New Creation Realities

Truth is often found in unexpected places, and here’s a good example of that. Frederick Faber was already noted as a poet during his university days but is best known for his hymns “Faith of our Fathers” and “There is a Wideness in God’s Mercy”, among others. He became an Anglican minister in 1839, but then he became a Roman Catholic priest in 1847. At that time such a change would have caused considerable criticism.

Somewhere I discovered the following poem he wrote, and have used it for many years because of the truths it declares which are not regularly taught in churches of any persuasion today. I particularly use it in the “In Christ, Christ In” seminar, where I put great emphasis upon the New Creation in Christ, and it will appear in the forthcoming book of the same title. Here are the first four verses:

How have I erred! God is my home, and God Himself is here.
Why have I looked so far for Him Who is nowhere but near?

Yet God is never so far off As even to be near;
He is within, our spirit is The home He holds most dear.

To think of Him as by our side Is almost as untrue
As to remove His throne beyond Those skies of starry blue.

So all the while I thought myself Homeless, forlorn, and weary;
Missing my joy, I walked the earth Myself God’s sanctuary.

These verses specifically address that there is no separation between a New Creation and the God Who placed him or her in Christ, just as there is no separation between Christ and the Father. “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Also scriptures like Romans 8:35 and 38 jump to mind.

Even though many get comfort from hymns such as “The Garden”, where the chorus proclaims, “And He walks with me and He talks with me”, and similar hymns, the New Testament truth is clear that “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (I Corinthians 6:17). Just as two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen make water, you cannot separate the parts when you drink. Faber is making the strong point that God in Christ is in us, not just with us.

The fourth verse is a particular favorite due to the contrast between the average Christian and one who has found and accepted and enjoys the truth that Christ lives in him or her, as Paul so clearly taught in Galatians 2:20, “Christ lives in me.”

“If anyone is in Christ. the new creation has come. the old has gone, the new is here!” (II Corinthians 5:17).

The Word teaches us very clearly that Christ has been taken right out of this old creation and set at God’s right hand in the heavenlies. On the other hand. it shows us that His being there, and our being in spiritual union with Him, means that for all spiritual purposes and resources, we also are in the heavenlies in Christ…

Let us ask the Lord to give us a real, spiritual, quick, living apprehension of this great truth concerning our Lord Jesus, the great realm of the new creation into which we are brought, and let us apply it, practice it, put it into operation from day to day.

You may have to go into a place where there is not much spiritual wealth on the outside, not much upon which to feed. Remember you have Christ, the whole Land, lying before you.

You may have to go into scenes where there is anything but rest, spiritual rest; where all is fret, care, drive, strain. Remember that you are in the Land; you are in Christ; you have Him as your Rest.

You may have to go into the conflict, into the battle, into the tremendous activities of the enemy to overthrow you. Remember you are in Christ, Who is Victory, complete, final victory.

That remains true, whatever the enemy may say about it. Christ is all that we need for a life which is glorifying to Him. It is what Christ is, what we have in the new creation.

From: The Essential Newness of the New Creation by T. Austin-Sparks (www.austin-sparks.net)

Some believers find it difficult to understand that since they are “complete in Him” (Colossians 2:9-10), then how can they possibly “grow in Christ”. At the other end of the spectrum we have believers who want God to make them better than they are. In one group I was in we sang a hymn, one line of which went “Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.” I now know He is not going to pick up my feet and plant them higher, for He has already provided for my growth.

There are three verses in the epistles that use the word “grow”. We have the well-known exhortation “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation” (I Peter 2:2 ESV). Then we read, “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18). Both of these statement were written to born-again Jews who were dispersed among other nations.

The major passage is from Ephesians, considered by some to be the highest revelation of God to man. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). The context speaks of attaining “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (verse 13). The phrase we need to focus on is “grow up… into him… into Christ.”

We are to grow from “children” (verse 14) to “manhood” (verse 13), and all this is “in Christ”. Immediately the illustration of I John comes to mind — “little children”, “young men”, and “fathers” (I John 2:12-14). It is generally agreed that fathers are “those mature believers with long and rich experience” (Robertson’s Word Pictures).

A seed is perfect but God designed it to grow. The seed of eternal life in you is also designed to grow. So, yes, all believers are complete in Him, yet as we read and read again that part of God’s Word addressed to us (from Romans to Philemon), our relationship with the Christ within and our loving Father grows and grows until we reach “the stature of the fullness of Christ”, also referred to as “mature manhood”. It is not talking about position but relationship.

No matter from what angle you look at Christianity, it is a miracle. The most amazing miracle is the New Creation.

We have never been able to get at the heart of it. We have stood outside as spectators and looked at it from its various angles.

A man becomes a New Creation by receiving the very Life and Nature of God.

Take these scriptures as illustrations. Colossians 2:13, “And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of the flesh, you, I say, did He make alive together with Him, having been gracious to us in all our trespasses.” We have been made alive together with Him.

12th verse, “Wherein ye were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” This is the legal aspect of the New Creation and everything that is legally ours can become a vital reality.

In the mind of the Father, we were made alive with Christ. When He was made alive in spirit, we were made alive in spirit. This becomes a reality to us when we personally accept Christ as Savior and confess Him as Lord.

The life of God comes into our spirits and recreates us. Ephesians 2:1-2, “And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins.” This can be called the miracle of Christianity, an actual New Creation.

From Jesus the Healer by E.W. Kenyon (1940).

The apostle’s secret of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) is one which the world cannot grasp. Think of it and try to realize it. God is not only a God who mercifully pardons our guilt and saves us from its consequences, not only a God who gives to us a new nature that loves to do the right which once we hated, not only a God who comes to our aid in temptation and trial and interposes His strength and His providence for our deliverance, but above all this He is a God who comes Himself to live His own life in us. Continue reading →