrection—Eph. 4:22, 24; 2:4-6.