NEW CREATION, IN THE BELIEVER'S APPREHENSION OF IT
NEW CREATION, IN THE BELIEVER’S APPREHENSION OF IT
I was dwelling a little last time on the meeting of two things in Christ. On the one hand, every testimony which God has ever given finds its resting-place there. There are many and varied testimonies of God, many indications of His mind scattered through Scripture, but whatever testimony God has ever given has now found its resting-place in Christ, and that on the foundation of righteousness. On the other hand, we have in Christ the full revelation of God. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. Thus we have at the same point the full revelation of God, and the establishment in a Man of every divine purpose. That is what is gained by contemplating the Lord. There is no more light to come out. Christianity really comes in upon the same line, for the apostle John says, “No man has seen God at any time: if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us”. The same formula introduces that passage as introduces the passage I have quoted from the first chapter of the gospel.
Now, having said so much in regard to what is true for faith, I desire to come to another point, viz., how the soul reaches the sense of new creation. You must distinguish between two things — the fact of new creation, and the apprehension of it. New creation evidently is wholly and entirely of God; it must be so. If it were not, it would not be new creation. But in the chapter before us we find the way in which the truth is reached in a man’s soul. There is a certain line of thought which brings us to the point of new creation which I want, by the grace of God, to trace.
[p. 165] Now, in our spiritual experience, there are two chapters: one comes to a close, and the other is eternal. I purpose dwelling on these two, and especially on the one which is eternal, that is, what I spoke of just now as new creation. I cannot tell you much about new creation — I can tell you what Scripture says about it. What I see in the passage before us is the way by which new creation is apprehended in the soul of the believer. New creation has taken place before we have much apprehension of it. It is difficult to understand that anyone should be the subject of new creation without having an apprehension of it, but it is clear that any work of God must precede the apprehension of it on our part. A babe has some consciousness of life, but then life must be there. And the same holds good as to new creation.
We have in the chapter this expression on the part of the apostle: “Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be acceptable to him. For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God, and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences. For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart. For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause”. In the course of the passage, the apostle alludes to two influences which affected him powerfully. One was the knowing the fear of the Lord, and the other, the love of Christ. “Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord” is connected with the judgment-seat of Christ, and the fear of the Lord is evidently a very different thought from the love of Christ, and yet the apostle was greatly affected by [p. 166] both. The two thoughts had a different effect. The result of one was, “we persuade men”. The effect of the love of Christ was different. The judgment-seat of Christ closes up one chapter of the history of saints, that is, the chapter of our responsibility. It is important to apprehend that this chapter is still going on as long as we are in the body. We are in the place of responsibility. Responsibility, in regard to Christians, is evidenced in many things. We have to continue in the faith, and not be moved away from the hope of the gospel. We have to walk in the Spirit. These things prove responsibility, but all that closes in the judgment-seat of Christ. “We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done through the body, according to that he hath wrought, whether it be good or bad”. It has been said that the judgment-seat of Christ will determine our place in the kingdom, but it is at the same time a comfort to know that the judgment-seat will close the history of the Christian’s responsibility. I do not think any one of us can be very proud of our history, though it gives us abundant occasion to thank God for His grace. If one is kept so long as he is down here in the midst of dangers, it can only be attributed to the unceasing grace of God. If it were a question simply and purely of responsibility, one would certainly fall away. And yet the judgment-seat is not an occasion of fear to saints. The apostle John says, “Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world”. That is the way it was presented to the mind of John; but the apostle Paul does say here, “Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord”, and the effect of this was that he persuaded men. He adds, “But we are made manifest to God”. It is possible that there were those who accused the apostle of seeking to exercise an undue influence over men, but, having a sense of the judgment-seat of [p. 167] Christ in his own soul, the apostle was pressed to persuade men, not for the purpose of gaining an influence over men, but of gaining a vantage ground for the testimony of the gospel. Noah, in the sense of coming judgment, prepared an ark for salvation, but at the same time he was a preacher of righteousness. He was in the consciousness of what was coming. And I can understand the same thing in regard of the Christian; he knows the fear of the Lord, although, in regard of himself, he has no fear in respect of the day of judgment.
Now I want to come to the other chapter in Christian experience which runs concurrently with the one of which I have spoken. “For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh, yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation”. Now, I desire, by the grace of God, to open up a little this line. It is of a very different order indeed to what preceded, for it does not contemplate our responsibility, but that which is in contrast to our responsibility, viz., the work of God. The Christian has his responsibility; you cannot, as we have seen, be apart from responsibility and the sense of it as long as Christ is absent. The Lord left His servants to take care of His household in His absence. Everything tends to accentuate the thought of responsibility in the absence of Christ, but that is [p. 168] evidently one side of the truth, and the work of God is another. The apostle begins to open up the latter with the love of Christ, on which he reasons.
Now, the first point in this line is the love of Christ, and that which is the peculiar expression of that love. The love of Christ is abiding. The expression of it was in a moment; death was the expression of His love, but the love was there to be expressed. Jesus Christ is “the same, yesterday, today, and for ever”, but there was a moment when He gave expression to His love, and the expression which He gave of His love — and it was divine love — was that He died for all.
I was speaking on a previous occasion of the wonderful truth that Christ has brought into death the testimony of God’s love. It is there that we learn that love. There never was a person yet that learned the love of God but in the death of Christ. They may have had ideas about it, but no one ever learned the greatness or reality of it save in the death of Christ. It is true that what is spoken of here is not exactly the love of God, but “the love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead”. The love of God refers usually to all, to men as men, but the love of Christ refers rather to those who are the objects of divine purpose. Christ went into death that He might acquire rights over all, but in order that those who live should live to Him. I think that is the light in which His death is viewed here. The apostle argues here, “If one died for all, then were all dead”. That is a most solemn consideration. If you would arrive at the truth of new creation, you must begin by accepting that “if one died for all, then were all dead”. The death of Christ is the most solemn witness of the state of man that ever was given in this world. It is, indeed, a new witness. God had given many a witness of the state of man, but the most solemn witness is the death of Christ; the simple fact of the death of Christ is the proof that all were dead.
[p. 169] If Christ died, it proved that there was no one here in life under the eye of God. I think there are Christians who have never accepted the solemnity of that. When I see people disposed to take their own course here, and to give more or less licence to their own wills, it proves to me that they have never accepted the truth that “if one died for all, then were all dead”. You cannot exaggerate the solemnity of the testimony of the death of Christ. It was the expression of divine love on the part of God, but also the testimony that all were under death. That is very sweeping, for it sets aside all the pretension of man down here, and witnesses the absolute right and title which Christ has over those who live: “they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again”. The Christian has thus no title to live to himself. He has to accept the death of Christ as God’s testimony that death was upon him, and if he takes the ground of claiming to live, he has no title to live to himself, but to Christ. That is the standard now.
There were two ways in which this affected the apostle: he was beside himself to God, and sober for the sake of the saints. It is a great thing to be beside oneself to God. In coming to God, you are withdrawn from the things here into which sobriety enters. The apostle was beside himself to God, that is, he did not order his communications with God according to the limitations of sober sense. His communications with God were according to the power of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, with the saints sobriety comes in. What I understand by this is the ability to take a sober estimate of all connected with and that affected them. And this was the way in which the love of Christ wrought in the apostle. It came out in that way.
But to return to the thought that “if one died for all, then were all dead”. What the apostle bases upon that, is that “henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more”. If all were dead, there is little meaning in knowing people after the flesh. This broke the apostle’s link completely with the Jew. To have a special leaning, as the apostle once had, to the Jew, was to know them after the flesh. The time was when all that had its place, but now that had ceased. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more”. This was a solemn lesson for the soul of the apostle. The distinctions which had existed between men no longer existed for the apostle. The Gentile was no different from the Jew, and no one was any good at all, except as the fruit of the work of God. We may not be able to take things up quite in the same absolute way; we have natural links and ties which we must regard. It would be perhaps untrue for us to say that we know no one after the flesh, but we can apprehend the idea of it. It became the apostle’s deliverance from all fleshly distinctions which existed between men down here. The time had been when, even as a Christian, he had had regard to them, but he had regard to them no longer.
We come now to the point of new creation: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation”. The truth is that there is a new man come upon the scene, that is, a new order of man, and a new order of man means a completely new system of affections. Supposing that it were possible for man to be completely set right as man down here, that would not alter the system of affections proper to man. The system would abide, though the affections were purified. One can understand that many would like that — they would like still to maintain in all their force the links of natural life down here, with the affections that are connected with those links purified, but that is not new creation. New creation means another order of [p. 171] man, and so, another order of relationships and affections. I have thought over an expression, “new nature”, that people have commonly used. It appears to me to be too limited an expression to convey new creation. It does not give me the idea of a new man. When you have got the new man, then you can talk about his nature; but you must have the man first. And having the man, you must connect with the man a system of relationships and affections suitable to him. I think that a great many Christians fail to see that. They regard Christianity as a kind of purification of the relationships existing. I have no doubt that a Christian makes a better father, husband, or child than any other. But that is not new creation. All the relationships and affections which exist in connection with natural life down here will pass away for the Christian — they all come to an end in death. They are connected with human life down here, and come to an end with it. They will not pass beyond. But what has been brought into view by the power of God is a new man, created after God, and at the same time a new and complete system of relationships and affections which do not pass away. I have no doubt that it is in that connection that eternal life comes in. Eternal life is eternal life, and we are brought into eternal life in Christ already, and so into relationships and affections which are new and of God. [p. 175] The new man is created after God in righteousness and holiness of truth. But it is a new man with new affections and new sensibilities. Everything in the new man is according to God — holiness and righteousness, affections and sensibilities — and Christ is the proper expression of them. We find in Colossians 3 that “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all”. And the sensibilities, the affections, the peace and the word of Christ are to characterise the Christian down here. You are to put on love, which [p. 172] is the bond of perfectness, and the working of this is that God becomes the supreme object of love. Christ has His proper place in the affections of the Christian, as the apostle puts it here: “The love of Christ constrains us”. And there are, too, relations down here with the saints. “By this we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” — those who are equally with ourselves the subjects of new creation. They have the first place with the Christian down here. Now, that is important, for in new creation you have to do with eternal things, and you are brought into that here. They are things which are unseen and eternal, but they begin while we are still down here upon earth. That being so, they must of necessity take precedence over things which are upon earth. The apostle says further, “All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation: to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; [p. 173] and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us: we pray, in Christ’s stead. Be ye reconciled to God; for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”.
You will observe how intimately the truth of new creation is bound up with reconciliation. I think reconciliation is largely misunderstood. The idea of reconciliation in many minds is of some change in themselves, but that is not the divine idea. God has reconciled us. I could not say God is reconciled. There are two thoughts presented here: the ministry of reconciliation, and the word of reconciliation. When the Lord Jesus was here upon earth, He was here in the ministry of reconciliation. It was the outset of it: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,
and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation”. The fact is that the very presence of Christ here meant reconciliation. It meant that God had bridged over the distance that stood between Him and man, and in the coming of Christ all stood for Him on a new basis. Man was approached on wholly different ground, and that was in view of the death of Christ; but the fact remains that God was approaching man down here in the Person of Christ. If God had imputed trespasses, there could not, of course, have been reconciliation; but when Christ was here, God was not imputing trespasses.
Now, as to the word of reconciliation. The force of ‘word’ is testimony, and the testimony of reconciliation was, that in the death of Christ the moral distance between God and man had been completely and eternally removed for God’s glory in the judicial end of man in the cross; and further, God had made the very removal of man to be the occasion of the expression of His love. Love has come in where distance was. That is what the cross meant. All that was effected, so to speak, in a moment in the death of Christ. Now, the apostle says, “God hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation”. In accepting the light of the cross, people received reconciliation. Now this connects itself with the truth of new creation. If there were not new creation, one could not be in the full enjoyment of God’s love. But new creation is there, and in virtue of it we are in the enjoyment of reconciliation; conscious, on the one hand, that the infinite distance that existed between God and man has been removed in the death of Christ to the glory of God, and that in the place of the distance there is love. God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”. You have to remember that when the righteousness of God came out in Christianity, the love of God was behind it. God made him sin for [p. 174] us — that was in love to us, that we might be for the satisfaction of God in regard of righteousness.
It is plain that new creation and reconciliation are very intimately connected. No one could enjoy the thought of reconciliation if there were not new creation. The Christian is thus a man of another order; he is after the order of Christ. “As is the heavenly, such are the heavenly”. He is according to God, and, as being according to God, he can enjoy the thought of reconciliation, and this is as being of God. The apostle says, in Romans 5: “We joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation”. I do not believe that any Christian can be in the enjoyment of reconciliation but as being in the apprehension of the love of God. The very presence of Christ here was the expression of His love. It showed that God had no pleasure in the distance. And there was the blessed testimony, divinely given, down here, of divine love. The Lord bore testimony that “God so loved the world”. In the cross the distance was removed, and in the place of the distance we find the love. You get an illustration of it in the parable of the prodigal son in his coming back to the father. The distance was gone, and the love was there, and that marks properly our relation with God.
As I said at the beginning, we get two chapters opened out here; one, which will be brought to a close at the judgment-seat of Christ, never to be reopened; and the other, which tells us of the work of God, as the effect and result of which, we enjoy the blessed truth of reconciliation. There is the process by which the soul arrives at the truth of new creation. This begins with the witness of the death of Christ. We know no one after the flesh, not even Christ. That is all passed away. But we come to new creation, where all things are of God. Everything in the line of new creation takes its character from God morally.
The new man is created, after God, in righteousness and holiness of truth. God has begun a creation for Himself morally. It is according to Him. That is where the Christian properly started from.
May God give us to know the great reality of being down here in the enjoyment of reconciliation!