A New Creation

To start this post I would like us to quickly refer back to verses 14-16: “Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!” Here Paul tells us that all believers have died with Christ and no longer live for themselves; their lives are no longer worldly, but are now spiritual. Our “death” is the one where our old sin nature was nailed to the cross with Christ, it was buried with Him, and just as He was raised up by the Father, so are we raised up to walk in the newness of your life. “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.” -Romans 6:4 The new person that was raised up is what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 5:17 as the “new creation.” In order for us to understand this new creation, we first must grasp that it is truly a creation, something created by God. John 1:13 tells us that this new birth was brought about by the will of God. “They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.” -John 1:13 God created something entirely fresh and unique in us, He did not simply “clean up” our old nature. We did not inherit this new nature and we did not just decide to “re-create” ourselves, this new creation is completely new and brought about from nothing by God the Creator and only He could accomplish such a feat. The second part of the verse states that the “old things have passed away.” The “old” refers to everything that is part of our old nature, whether that may be pride, love of sin, bad habits, or sinful passions. Most importantly the love of self has passed away and with it self-righteousness, self-promotion, and self-justification. As a new creation, we should look outwardly toward Christ instead of inwardly toward self, the old things died, nailed to the cross with our sin nature. With the old passing away, the last part of the verse comes into play saying “the new has come!” The old, dead things are replaced with beautiful new things, full of life and the glory of God; and our newborn soul should delight in the things of God and leave the things of the world and the flesh. If we are truly a new creation, our purposes, feelings, desires, and understandings should become fresh and different, and we should see the world differently. Even though we may have read it before, the Bible should seem to be a new book, and there should be a beauty about it which we never saw before, which we have never perceived. The whole world seems to be new and all of nature seems to change, the heavens and the earth are filled with new wonders, and all things seem to speak the praise of God. We should have new feelings toward people, like a new kind of love toward family and friends, a new compassion felt for our enemies, and a new respect for all mankind in general. The things we once loved, we now despise and the sin we once held onto, we now desire to dispose of it forever. “Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.” -Colossians 3:9 “Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.” -Ephesians 4:24 What about that Christian who continues to sin? Well there is a difference between continuing to sin and continuing to live in sin, no one ever reaches true sinless perfection in this life. However, the redeemed Christian is being made holy day by day, sinning less and hating it more each time he fails. Yes, we will still sin, but unwillingly and less and less frequently as we mature, because our new self should hate the sin that still has a hold on us. The difference is that we, as a new creation, are no longer a slave to sin, like we formerly were, we are now free and sin no longer has control of us. “We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin.” -Romans 6:6-7 Now we are empowered by God to make our own decision to either let sin reign over our lives or to become dead to sin and live our lives in righteousness for God. The best part of it all, is the fact that now we have the power and free will to choose the latter. “So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires.” -Romans 6:11-12 We, in Jesus, are a new creation and have become a wondrous thing, formed in the mind of God and created by His power, for His glory.