The New Creation

Boy, how time flies!  I can’t believe this is already the fourth article in this series on the different ways in which God demonstrates His love for us.  Previously we saw how He revealed His love to us on the cross, how He has forgiven our debt, and how He has chosen not to remember our sins anymore.  Can you imagine life without these wonderful gifts?  Now that’s essential grace.

But that’s just the beginning of God’s love.  It goes even deeper still.  Let’s now shift our attention to how God’s love is revealed in the life of a person after they have become a believer.

So you heard the gospel one day and you believed.  Awesome!  Congratulations.  If you’re like many people, you may have thought, “What now? Now that I’m a Christian, what happens?”  Excellent question.  There is no one single answer, but let’s start with what changes immediately after you believe (or at the same time perhaps).

The first thing we must understand is what our true nature was apart from Christ.  We get a hint about that nature in 1 Corinthians 15:22, when we are bluntly told, “For as in Adam all die.”  Why is that?  Why, like Adam, does every human being taste death?  

The answer lies in what Adam is responsible for and what everyone since is responsible for.  As you know from the familiar story in Genesis, Adam was given the breath of life by God and placed in a beautiful garden.  He lived in a perfect environment where he knew no death, no fear, and no sin.  But all that changed when he and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.  From that time on, something was radically different.

Instead of being the perfect man that God had created him to be, Adam’s nature was now altered.  He now had a sin nature and the consequences were dire and profound.  As Paul tells us, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin…”  (Romans 5:12)  

Because of Adam, sin was now in a world that had never previously known sin.  As a result, what God had warned Adam about when He told him to never eat the forbidden fruit became a fact of life on earth.  Death from now on became part of our reality.  Adam and Eve experienced it themselves.  They died spiritually on the very day they sinned and they would eventually die physically as well.  Sin and death – that is what Adam is responsible for.

But what about you and me?  We weren’t there in the garden making the choice that Adam made.  What we are responsible for?  Paul makes it clear immediately after he told us about Adam’s responsibility.  “…in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.”  (Romans 5:12)  Essentially, what Paul is saying is that we inherited the same nature that Adam had.  In other words, we are born with a sin nature.  We are all bound to sin if we live long enough to know the difference between right and wrong.  So we too are responsible for sin, and death visits us all as a result.  

Is there any hope for us?  All of us have probably cried out in anguish at one time or another as Paul did in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”  

Without doubt, there is hope, and there is an answer for Paul’s tormented question.  In fact, he gives the answer in the very next verse.  “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  (Romans 7:25)  Jesus is our hope and our answer.  But if you’ve already put your faith in him, then you already knew that answer.  What you may not know is what comes as a result of faith.

So now we come to God’s essential grace.  His love, demonstrated at the cross through the forgiveness of all our sins, now turns what was dead into life.  We are told in Ephesians, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”  (Ephesians 2:1, 4-5)  Now is that good news or what?  Better yet, that is great news, astounding news, breathtaking news!  

How great is the love of God that He not only redeems us and forgives us of our sins but breaths life back into our dead spirits too.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m very thankful that my sins are forgiven, but what good would that do if I were still spiritually dead?  But He didn’t leave us in that desperate state.  He made us alive in Christ!  Praise God for His eternal goodness.

With the new life we have in Christ comes a change in us that is even more profound than the change that occurred in Adam.   As we are told, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”  (2 Corinthians 5:17)  We have been made new.  Our nature is new.  The old, sinful nature is gone for good.  God has fulfilled what he promised over 2,000 years ago.  “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”  (Ezekiel 36:26)

The contrast between what we were in Adam and what we are in Christ is simply startling.  In Adam, we were dead; in Christ, we are reborn.  In Adam, sin corrupted our nature; in Christ, our nature is made new.  In Adam, our hearts were stone cold; in Christ, our heart is beating again.  All this is a gift from the Father who loves you more than you can possibly imagine.  That love, manifested by His grace, has awakened in His children a craving for a living, loving relationship with the one who gave everything to claim us as His own.

Let these truths penetrate your mind.  Your new heart and new spirit will confirm it to be so.  Once all three are in agreement, you will be able to live in the freedom of God’s transforming grace.  So keep all this in your thoughts and never forget, you are a new creation in Jesus Christ.