5: Iam aNew Creation
Five
I AM A NEW CREATION
In considering our analogy of the serial killer and death row inmate pardoned and adopted by the governor, perhaps you thought to yourself, There’s something wrong with this picture. No one in his right mind would adopt and take into his home a serial killer. Very true, yet in principle that is exactly what God did for us. How could that be?
Typically, if we are not actually murderers, felons, or adulterers, we tend to think of our common sins as no more serious than a parking violation. We are so used to living with pride, selfishness, envy, gossip, and a whole host of other “respectable sins” that we don’t even think of them as sin.
But the fact is that, as serial sinners, we are all as guilty before God as that murderer. You and I sin every day in thought, word, deed, and motive. And whether those sins appear great or small in our own sight, in reality every sin we commit is an act of rebellion against God, a rejection and attempted negation of his sovereignty and rulership over us. And even more serious and damning than our countless individual acts of sin is the very fact of who we are apart from Christ. Through our representative union with Adam in his sin, we are all born serial sinners, sitting on death row awaiting eternal damnation.
The good news of the gospel is that Jesus took our place on God’s death row and actually died in our place to satisfy the justice of God so that God might fully pardon us without violating his justice. But if all God did was pardon us, it would never make sense for him to bring us into his household as adopted children and heirs. That’s why you may have thought to yourself, How could the governor invite a death row inmate to live in his home? The man has the heart of killer!
In the previous chapter we discussed two truths that follow from the analogy of that adopted murderer: in our adoption, we gain an inheritance, and we gain a relationship with God as our Father. But the third truth we must see is that, in pardoning and adopting us, God also does one other thing. He changes us into a different person, a new creation. As a result of being in Christ we are given a new heart, a new spirit, a new identity, and a new relationship.
A New Heart, a New Spirit
God has done for us what the governor could never do for the serial killer. He has radically changed our hearts, turning hearts of constant rebellion and disobedience to hearts fully capable of loving obedience.
Here is what God promised some six hundred years before the death of Christ.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
In this passage God promised two things: to radically change our hearts and to actually put his Holy Spirit within us to prompt us and enable us to obey God. The ultimate fulfillment of this promise awaits the new heaven and new earth when sin will be absolutely banished, but it has its beginnings in each of us the moment we trust in Christ as our Savior. That’s why Paul could so confidently say: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).
There it is again, one of Paul’s favorite expressions: “in Christ.” It is only through our union with Christ that we can become a new creation. By the statement, “the old has passed away,” Paul is referring to our old identity “in Adam.” He says that this identity is completely gone; it is no longer our identity, no longer true of us. The best explanation for this is found in Romans 6:1-14.
A New Identity, a New Relationship
Romans 6 is admittedly difficult to understand, and over the last half-century commentators have written hundreds of pages about what they think Paul is saying. I hold to what is probably the most generally accepted understanding of the chapter, the one that best explains why Paul’s words, “the old has passed away,” are true of us who are in Christ.
The occasion for Romans 6 is Paul’s statement in Romans 5:20 that, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” He then anticipates a question, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Romans 6:1). His rather vigorous reply is, “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (v 2). Here, Paul is not rebuking a cavalier attitude toward sin suggested by his question. Rather he is saying that a Christian continuing “in sin” is impossible. Why impossible? Because we died to sin through our union with Christ in his death (vv 6-8). We died to sin in that “our old self was crucified with him” (v 6), our “old self” being the person we were “in Adam.”
In Adam, we were under both the guilt of sin and the dominion of sin. Under the dominion of sin, it was impossible for us to obey God. Under the guilt of sin it was impossible for us to please God. (See Romans 8:7-8.) But through our union with Christ in his death, we died to both sin’s guilt and its dominion over us. We are now able to both obey and please God. Our old identity in Adam is gone, together with its bondage to the reign of sin.
So in writing, “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” Paul was not essentially saying, “How dare you imagine such a thing!” He was saying something more like, “Absolutely not. It can’t possibly happen!” Yes, we may continue sinning—but we cannot possibly continue “in sin,” because we are no longer “in Adam.” Paul is not issuing a moral rebuke. He is making an iron-clad theological statement.
When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that the old has passed away, he is saying that our identity in Adam is gone forever. It’s dead. The “new has come” refers to our new identity in Christ. We have a brand new relationship with God through Christ.
This identity is more than just a label. It defines who we really are. It means that God has taken away our stony hearts and given us hearts that are spiritually alive and responsive to him.
This categorical change, this transition from being in Adam to being in Christ is not something we could remotely have made happen on our own. God alone made it happen. The moment you trusted in Christ as Savior, the person you were in Adam died. You were crucified with Christ. You are now in Christ, and through that union with him the basic disposition of your heart has been changed. That is why God can take you into his spiritual family, adopting you as his own.
A New Way to Live
But Romans 6 is also about more than theology. Paul is not content to leave us with theory. He wants us to act on this radical change in our identity by applying the truth of it to our everyday lives. So he says in verse 11, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” The word consider that Paul uses here is best understood as meaning “think about carefully, especially with regard to taking action.”
Paul wants us to see that through our union with Christ Jesus, we not only have been delivered from the dominion and bondage of sin, we also have been united to Jesus in his life—we are both dead to sin and alive to God. We are branches on the vine that is Christ, and because of this we partake of the spiritual life and vitality that is in him.
This is the meaning of “the new has come” in 2 Corinthians 5:17. In Romans 6, Paul is saying all this “newness” is a settled, established, and unchangeable fact, but at the same time something we must continually think about and act on. That is why, in Romans 6:12, he immediately adds an action step: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (v 12). After all, one might reasonably ask: “If we have truly been delivered from the dominion of sin, if it no longer rules us, why must we be diligent not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies? What difference does it really make?”
The New Testament is very clear. It makes a huge difference. You and I are now engaged in a spiritual guerilla warfare against remaining corruption within us, and that warfare has real consequences—for ourselves, others, and the glory of God—depending on how we engage in it. This warfare is described by Paul in Galatians 5:17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
Though we have been delivered from absolute bondage to sin, we have not been freed from its presence or influence. And as long as sin is present within us, it will seek to regain its dominion over us. While sin can never fully succeed at this, it can make life far more difficult, far more painful, and far less fruitful.
Here is a flawed but possibly helpful analogy. Think of a prisoner of war camp. Suppose the POWs have somehow managed to overcome their guards, confiscate their weapons and have set out to engage in guerilla warfare against their enemy. They are freed from the bondage they were under as prisoners, but they are still in enemy territory and are very much in danger from their former captors. So they must be alert and diligent in their efforts to evade their enemy, and they must be prepared to engage in defensive action when necessary.
We have an enemy that does not stop opposing us. To live as if this were not true is simply foolish. We are freed from sin’s dominion, but it still desires to destroy us. So we must be vigilant against its assaults, and take steps by God’s Spirit to put to death the expressions of sin that we see daily in our bodies and minds (see Romans 8:13).
Paul wants us to remember that, since we are freed from bondage to sin, we can say No to temptations. Only in eternity will it be impossible for us to sin, but for now it is always possible for us not to sin in response to specific temptations. We may choose to sin, and we often do choose to sin, but we do not have to sin.
When we were in Adam, and thus under sin’s dominion, we had no choice but to sin at every temptation. Obviously, this is not to say, for example, that every time an unsaved person is tempted to adultery, he or she commits adultery. But it is to say that every time an unsaved person is tempted to sin in some way, some sin is committed in response. But once we are in Christ, we are able to say No to sin, and that is an ability we simply did not have prior to our conversion, because we were in Adam.
The fact that we have died to the dominion of sin is not a truth to be put on a shelf and admired. It is a truth we must put to use every day.
When We Fail
Sad to say, we often do not take advantage of our new identity in Christ. As we saw in Galatians 5:17, the flesh continues to strive against the Spirit, and it frequently gets the upper hand in our lives. So what should we do then? The answer is that we take that sin to the cross and remember that Jesus died for the very sin of which we are now ashamed. Furthermore, in the very temptation where we sinned, Jesus obeyed in his humanity. He was tempted in all points as we are, yet was without sin.
That’s why it’s important to consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus—that is, to count on the fact that in Christ’s death, we died not only to sin’s dominion but also to its guilt. Because Jesus fully satisfied the justice of God toward our sin, God no longer counts it against us.
But what about our struggles with persistent sin patterns, when we are tempted to feel that we have exhausted the patience and forgiveness of God? We should still bring that sin to the cross in an attitude of repentance and contrition, knowing and believing that there is no sin that is beyond the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. As God said in Isaiah 1:18, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become as wool.” We cannot resist the power of remaining sin in our lives if we have not first dealt with its guilt. And the only way to do this is to continually go back to the cross and see Jesus bearing that sin and paying its penalty through his death.
We truly are new creations in Christ. The old person we were in Adam has passed away. The new person we are in Christ has come. Yet it often seems as if the old person we were in Adam is still very much alive. But that is not our true identity. It is the flesh striving against the Spirit. Our true identity is in Christ. And through his power applied to us by the Holy Spirit we can make progress in becoming new creations in our daily experience as well as in our identity.
Examine Yourselves
But there is a sober note to this truth. Do we indeed show evidence of being new creations in Christ? The apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians apply to us also: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5). Here are some questions to help us examine ourselves:
• What is my attitude toward God? Do I gladly acknowledge my dependence on him and my accountability to him?
• What is my attitude toward my sin? Am I concerned or indifferent about it?
• What is my attitude toward Jesus Christ? Do I trust in him as the one who died for my sin on the cross?
• What is my attitude toward the Bible? Do I truly want to grow in my understanding and application of it in my life?
• What is my attitude toward prayer? Do I also want to grow in this area of my life, or am I quite content to see prayer as an occasional call out to God for help?
• What is my attitude toward other Christians? Do I appreciate being with them and learning from them, or do I actually prefer the company and lifestyle of my non-Christian friends?
These are important questions that we should seek to answer truthfully. The stakes are too high to ignore them or play games with them. Our eternal destiny is at stake and eternity lasts forever. There is no end to it. All of us will spend eternity in the blessed presence of God, or we will spend it under the never-ending curse and wrath of God.
So the question each of us should honestly face is this: Do I have some evidence that I am a new creation? Can we say something such as this: Yes, I still struggle with remaining sin and I see my frequent failures, but as I look at these questions I can truthfully say that, though I have a long way to go, I believe I’m headed in the right direction.
Having examined ourselves, we should also be concerned for friends and relatives who consider themselves to be Christians, but who show little or no evidence of being new creations. At the very least we should pray that God will lead them to a genuine saving knowledge of Christ. And then, depending on our relationship with them, we can seek to graciously challenge them to examine themselves.
Privilege and Responsibility
I said in the introduction to this book that our identity in Christ involves both privilege and responsibility. That is certainly true with respect to the subject matter of this chapter.
Privilege. Our positions of being justified, adopted, and a new creation in Christ are ours, but they are basically privileges. God has done it all through Christ. We who used to be in Adam—with our guilt and bondage to sin—have died, having been crucified with Christ. We are now alive unto God through his Spirit who dwells within us. We do not have to sin. We can say No to temptations from our flesh, the world, or the devil.
Responsibility. Our right and proper response is to believe these truths about ourselves, rejoice in them, and live in the reality of them. We must not let sin reign in our bodies (Romans 6:12). When we do allow sin to get the upper hand we must immediately confess it, repent of it, and take it to the cross to experience the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. We cannot deal with the power of sin unless we have first dealt with its guilt. And we deal with it at the cross.
I am a new creation, with a new heart, a new spirit, and a new identity before God. Having been delivered from the dominion of sin and united to Christ, I am always able to resist temptation. When I do sin, I am always welcome at the cross, for all my sins have been forgiven in Jesus.