437. 2 COR 5:17: IN CHRIST A NEW CREATION

2 Cor 5:17: In Christ a New Creation

Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation (R. V.marg.).'972Co_5:17.

1. The word '93wherefore,'94 with which the text begins, shows us that the words stand in close connexion with what precedes them, and that, in order to understand their meaning, we must know what is the argument that leads up to them. The Apostle has been dealing with one of his favourite themes'97the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and he has been arguing, as he often does, that that death upon the cross was not an end in itself, but the necessary step towards the resurrection, and that the new life which was manifested in that wonderful victory over the grave, was to be imparted to all who, through faith in Him, partook in the same experience. But, to the mind of St. Paul, this did not only mean that literal death was to be succeeded by a literal resurrection; it meant that, here and now, in the life men live in the flesh, the whole drama of the cross and of the open grave was destined to be re-enacted, and that a death to sin might mean for any man who sought it a resurrection to righteousness. For the Apostle one great effect of the resurrection of Christ was that it set free in the world a new and hitherto undreamed-of power, the power whereby, if belief made a man one with Christ, the greatest marvel might be accomplished, and all that man's past be forgotten in a new and wonderfully altered present. And so he reaches the words we have here to consider, in which he terms such a change nothing less than a '93new creation.'94

2. A word on the translation. In the Authorized Version we read '93If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature'94; and the Revisers have retained this rendering. But they give the literal translation in their margin'97'93there is a new creation.'94 That is, if any man is in Christ, a new creation is the result; a creation not less perfect or majestic than that which the prophet announces, '93Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth'94; or than that which Christ Himself proclaims, when it is said that '93He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.'94 Thus in the case of the man that is in Christ Jesus, there is '93a new creation,'94'97a new creation within, a new creation without,'97a new creation already in part accomplished, but waiting its blessed consummation when the great Creator returns in glory to complete His handiwork within and without, in soul and in body, in heaven and in earth.

First then let us see what is meant by being '93in Christ'94; then let us look at the new creation which the man in Christ discovers within him, and finally at the new creation which he finds all around him.

I

In Christ

No words of Scripture, if we except these: '93God manifest in the flesh,'94 hold within themselves a deeper mystery than this simple formula of the Christian life, '93in Christ.'94 Indeed, God's taking upon Himself humanity, and yet remaining God, is hardly more inexplicable to human thought than man's becoming a '93partaker of the divine nature,'94 and yet remaining man. Both are of those secret things which belong wholly unto God. Yet, great as is the mystery of these words, they are the key to the whole system of doctrinal mysteries. Like the famous Rosetta stone, itself a partial hieroglyph, and thereby furnishing the long-sought clue to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, these words, by their very mystery, unlock all mysteries of the Divine life, letting us into secrets that were '93hidden from ages and from generations.'94

The words '93in Christ'94 or '93in Jesus Christ'94 occur fifty-five times in the New Testament. Fifty-four of these occasions are in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul; the fifty-fifth is in a benediction in the First Epistle of St. Peter, which is clearly influenced by St. Paul's custom. These figures are not to be dismissed as mere statistics. If a straw shows which way the wind blows, statistics of this kind may show the channels of thought in which the Apostle's mind most often ran. They show the Apostle as the founder of Christianity as a working, worshipping religion, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. If we can follow St. Paul in his use of a phrase which recurs whenever he is dealing with the heart of his faith, the idea which was in his mind will take shape in ours, and we shall have a clue to what the Apostle meant when he went about Asia and Europe founding Churches in Christ.

1. The phrase is more fully explained in other parts of the Apostle's writings to be such union with Christ as to involve our being crucified with Him, dead, buried, risen, ascended with Him. But what does all this mean? To understand these mystical terms fully, one would need to pass through the experience of which they are the expression. But something may be said by way of indicating the direction in which to look for the explanation.

It is necessary, in order to the new life of heavenly devotion, that the affections be shifted from earth to heaven, from self to God. How is it to be done? It is easy to say, '93Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind'94; but how can I do it? I cannot force myself to love anybody. I cannot even force myself to love a good man. How then can I get to love God, who seems so far away, so impalpable that I cannot grasp Him, so much offended that I dare not approach Him, and so completely out of the sphere of my ordinary life that all human ways of winning my love are impossible on account of the infinite distance between Him and me?

Now, it is perfectly true that under these conditions it is impossible that there should be awakened in any human heart love enough to God to counterbalance the earthly affection. But see how it is all met in Christ. Christ is '93God manifest in the flesh,'94 so that He can and does come close enough to make it possible for Him to win our affection. And this He does by the beauty of His character, by the tenderness of His heart, by the constancy of His love, by His giving up everything for us, and, above all, by His agony and death for us, to take away our sin, to rescue us from death, to redeem our lives from destruction and to crown us with loving-kindness and tender mercies'97thus it is that He draws His people to Him with the bonds of an affection which easily becomes paramount and supreme. Those who yield themselves to it are drawn to Him so closely that, spiritually, they are one with Him, just as the true wife is one with the husband whom she loves with all her heart, so thoroughly one with him that what the husband suffers she suffers'97she is sick with him, she is pained with him, she is in agony with him, and if he die she dies with him'97not literally, of course, but spiritually and really, how really let her altered life after the great crisis only too truthfully tell; and oh, how much of her heart goes after him to the heaven where he is gone!

If a man is in Christ, he must have regeneration; for how can the Head be alive, and the members dead? If a man is in Christ, he must be justified; for how can God approve the Head, and condemn the members? If a man is in Christ, he must have sanctification; for how can the spotlessly Holy remain in vital connexion with one that is unholy? If a man is in Christ, he must have redemption; for how can the Son of God be in glory, while that which He has made a part of His body lies abandoned in the grave of eternal death?1 [Note: A. J. Gordon, In Christ, 10.]

2. Thus we get a profound insight into the Divine method of salvation. God does not work upon the soul by itself; bringing to bear upon it, while yet in its alienation and isolation from Him, such discipline as shall gradually render it fit to be reunited to Him. He begins rather by reuniting it to Himself, that through this union He may communicate to it that Divine life and energy without which all discipline were utterly futile. The method of grace is precisely the reverse of the method of legalism. The latter is holiness in order to union with God; the former, union with God in order to holiness. Hence, the Incarnation, as the starting-point and prime condition of reconciliation to God; since there can be, to use Hooker's admirable statement, '93no union of God with man, without that mean between both which is both.'94 And hence the necessity of incorporation with Christ, that what became possible through the Incarnation may become actual and experimental in the individual soul through faith.

I wish a greater Knowledge than to attain

The knowledge of my self; a greater Gain

Than to augment my self; a greater Treasure

Than to enjoy my self; a greater Pleasure

Than to content my self; how slight and vain

Is all Self-knowledge, Pleasure, Treasure, Gain;

Unless my better Knowledge could retrieve

My Christ; unless my better Gain to thrive

In Christ; unless my better wealth grow rich

In Christ; unless my better Pleasure pitch

On Christ; or else my Knowledge will proclaim

To my own heart, how ignorant I am:

Or else my Gain, so ill improved, will shame

My trade, and shew how much declined I am:

Or else my Treasure will but blot my name

With Bankrupt, and divulge how poor I am:

Or else my Pleasures that so much inflame

My thoughts, will blab how full of sores I am:

Lord, keep me from my self, 'tis best for me,

Never to own my self, if not in Thee.1 [Note: Francis Quarles.]

3. If, then, we are Christ's, we enter spiritually into '93the fellowship of his sufferings,'94 so that we are crucified with Him, dead with Him, buried with Him, and rise with Him, finding it a second nature thereafter to set our affections on things above. That is what the Apostle means when, after speaking of the Risen Christ, he says: '93If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.'94 His agnosticism is gone; his guilt and condemnation are gone; his bondage to lust and passion is gone; his heart is set on higher things; God is now the centre of his life, and not only is he himself a new creature, but there is around him a new creation. Earth is much smaller than it used to be, and the infinities of the great universe of God begin to open out to his spirit, even as they began to open out to the intellect of the astronomers after they followed Copernicus to the new centre he had found in the sun.

Nothing is more striking than the breadth of application which this principle of union with Christ has in the gospel. Christianity obliterates no natural relationships, destroys no human obligations, makes void no moral or spiritual laws. But it lifts all these up into a new sphere, and puts upon them this seal and signature of the gospel'97'93in Christ.'94 So that while all things continue as they were from the beginning, all, by their readjustment to this Divine character and Person, become virtually new. Life is still of God, but it has this new dependency '93in Christ.'94 '93Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.'94 The obligation to labour remains unchanged, but a new motive and a new sanctity are given to it by its relation to Christ: '93Forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.'94 The marriage relation is stamped with this new signet, '93Only in the Lord.'94 Filial obedience is exalted into direct connexion with the Son of God: '93Children obey your parents in the Lord.'94 Daily life becomes '93a good conversation in Christ.'94 Joy and sorrow, triumph and suffering, are all in Christ. Even truth, as though needing a fresh baptism, is viewed henceforth '93as it is in Jesus.'94 Death remains, but it is robbed of its sting and crowned with a beatitude, because in Christ, '93Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.'94

'93In Christ!'94 How mighty the expression! How singular, yet how exact the description! '93In Christ,'94 then out of the world. '93In Christ,'94 then out of self! '93In Christ,'94 then no more in the flesh, no more in sin, no more in vanity, no more in darkness, no more in the crooked paths of the god of this world.1 [Note: Horatius Bonar.]

4. But if we are to see how much St. Paul meant by being '93in Christ,'94 we must get at his meaning by an induction rather than a description.

(1) '93The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death'94 (Rom_8:2). Here '93in Christ Jesus'94 is a sphere of freedom; and it is freedom of a well-known and recognizable type. It is the freedom by which a higher law and a more developed life-system superseded a lower and less developed one.

It used to be the proud boast of our countrymen that no slave could breathe under the British flag. By setting foot on British soil he ceased to be a slave. The law of freedom superseded the laws of slavery as by a higher right. What our fathers claimed for British rule in the sphere of personal freedom St. Paul claimed for the person of Christ in the sphere of spiritual freedom. No man, however bound in bondage of sin by lusts, passions, habits, superstitions, worldliness, or selfishness could come into Christ without finding his bonds fall from him. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus would set him free from the law of sin and death. When Eliza, the slave-mother in Uncle Tom's Cabin, finds that she is sold to a new owner who is going to separate her from her child, she makes a desperate effort to escape. She has been sold in Kentucky: if she can get into Ohio she will be under other laws, and her child will be her own. She slips away from the inn where the sale has been transacted down to the river bank. But there is no boat to take her across! She hides in terror till she hears the hounds baying on her track. Then, with the courage of despair, she leaps out on the floating ice floes in the river; she passes from one to another, her child in her arms, her feet cut and bleeding, till she is almost across the river; then as she nears the other shore a stranger who has watched her flight reaches out a hand and she lands in safety'97a free woman. The laws that bound her do not run here. They have ceased to have any authority over her.1 [Note: D. Macfadyen, Truth in Religion, 246.]

(2) '93Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus.'85 Salute Urbanus our fellow-worker in Christ'94 (Rom_16:3; Rom_16:9). '93In Christ'94 is a sphere of work as well as a sphere of freedom. The nature of the work is tolerably clear from the connexion in which the words occur. Aquila and Priscilla had a '93church in their house,'94 where they and others constantly endeavoured to justify the ways of God to men; and brought men to the knowledge of God through Christ. To be '93in Christ'94 was to be a fellow-worker with St. Paul in this great endeavour. '93In Christ'94 they found a solution of the problem of man's relation to the unseen world. They found the '93good news of God'94 which lifted away the uncertainties that hung like a mist over man's destiny; and they felt the news so great that they must make it known. They became fellow-workers in the endeavour to bring men into a life which was to be a conscious fellowship with God.

Love is more often the child of service than its parent. Out of the experience of difficulties overcome, of the hearts of men answering to the word of Christ, and the minds of men responding to His Spirit, comes the confidence which is the renewal of faith. It is an old recipe for dealing with scepticism to send it to teach in a slum or a ragged-school. The worth of the spiritual element in life is never so manifest as when we come to know the meaning of life stripped bare of that element. It is then we know what it is to be '93fellow-workers in Christ.'941 [Note: D. Macfadyen.]

(3) Sometimes one gets a flash of insight into St. Paul's mind through a single casual phrase, as when he says, '93I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not'94; or, '93minds corrupted from simplicity toward Christ.'94 The life of humanity as St. Paul sees it in Christ is a clean, sweet, ordered, simple life. Of late much has been said and written of the simple life. But the simple life is not life in a cottage or life in a flat, but life '93in Christ.'94 And it is that wherever it is lived.

The talk about the simple life is a natural revolt against the complications of a cumbrous civilization which is at some points becoming too heavy for the shoulders that have to carry it. Our churches are like the Italian condottieri in the days when defensive armour had reached its highest point of development, and before guns had been introduced to make armour useless. They were so smothered in armour that when a man fell from his horse he could not rise. He might expire on the ground unless some friend came to release him. With us it is the elaborate organization of life, and the increasing demands of ecclesiastical dominion that are destroying the spontaneity of nature in the soul's life.2 [Note: D. Macfadyen.]

(4) But the climax of St. Paul's way of interpreting the Christian life is reached in the phrase in this text'97'93a new creation'94 in Christ. Men who live in this sphere of spiritual freedom, work in this atmosphere, and admit the force of this dynamic, undergo a new spiritual creation. The fact has its physical analogy with which every one is familiar. We may have known someone condemned to exile by the doctors. He was told that he could not live in this climate, but if he would go to South Africa or New Zealand or Australia, breathe a drier atmosphere, live in the open air, he might indefinitely prolong his life. He went, and we lost sight of him for a time, but in ten or fifteen years he came back, broad-shouldered, sun-browned, vigorous, hearty, strong. When we saw him we said instinctively, '93My friend, you are a new man, one would hardly have known you.'94 And the phrase is true enough. The body has been rebuilt, new elements built into it, new energies stored in it, years of hope and service have now become possible for it which were once impossible.

On an early morning of February, his wife awoke, to hear that the light they had waited for more than they that watch for the morning, had risen indeed. She asked, '93What have you seen?'94 He replied, '93The Gospel.'94 It came to him at last, after all his thought and study, not as something reasoned out, but as an inspiration'97a revelation from the mind of God Himself. The full meaning of his answer he embodied at once in a sermon on '93Christ the Form of the Soul,'94 from the text, '93Until Christ be formed in you.'94 The very title of this sermon expresses his spiritually illuminated conception of Christ as the indwelling, formative life of the soul, the new creating power of righteousness for humanity. And this conception was soon after more adequately set forth in his book, '93God in Christ.'94 That he regarded this as a crisis in his spiritual life is evident from his not infrequent reference to it among his Christian friends. He regarded this experience as a '93personal discovery of Christ, and of God as represented in Him.'94 To those about him he seemed '93a new man,'94 or rather, the same man with a heavenly investiture. Or, as he himself explained it: '93I seemed to pass a boundary. I had never been very legal in my Christian life, but now I passed from those partial seeings, glimpses, and doubts, into a clearer knowledge of God and into His inspirations, which I have never wholly lost. The change was into faith'97a sense of the freeness of God, and the ease of approach to Him.'941 [Note: T. T. Munger, Horace Bushnell, 114.]

II

A New Creation Within

1. It is the great characteristic of the New Testament that it demands a new creation. This is its specific message. Other systems that seek to change character and society insist on education, amelioration, reformation or revolution. The New Testament has little to say about any of these, but demands the new creature'97a new creation. Nothing is sufficient except a definite change in the spirit of the man'97a change that is so complete and radical that it must be spoken of as a creation, an act of supernatural Divine grace, which makes the creature new, and all life new with it.

'93A new creation!'94 Then, from the very root of being, upward throughout all its branches, a marvellous change has taken place a change which nothing can fitly describe, save the creating of all things out of nothing at the beginning, or the new-creating of this corrupted world into a glorious earth and heaven, when the Lord returns to take possession of it as His Kingdom for ever. '93A new creation!'94'97then old feelings, old habits, old tastes, old hopes, old joys, old sorrows, old haunts, old companionships, all are gone! Old things have passed away, all things have become new. Christ in us, and we in Christ,'97how thorough and profound the change must have been! '93Christ formed in us,'94 nay, '93in us the hope of glory'94; and we created in Christ unto good works after the very likeness of incarnate Godhead'97how inconceivably glorious the renewal, the transfiguration wrought in us; for nothing short of transfiguration is it, considered even in its general and most common aspect.

When Jenny Lind, the famous vocalist, suddenly discovered her powers as a singer, it perfectly transformed her whole outlook upon life. She has described the day of the discovery thus: '93I got up that morning one creature, I went to bed another creature. I had found my power.'94 '93On that day,'94 remarks her biographer, '93she woke to herself, she became artistically alive: she felt the inspiration and won the sway which she now felt it was hers to have and to hold. It was a step out into a new world of dominion.'94

Patrick Daley was one of the first to profess conversion in connexion with Mr. Moody's recent evangelistic services in Boston. He had been a staunch Roman Catholic by persuasion, but a desperate drunkard by practice. With an overpowering desire to be saved from his evil habit, he so far broke through the prejudices of his religion as to go and listen to the great evangelist. There he heard with astonishment and delight that the chief of sinners and the most hopeless of drunkards might find immediate forgiveness and deliverance through surrender to Jesus Christ. He went into the inquiry-room, and trustingly accepted the Saviour, and entered into great peace and joy in believing. Several weeks after his conversion, he approached me at the close of a meeting with his story and his question.

'93You see, your reverence, I know a good thing when I get it; and when I found salvation, I could not keep it to myself. Peter Murphy lived in the upper story of the same tenement with me. Murphy was a worse drunkard than me, if such a thing could be; and we had gone on many a spree together. Well, when I got saved and washed clean in the blood of Christ, I was so happy I did not know what to do with myself. So I went up to Murphy, and told him what I had got. Poor Peter! he was just getting over a spree, and was pretty sick and sore, and just ready to do anything I told him. So I got him to sign the pledge, and then told him that Jesus alone could help him keep it. Then I got him on his knees, and made him pray and surrender to the Lord, as I had done. You never see such a change in a man as there was in him for the next week. I kept watch of him, and prayed for him, and helped him on the best I could, and, sure, he was a different man. Well, come Sunday morning, Joe Healey called round to pay his usual visit. This was the worst yet; for Healey used to come to see Murphy as regular as Sunday, always bringing a bottle of whisky with him, and these two would spree it all day, till they turned the whole house into a bedlam. Well, I saw Healey coming last Sunday morning, and I was afraid it would be all up with poor Murphy if he got with him. So when I went to the door to let him in, and he said, '91Good morning, Pat; is Murphy in?' I said, '91No; Murphy is out. He does not live here any longer'; and in this way I sent Healey off, and saved Murphy from temptation.'94

Here was the burden of Patrick Daley's question; for he continued: '93Did I tell a lie? What I meant was that the old Murphy did not live there any more. For you know Mr. Moody told us that when a man is converted he is a new creature; old things have passed away. And I believe that Murphy is a new creature, and that the old Murphy does not live any more in that attic. That is what I meant. Did I tell a lie?'94

Candid reader, what should I say? In the light of Paul's great saying, '93Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,'94 can it be denied that Patrick Daley was right?1 [Note: A. J. Gordon: A Biography, 97.]

2. '93No such change is possible,'94 men say. '93Character is not made in a day. All this talk about being born again'97about becoming a new man'97is misleading and mischievous.'94 Yes, it may be, if you do not understand it. Perfection of Christian character is not reached in a day. The telephone was not perfected in a day; but the idea, the essential telephone, was born in a minute. So with the Christian character. '93Complete realization,'94 says President Harris, '93lies in the future, but the type itself, in the principle and power of it, is already actual. Because the type now exists, its complete attainment is to be expected. I regard this as one of the most important considerations for Christian ethics as well as one of the most unique features of the Christian religion. It explains and combines the statements of Scripture that man is to be saved in the future and yet is saved in the present; that he will have and that he now has eternal life.'94

In the life of every man has there been a day when the neavens opened of their own accord, and it is almost always from that very instant that dates his true spiritual personality. It is doubtless at that instant that are formed the invisible, eternal features that we reveal, though we know it not, to angels and to souls. But with most men it is chance alone that has caused the heavens to open; and they have not chosen the face whereby the angels know them in the infinite, nor have they understood how to ennoble and purify its features'97which do indeed but owe their being to an accidental joy or sadness, an accidental thought or fear. Our veritable birth dates from the day when, for the first time, we feel at the deepest of us that there is something grave and unexpected in life. Some there are who realize suddenly that they are not alone under the sky. To others it will be brusquely revealed, while shedding a tear or giving a kiss, that '93the source of all that is good and holy from the universe up to God is hidden behind a night, full of too distant stars'94; a third will see a Divine hand stretched forth between his joy and his misfortune; and yet another will have understood that it is the dead who are in the right. One will have had pity, another will have admired or been afraid. Often does it need almost nothing, a word, a gesture, a little thing that is not even a thought. '93Before, I loved thee as a brother, John,'94 says one of Shakespeare's heroes, admiring the other's action, '93but now, I do respect thee as my soul.'94 On that day it is probable that a being will have come into the world. We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God. But most of us are content to wait till an event charged with almost irresistible radiance intrudes itself violently upon our darkness, and enlightens us, in our despite. We await I know not what happy coincidence, when it may so come about that the eyes of our soul shall be open at the very moment that something extraordinary takes place. But in everything that happens is there light; and the greatness of the greatest of men has but consisted in that they had trained their eyes to be open to every ray of this light.1 [Note: M. Maeterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, 172.]

3. Is not a great deal of moral effort to-day spasmodic and almost fruitless because men do not take themselves in hand with thoroughness? To try to do something right here and there, while the bias of life is left in the wrong direction is a miserable piece of work; patching a rotten garment with bits of virtue; washing a hand when the whole body needs to be plunged in the cleansing fountain. We have known persons who found that their course of conduct was disastrous to them, and under compulsion they have changed it, but they are what they were though their habits have changed; the old spirit still remains, the spirit that seeks its own advantage always. That was the motive in the old habits; they have simply seen that other habits are necessary to serve their purpose. So they are not new creatures though they have new clothes. If a time came when the old habits would serve them again, they would take them on. They remind one of a fable in which the cat is transformed into a princess, but a mouse crosses her path, and in an instant the princess is a cat once more.

Christ did not come into this world to patch up an old religion, merely to mend a hole here, and beautify a spot there, and add a touch to this part or that; He came to make all things new. And when He saves a sinner, He does not propose merely to mend him up a little here and there, to cover over some bad spots in him, and to close up rents in his character by strong patches of the new cloth of grace. Gospel work is not patchwork. Christ does not sew on pieces; He weaves a new garment without seam throughout.1 [Note: J. R. Miller.]

4. This new creation involves certain facts which are worth considering.

(1) It means that we have a new standing before God.'97If I am a new creation in Christ, then I stand before God, not in myself but in Christ. God sees no longer me, but only Him in whom I am'97Him who represents me, Christ Jesus, my substitute and surety. In believing, I have become so identified with the Son of His love that the favour with which He regards Him passes over to me, and rests, like the sunshine of the new heavens, upon me. In Christ, and through Christ, I have acquired a new standing before the Father. I am '93accepted in the beloved.'94 My old standing, namely that of distance, and disfavour, and condemnation, is wholly removed, and I am brought into one of nearness and acceptance and pardon; I am made to occupy a new footing, just as if my old one had never been. Old guilt, heavy as the mountain, vanishes; old dread, gloomy as midnight, passes off; old suspicion, dark as hell, gives place to the joyful confidence arising from forgiveness and reconciliation, and the complete blotting out of sin. All things are made new. I have changed my standing before God; and that simply in consequence of that oneness between me and Christ which has been established through my believing the record given concerning Him. I come to Him on a new footing, for I am '93in Christ,'94 and in me there has been a new creation.

(2) It points to a new relationship to God.'97If we are new creatures, then we no longer bear the same relationship to God. Our old connexion has been dissolved, and a new one established. We were aliens once, we are now sons; and as sons we have the privilege of closest fellowship. Every vestige of estrangement between us is gone. At every point, instead of barriers rising up to separate and repel, there are links, knitting us together in happiest, closest union. Enmity is gone on our part, displeasure on His. He calls us sons; we call Him Father. Paternal love comes down on His part, filial love goes up on ours. The most entire mutual confidence has been established between us. No more strangers and foreigners, we are become fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, every cloud being withdrawn that could cast a single shadow upon the simple gladness of our happy intercourse. There has been truly a new creation; '93old things have passed away, all things have become new.'94 Our new relationship is for eternity. He is eternally our Father; and we are eternally His sons.

(3) It means that we have entered upon a new way of life.'97For when men's hearts are stirred by the higher love, when the spirit is possessed by the Divine impulse, when Christ has come in, man feels that the saving power has gripped him; and though a long battle may still have to be fought to subdue the whole life to the central spirit, yet that spirit having possessed the centre, there is promise of final triumph. Now this is just the difference between morality and religion, between what that man meant by character and what he meant by Christ; the one is the feeling that we are trying to win goodness, the other is the feeling that the good God has laid hold on us; in the one we have a sense of struggling to hold on to virtue, in the other we have the consciousness of being sustained in the struggle by One that is mighty. This is the need of the individual, and this is certainly the need of the Church.

5. To put it the other way, this new creation is necessary'97

(1) In order to get rid of sin.'97Many people talk as if it were an easy thing to get rid of that mysterious quality in our being which we distinguish as sin. They talk of turning over a new leaf. It is an easy thing to turn over a new leaf, but it is far more difficult to get free from sin.

I was reading a medical book the other day'97which books, I find, open a very suggestive field to the theologian; for there is a wonderful analogy between physical and moral maladies. The subject was the sterilizing of the hands. The writer showed how impossible it was to cleanse the hands from bacteria. You wash your hands and they are worse when you have finished than before you commenced. The water has liberated the bacteria until now your hands literally swarm with these forms of life. Then the writer goes on to show that you may attempt to cleanse them with benzine or with alcohol, but when you have done your utmost the hands are still surgically infected. Before I read that book, it seemed one of the easiest things in the world to wash my hands, but now I know that it is physically impossible by any process so to cleanse the hands as to be free from the contamination of vermin and death. '93Cleanse your hands, ye sinners,'94 says the sacred writer, '93and purify your hearts ye doubleminded.'94 Is that an easy task?1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

(2) In order to have peace of conscience.'97Many of our great philosophers tell us that human nature can never attain content with itself. They tell us that our activity contradicts our ideal, that our carnal self is opposed to our rational self, and that our impulse dominates duty. So in the very nature of things a man cannot be at peace in himself. Thus one of the philosophers'97Schopenhauer'97asks this question, '93Was there ever a man who was at peace with himself?'94

(3) In order to obtain spiritual knowledge.'97We have not brought into our life the knowledge of God; that is the secret of our discontent. We want the miracle of creation working in nature. There was a time when nature stood great and material, but there came a day (if you like to express it so) when the Spirit breathed upon its rugged greatness, and all was changed.

Botanists tell us that there was a time when all the flowers were green and rough; but there came a day when they received a spiritual touch, and in place of the full monotony of green they blossomed pink and blue, crimson and gold. That is the touch we want. Scientists tell us that there was a time when the birds did not sing (for these gentlemen inform us that music is very recent). All the birds were there, yet they had no melody nor song; but there came a strange moment for the world of birds, and they responded to the touch of the Spirit and became the songsters of morning entering the realm of music. It is a touch like that we want! There was a time, so thinkers say, when man existed in a certain shape they call the almost-man. One day the Spirit breathed upon the almost-man and he stood up as the man we know in Milton and Shakespeare, St. Paul and St. John. That is the touch we want. As these great scientists tell us, there was special breath which caused the green flowers to be decked with radiant glory, the silent birds to break out in the sweet minstrelsy of song, and the almost-man to arise to dignity, intelligence and spirituality; that is the great change which many people need. They have the material form, but they want the touch of the Spirit, which makes life higher, grander and nobler.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

III

The New Creation Without

Change the man and you change his world. The new self will make all around it as good as new, though no actual change should pass on it; for, to a very wonderful extent, a man creates his own world. We project the hue of our own spirits on things outside. A bright and cheerful temper sees all things on their sunny side. A weary, uneasy mind drapes the very earth in gloom. Lift from a man his load of inward anxiety and you change the aspect of the universe to that man; for, if '93to the pure all things are pure,'94 it is no less true that to the happy all things are happy. Especially is the world revolutionized and made new to a man by a noble and joyous passion. Any great enthusiasm which lifts a man above his average self for the time makes him like a new man, and transfigures the universe in his eyes. Even common natures know how the one pure, imaginative passion of youthful love, which to most people is the solitary enthusiasm of their life, works a temporary enchantment. All poetry and art, fastening on this as the commonest form of noble passion, have worked this vein and made us familiar with the transforming virtue of young love betwixt youth and maiden to turn the prose of life to poetry, to make the vulgar heroic, and the common-place romantic. The ideal lover moves in a world of his own. To him '93old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.'94 Now, this power of human nature, when exalted through high and noble emotion, to make its own world, will be realized in its profoundest form when the soul is re-created by the free Spirit of God. Let God lift us above our old selves, and inspire us with no earthly, but with the pure flame of a celestial, devotion; let Him breathe into our hearts the noblest, freest of all enthusiasms, the enthusiasm for Himself; and to us all things will become new. We shall seem to ourselves to have entered another world, where we breathe lighter air, see an intenser sunlight, and move to the impulses of a more generous spirit.

Science entirely fascinated him; his first plunge into real scientific work opened to him a new life, gave him the first sense of power and of capacity. Now he read Mr. Darwin's books, and it is impossible to overrate the extraordinary effect they had on the young man's mind. Something of the feeling which Keats describes in the sonnet '93On looking into Chapman's Homer'94 seems to have been his:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific'97and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise'97

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.1 [Note: The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, 8.]

It is a new world into which a man is led forth when Christ is formed in him; when his life is joined, by the bonds of a living fellowship, with the life of the Son of Man. There is a new creation; the morning stars are singing together and the sons of God are shouting for joy. No one ever knows how beautiful this world is, how fair its fields, how glorious its skies, till he has looked upon it with eyes anointed by a great affection. Under the spell of such a revelation all tasks are sweet, all burdens light. Into this liberty of the glory of the sons of God may some of you who labour and are heavy-laden be led by Him who is the Way and the Truth and the Life!1 [Note: W. Gladden, Where does the Sky Begin, 201.]

1. Christ is new.'97Consider the difference between what Christ is to St. Paul now and what He was to him in the old persecuting days. In those old days Jesus of Nazareth was to him a mere atom of humanity, a single individual out of countless multitudes who had lived and suffered and died upon the earth; and not even that any longer, for He was blotted out by death, nothing remaining of Him but the mere empty name of a dead impostor, made use of by some superstitious people to attempt to overturn the time-honoured fabric of the Hebrew faith. What is He now? Atom of humanity? No: the very God. He is the sun in the heavens, the centre of all light, and life, and love, and power.

From the moment that the light above the brightness of the sun shone upon the spirit of St. Paul, he ceased to identify Christ with the flesh He had worn on earth, and now identified Him with the God over all whom in that flesh He had revealed. And in making the Christ whom he had despised the centre of his life, round which it all revolved, His will its law, His glory its aim, His smile its light, His love its motive power'97if he was reproached by others with being eccentric, he was content to be able to say: '93Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God.'94

New creatures; the Creator still the Same

For ever and for ever: therefore we

Win hope from God's unsearchable decree

And glorify His still unchanging Name.

We too are still the same: and still our claim,

Our trust, our stay, is Jesus, none but He:

He still the Same regards us, and still we

Mount toward Him in old love's accustomed flame.

We know Thy wounded Hands: and Thou dost know

Our praying hands, our hands that clasp and cling

To hold Thee fast and not to let Thee go.

All else be new then, Lord, as Thou hast said:

Since it is Thou, we dare not be afraid,

Our King of old and still our Self-same King.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 27.]

2. God is new.'97Man has seen God in Christ as man never saw God before. It is fashionable for intellectual men, or rather'97for the fashion of this world's thought changes'97a few years ago it used to be in good intellectual form for men to say, '93We may believe that God exists, but we cannot know anything of God.'94 That passing fashion of thought, however, was fatally illogical, because the very words which were in vogue in some quarters about God, such as, '93He is the unknown and unknowable Power,'94 really affirmed something, of which we have some latent idea, about the unknown God. And we may have real though finite knowledge of infinite things. I can know what light is by a single ray in my eye, although I cannot contain in my eye the infinite flood of light which fills all space. And I may know God by a single beam of truth in my soul, although I cannot know God in His infinitude of being. To us who are capable, then of receiving truth from God because we are made in the image of God, Jesus Christ brought a new revelation of the essential and eternal character of God. And what was that revelation? Not an image of Deity for the Holy Place of the Temple, in which was no likeness of God. Not a map of the Divine attributes, as they are found in the books of the Schoolmen. Not a form of God which we may look upon and worship as a picture of Divinity in our imaginations. Jesus is never depicted pointing His disciples to the sky, as we do, when we say to our children, '93God is there, Heaven is up above.'94 You cannot find in the teaching of Jesus one word about God's nature which is addressed to these bodily senses. But when Philip said, '93Shew us the Father,'94'97poor bewildered disciple, finding the truth he had been learning too great for him, and thinking, If I could only know the Father, if I could only see God as I see man,'97then Jesus said, '93Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'94 That was His revelation, His new, world-changing revelation of God. Himself, His Person, His character, His conduct'97you know that; such is God. The one word which declares God is Christ. Christlikeness is what God is.

3. Man is new.'97As man is discovered to us in Christ, he is found to be a new creature. Man is in Christ another man. It will make a vast difference with us whether we habitually look upon man as created in Christ, or without Christ. You go down the street, and pass some one who is to you only another of the multitude of human beings of whom there seem sometimes to be already many more than there is any use for on this earth. You do not know that man, and do not want to know him. He may be only some worthless creature who hives, with other miserables, in some tenement house which was built by the devil of greed, and has been rented to demons of vice and squalor. Only some Board of Health, or the police, have occasion to know the habitats of so much swarming and festering humanity! Or the man you meet may be respectable and honest enough, for all you know, only he exists, and must live his life, whatever it may be, in some one of those worlds which lie below the one into which you were born, and, probably enough, his name is not to be found written in your book of life. You owe him, you will admit, '93equal rights,'94 '93liberty to make contracts,'94 a certain humanity, and, if he should ever happen to come to your church, a seat in somebody else's pew. Something like that, in spirit, was the old-world view of man before the birth of Christ. That is the view of him which you might take, had you not been baptized into the name of Christ, in whom our whole common humanity exists, redeemed and capable of a great salvation. But what thought Jesus Christ of humanity as He came from the Father, and met that publican in Jericho? As He went to God what said the Lord Jesus to that thief upon a cross? As Jesus' revelation of God was vivifying, and is potential with blessing for the whole world, so also His revelation of man is wonderfully ennobling and transfiguring. Jesus brought out, perfected, and showed in His own Divine Person, the true image of humanity. Man is made to become Christlike. Man may be saved to Christlikeness.1 [Note: Newman Smyth.]

4. Life is new.'97Examine the average life which is being led in a society (we will say) like our own; what is there about it that is noble or exalted? To get along comfortably; to make money; perhaps, in some cases, to make a great deal of money; to keep trouble at a distance, if possible; and to surround oneself with everything that is pleasant and agreeable; does not this'97or something like this'97seem to be the condition of hundreds and hundreds of the ordinary men and women with whom we are acquainted? They are respectable! They are blameless! They are kind! No one can lay any grave fault to their charge. But to say that there is anything lofty or noble or aspiring about them would be a simple misuse of language. But let Christ enter the life, and all this is changed. The commonest act is ennobled by being done for Him. Let Christ into all life; and the present'97no matter what it is'97reaches out and fastens itself on to the distant eternity, and becomes the germ of a never-ending existence.

Old sorrows that sat at the heart's sealed gate

Like sentinels grim and sad,

While out in the night damp, weary and late,

The King, with a gift divinely great,

Waited to make me glad:

Old fears that hung like a changing cloud

Over a sunless day,

Old burdens that kept the spirit bowed,

Old wrongs that rankled and clamoured loud'97

They have passed like a dream away.

In the world without and the world within

He maketh the old things new;

The touch of sorrow, the stain of sin,

Have fled from the gate where the King came in,

From the chill night's damp and dew.

Anew in the heavens the sweet stars shine,

On earth new blossoms spring;

The old life lost in the Life Divine,

'93Thy will be mine, my will is Thine,'94

Is the new song the hearts sing.

5. And the whole universe is new.'97For when the great change takes place, even the face of nature has a different look: there is a new glory in the heavens and a new beauty on the earth; the light that never was on sea or land begins to dawn.

The revolution in science which is associated with the name of Copernicus, was a similar shifting of the centre from earth to heaven; and the result of it was a new creation, a universe totally different from what had been known, or even imagined, before. Up to this time, it had been taken for granted that the earth was the centre of the universe, and on that false assumption there had been built up a vast science of astronomy (which, be it remembered, the scientific men of the time accepted as correct), a science which was no mere guess-work, for it was based on observations which had been most carefully made and diligently recorded for centuries. The intricacies of that old Ptolemaic system of the universe seem absurd enough to us now; but all its spheres, and cycles, and epicycles, and deferents had a strong foundation on exceedingly patient and careful observations of the motions of the heavenly bodies as taken from the earth. As taken from the earth'97there lay the whole fallacy. But one might ask, Where else can you take them from? Erect the highest Eiffel Tower on the top of the loftiest mountain, and still you take your observations from the earth. To which Copernicus replied: Nevertheless, so long as you take your observations from the earth, you are all wrong; for it is not the centre. The true centre is the sun, and though you cannot put your observatory in the sun, you can go there by faith; you can take your station there mentally even if you cannot bodily, and then out of old chaos will at once come new order.

At the great spring Dr'f4menon the tribe and the growing earth were renovated together: the earth arises fresh from her dead seeds, the tribe from its dead ancestors; and the whole process, charged as it is with the emotion of pressing human desire, projects its anthropomorphic god or daemon. A vegetation-spirit we call him, very inadequately; he is a divine Kouros, a Year-Daemon, a spirit that in the first stage is living, then dies with each year, then thirdly rises again from the dead, raising the whole dead world with him'97the Greeks called him in this phase '93the Third One,'94 or the '93Saviour.'94 The renovation ceremonies were accompanied by a casting off of the old year, the old garments, and everything that is polluted by the infection of death. And not only of death; but clearly, I think, in spite of the protests of some Hellenists, of guilt or sin also. For the life of the Year-Daemon, as it seems to be reflected in Tragedy, is generally a story of Pride and Punishment. Each Year arrives, waxes great, commits the sin of Hubris, and then is slain. The death is deserved; but the slaying is a sin: hence comes the next Year as Avenger, or as the Wronged One re-risen: '93they all pay retribution for their injustice one to another according to the ordinance of time.'94 It is this range of ideas, half suppressed during the classical period, but evidently still current among the ruder and less Hellenized peoples, which supplied St. Paul with some of his most famous and deep-reaching metaphors. '93Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.'94 '93As he was raised from the dead we may walk with him in newness of life.'94 And this renovation must be preceded by a casting out and killing of the old polluted life'97'93the old man in us must first be crucified.'941 [Note: Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 46.]

Midway down the Simplon pass the traveller pauses to read upon a stone by the wayside the single word, '93Italia.'94 The Alpine pines cling to the mountain-sides between whose steeps the rough way winds. The snows cover the peaks, and the brooks are frozen to the precipices. The traveller wraps his cloak about him against the frost that reigns undisputed upon those ancient thrones of ice-bound rock. But at the point where that stone with the word '93Italia'94 stands, he passes a boundary-line. From there the way begins into another world. Soon every step makes plainer how great has been the change from Switzerland to Italy. The brooks, unbound, leap laughing over the cliffs. The snows have melted from the path. The air grows warm and fragrant. The regiments of hardy pine no longer struggle in broken lines up the mountain-side. The leaves of the olive trees glisten in the sunshine. The vines follow the wayside. The sky seems near and kind. And below, embosomed in verdure, Lake Maggiore expands before him. As he rests at evening time he knows that the entrance into a new world was marked by the word '93Italia'94 upon that stone at the summit of the pass. Humanity has crossed a boundary-line between two eras. Up to Bethlehem was one way, growing bleaker, and more barren, and colder, as man hastened on. Down from Bethlehem has been another and a happier time. The one civilization was as Switzerland shut in among its icy Alps; the other is as Lombardy's fruitful plain.2 [Note: N. Smyth, Christian Facts and Forces, 4.]

O all-surpassing Splendour!'97one alone

Of earthly race hath seen that vision fair;

The present God, the rainbow round the throne,

And the elect, descending through the air,

His Tabernacle,'97He their glorious light;

For in His presence there can be no night.

'93All New,'94'97a higher world then had been made

In the past-workings of omnipotence,

Wills without sin,'97Earth's precious stones displayed

Tell faintly some Divine magnificence.

Of that regenerate sphere, the pure abode

For sons and daughters of the Immortal God.1 [Note: W. J. Irons.]

In Christ a New Creation

Literature

Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 10; iv. 274.

Dewey (O.), Works, 759.

Farrar (F. W.), Truths to Live By, 290.

Figgis (J. N.), Antichrist and Other Sermons, 16.

Gibson (J. M.), The Glory of Life, 35.

Gladden (W.), Where does the Sky Begin, 187.

Gordon (A. J.), In Christ, 91.

Grimley (H. N.), Tremadoc Sermons, 243.

Jerdan (C.), Manna for Young Pilgrims, 46.

Martin (G. C.), in Great Texts of the New Testament, 127.

Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 210.

Moore (A. L.), in Keble College Sermons, 197.

Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, v. 164.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 881; xx. (1874), No. 1183; xxii. (1876), No. 1328.

Westcott (B. F.), The Historic Faith, 129.

Williams (F. R.), The Christ Within, 104.

Wordsworth (J.), Sermons Preached in Salisbury Cathedral Church, 97.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxv. 346 (G. Matheson); lii. 187 (T. V. Tymms); lxix. 262 (W. L. Watkinson).

Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd. Ser., viii. 93 (G. Calthrop); xiv. 12 (W. Burrows).

Autor: JAMES HASTINGS