Happy Mother’s Day! Today I want to talk about the new creation and the ministry of reconciliation.
Main thesis: The new creation changes a few things in the life of a believer: 1) it changes the way they view others, 2) it changes their purpose, and 3) it changes the character of their ministry.
Before we can talk about the ways in which the new creation changes the lives of believers, we have to first know what the new creation is. The new creation is a phrase that comes directly from 2 Cor 5:17.
2 Cor 5
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.
To understand the new creation, we have to understand the original creation. The original creation event is found in Genesis 1 when out of complete and utter nothingness, God created the heavens and the earth. Then into the deep darkness, he said, let there be light and there was light and so forth. Whether you believe in the Big Bang or evolution to explain how we got to where we are today, I think the more fundamental question is not whether there was a Big Bang or not. Christians and non-Christians would agree that there was some sort of a beginning to our universe. The universe didn’t always exist. It had a precise point in time when it came into existence. The disagreement is over whether random chance spontaneously generated life OR there was a Creator that sparked the Big Bang. Personally, I think it requires more faith to believe that nothingness led to the Big Bang or random chance led to the origin of life than it does to believe in a Creator.
If you hold to the belief that it wasn’t random chance but it was an Intelligent Designer who spoke the universe into being, then we have a framework to understand not only the original creation but the new creation mentioned in 2 Cor 5. There is a creator who created the heavens and the earth. He declared everything you see into being, including you and me. We are the crowning achievement of God’s creation. Everything God made was good, but when it came to man, God said, it was very good. We were made in the image of God. The animals, the mountains, the oceans, all of these point to the glory of God. But if you want to get at the real grandeur of God, then don’t look to the mountains or the trees or the stars because nothing can compare to mankind. God breathed his spirit into us and we were given the incredible privilege to relate with the Person who spoke the stars and galaxies into being.
However, due to the Fall, sin entered the world. The image of God in humanity was distorted. This is why humanity is capable of such tremendous good, and at the same time, horrific evil. I’ve never seen a gloriously good ant, or a gloriously evil ant for that matter. And though ants have tried to climb into my pants, it never did horrific damage to me. After all, it’s just an ant. An ant’s range of good or evil is miniscule, almost negligible to us. But if you take a human made in the image of God, you can have people capable of horrific evil like a Hitler while there are people capable of tremendous good like a Mother Teresa. The range of human potential for good or evil is far more expansive than that of an ant. It speaks to the fact that we were made in the image of God.
If this was how it was in the original creation, then the new creation is similar. In the same way that God was the main actor behind the first creation, God is still the main actor when it comes to the new creation. Salvation is initiated by, caused by, accomplished by God. He is the Creator. He speaks life, He breathes His spirit into spiritually dead corpses. We are born again by the Spirit. Our spiritual eyes are opened. Our hearts of stone that once stood in rebellion toward God are changed into hearts of flesh. Just like the first creation was dependent on God’s activity, the new creation or salvation is also dependent solely on God.
You can be highly religious and very outwardly zealous and very committed to this or some other local church, but these outward actions are no guarantee of God saving your soul and making you a new creation from the inside out.
2 Cor 5
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.
The old has gone. New things have come. Old things have passed away – the “old” refers to your old nature–your pride, your love of sin, your reliance on works, your former opinions, habits and passions. What we loved has passed away, especially the supreme love of self and with it self-righteousness, self-promotion, and self-justification. The new creature looks outwardly toward Christ instead of inwardly toward self. The old you has gone. The old you who only cared about yourself and maybe your family and a few close friends and didn’t care a lick about anyone outside of your little clan or your little clique or people of the same skin color, that old you is gone. The old you that was insecure and sought to attain achievements in order to gain a sense of self-worth. The old you that pursued ambition or wealth or comfort or respect. That old you has gone. The old things have died. It has been nailed to the cross with our sin nature.
2 Cor 5
14 For Christ’s love compels us, since we have reached this conclusion: If One died for all, then all died. 15 And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised.
What’s one sign that you are saved? If you have been saved and made into a new creation, then you will no longer live for yourself. The old you died with Christ on the cross and the new you has been raised with Christ. Paul used to hate Christ and he killed Christians for a living. Hatred was at the center of his being. That was his old nature. Then by God’s grace, he was made a new creation. He was given a new nature. Instead of hatred, love was established in the core of his being. v14, we read that he was compelled by Christ’s love.
The same thing happens in the life of a believer who has been made a new creation. Out of nothing, God created the heavens and earth. And out of nothing, God created you anew and gave you a new heart. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t earn it. Christianity is not self-improvement. Christianity is not self-enlightenment. Christianity does not make you an improved version of who you were before. Out of nowhere, God came and he saved you. He made you a new creation. And he is continuing to make you into a new you. A new you with a new nature–new desires, new affections, new goals. You see the world differently. The Bible seems to be a new book, and though you may have read it for many decades, there is a beauty about it which you never saw before.
If you’ve ever been in love, then you know that what I described is someone who is in love. The whole world seems different. You walk down the street and you hear the birds chirping and you notice the blooming flower on the side of the road. There is a bounce in your step. Your boss yells at you, but you don’t care. Because the love of your life is interested in you. You are heartstruck. You are in love.
The same thing happens in the life of a believer. The heavens and the earth are filled with new wonders, and all things seem now to speak forth the praise of God. There are new feelings toward all people—a new kind of love toward family and friends, a new compassion never before felt for enemies, and a new love for all mankind. The things we once loved, we now detest. The sin we once held onto, we now desire to put away forever.
Of course, even as a Christian who is born again and is a new creation, we are not perfect. We still sin. But our relationship to sin has fundamentally changed. Before we were a new creation, we didn’t have a new nature. The old sinful nature was all we had. Thus, we were a slave to sin. Imprisoned, enslaved, in bondage to sin. Now, we have a new nature and so we are no longer powerless to sin. We have a choice, an ability to fight against sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us. We are empowered by the Spirit to resist sin and count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. A new creation refers to those who are genuinely saved. From this text, I want to focus on 3 concrete changes in the life of someone who has experienced the new creation.
First, the new creation changes changes the way believers view others.
Let’s read the verse that just preceded v17 about the new creation.
2 Cor 5
16 From now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way. Even if we have known Christ in a purely human way, yet now we no longer know Him in this way.
The word for purely human way is literally “fleshly.” Paul used to know Christ in a purely human or fleshly way. Jesus was someone Paul evaluated from a distance and hated and so he spent his life persecuting Christians. He couldn’t stand Jesus or his followers so he wanted to kill as many of them as he could. This is Paul BC, before Christ, before he met Christ, Paul with his old nature. He didn’t care to really investigate the claims of Christ. He had his Jewish religion. To him, he was confident in his self-righteousness. He didn’t want to get to know Christians. They were just heretics spreading a false religion. He judged them from a distance based on some external observations. They were enemies. He looked at them through eyes of the flesh. He considered them in a purely human way.
How are we like this? From a young age, we are taught to look out for #1. Didn’t your parents tell you not to share lunch with other kids? Now that I am a parent, I understand the heart behind that. It’s not that we are afraid that our kids are going to give away their lunch and starve. In the case of my kids, I know that I have to establish some clear rules about having to eat their entire lunch and not share. Because if I don’t spell it out, they will trade away whatever fruit that we packed for them in exchange for chips. I’m sorry, we want our kids to be healthy, not someone else’s kid.
Or, we tell them not to share toys. Not because we don’t want them to share, but they will inevitably want their friend’s toy and the friend will want my kid’s toy. And so they will trade. And one of my boys would come home saying, look at this pokemon card. The character has 50 pts of strength. Where did you get that? Oh, my friend gave it to me. For free? No, we traded. What did you have to give up to get that? I gave him my pokemon card with 150 pts of strength. My boy got ripped off! I had to sit him down to teach him not to trust others because bad people will take advantage of him.
We walk out from the first day of kindergarten until the day we die with a mentality that it’s me against the world. Trust no one. I can’t let others take advantage of me. Everyone is a competitor. How can I get an edge? How can I beat out the next guy? I have to get a better score so that I can gain admission to a school. Or I have to give a better answer at the interview so that I can land a job. Everything is competition and everyone is a competitor. This is looking at others from a fleshly or a human point of view.
Or we can do this literally and look at people made in the image of God as chunks of flesh. Hollywood and advertising teaches us to dehumanize one another. The internet has capitalized on our fallen desires and we have turned God’s crowning creation into objects that can provide pleasure for me. This is looking at others from a fleshly point of view, literally.
We also do this in a much more subtle way. Don’t we judge people all the time based on how they look? Or based on a first impression? He looks smart. She is pretty. I want to get to know him. She is snobby. I got to get away from her. He is spiritual. She is not. We judge on appearances all the time. Everyone has a story, but we don’t care to know the other person’s story and we don’t bother to take the time to listen to their story and we make a snap judgment.
In the world where we are evaluated by sight, everyone rallies around the handsome jock or the beautiful cheerleader or the charismatic business leader. And the nerds and the quiet ones and the shy stay in the fringes and nobody notices them. This is how the world evaluates one another.
One sign that you are a new creation is that God gives you new eyes to see the world. You see people through spiritual eyes. You see people from God’s perspective. Your heart goes out to those who are falling through the cracks. Your heart goes out to that kid in the corner who nobody pays attention to. Your heart goes out to the fringe person who comes to service and sneaks out the back as soon as the service is over. Your eyes notice those who are marginalized in society–the poor, orphans, widows, the elderly, those who have been forgotten and discarded by society.
How do you view people? Do you see them through fleshly eyes? Or do you have spiritual eyes to see everyone as a precious son or daughter made in the image of God? The new creation changes the way you view others.