1237. A New Creation the All-Important Thing

A New Creation the All-Important Thing

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (Joh_3:6, A. S. V.).

The Lord Jesus Christ, with one sweep of His Divine pen, has said that circumcision and uncircumcision can not avail anything; He has put them both under sin; He has shown that in Christ Jesus they are not anything. What then? Are we to be left hopeless, so far as our relationships to God are concerned? Is there nothing that is something? Is there nothing through which we can please Him? Yes, thank God, there is something that is everything–that something is the new birth. The new creation is everything.

1. When Christ was talking to Nicodemus He talked to a man who was a peer among Israel. Nicodemus stood for the circumcision, and for the very best that it could achieve, but the Lord Jesus knowing that circumcision was not anything, was not slow to tell Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again."

2. The Apostle Paul realized the value and necessity of the new creation. The Apostle Paul, in the Holy Ghost, said that "the old man was corrupt according to deceitful lusts." He also said, "Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."

Paul told us that if any man is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. In this new man, Christ is all in all. The old things have passed away, and all things are become new. It was when the realization of this fact came to the Apostle Paul that he took the things of the flesh–the advantages which circumcision had brought him–and counted them all but refuse that he might win Christ. Paul said, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord." He knew that the new man was everything.

3. The Apostle Peter brought the same message. He taught us that we were born again, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever" (I Peter

Peter summed up everything concerning the circumcision with the word; "All flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass." Circumcision was not anything. Peter realized that we must be born again; that we must become partakers of the Divine nature; that we must be a chosen generation; that we must be called out of darkness into the marvelous light of God.

4. The Apostle James taught the new creation. He put it this way: "Of His own will begat He us with the Word of Truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures."

The word "begat" means, He "brought us forth." The Epistle of James has much to do with works and with practical Christian living, but it is not the works of circumcision, nor the efforts of uncircumcision. His works are the works of born-again ones. James teaches that if a man has not faith he has not anything. There is nothing acceptable to God apart from the new creation.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR