THE REALITY OF THE RECREATED HUMAN SPIRIT THIS PHASE OF TEACHING has never been majored by our theological thinkers.. It is the crux of the whole Pauline Revelation, the ultimate toward which all of Gods plans move. Man, the failure, the sin-ruled, the Satan-dominated, held in bondage by the unseen forces of spiritual darkness, is to be recreated, made a New Creation, taken out of the family of Satan and “translated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love,” on legal grounds. This is the solution of the human problem: God giving His Nature, His Love, to fallen man. He is no longer a fallen man. He is a New Creation man united with Jesus Christ, the Head of the New Creation. He is the “raised together with Christ” man. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; behold they are become new.” His old sin consciousness, his old fallen life, his old sin life, and his old evil habits that grow out of Spiritual death, have passed away. He is a new Creation. He is a New Being. The Father has no memory of his past life. He is a newborn babe. His old past life has stopped being in the Mind of the Father. A New Creation has come into being through grace. 2 Corinthians 5:18, “But all these things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation.” Ways translation states it beautifully: “And of all this, God is the source. He reconciled me to Himself by the mediation of Messiah; and He has assigned to me the office of this reconciliation, the Charter whereof is: `God was present in the Messiah reconciling to Himself the world, cancelling the record of their transgression. “ He has given us through Christ the ministry of reconciliation; not the ministry of condemnation which we have had for the last hundred years, but a ministry of reconciliation. We have reckoned unto men their trespasses. We have kept them “trespass-minded.” We have kept them conscious of their weaknesses and failings. We have preached sin instead of Eternal Life. We have preached judgment instead of reconciliation, when God has committed unto us the “word of reconciliation.” We have that Word. We have that message. It is ours to give to the world. We have become New Creations. We have been recreated by Love. Love has been imparted to our spirits. God is Love, and Gods nature is Love; but God is also Life, the Author of Life. So He has imparted to us His Life Nature, His Love Nature. God has imparted His Nature to us, making us New Creations. That Nature is Righteousness. It is Holiness. It is Reality. It is Love. It has been imparted to us. We are ambassadors on behalf of Christ, and we are entreating the world to be reconciled to God. Why? Because “Him who knew no sin God made to become sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” God made Jesus sin to the end that He could make us righteous through the New Creation. We have a reconciling message of love to give to the world. It is not a message of condemnation, but of reconciliation; not of judgment, but of love. Jesus was made sin, was judged, and suffered all that we would have suffered had we rejected Him. By our acceptance of Him we entered into all that He purchased for us. This message is not an appeal to human reason or Sense Knowledge, but the Fathers appeal to our spirits. We ought to understand that the Father does not reveal Himself to our reasoning faculties but to our spirits. Our reasoning faculties can only apprehend the things that the five senses convey to them. Outside of that, the reasoning faculties are unfruitful. When our spirits are recreated they receive Eternal Life. We can know the Father. We can enjoy fellowship with Him through His Word. We have become so utterly identified with Him, so utterly one with Him, that the “vine and the branch” is the only suitable illustration of this new and beautiful relationship. We are a part of the Vine life. We are bearing the love fruit of the Vine life. Our spirits enjoy the reality of Christ in the world. Our minds may not be able to grasp it; but if we let our minds be renewed by acting on the Word and meditating in it, our minds and spirits will come into sweet fellowship with each other. The recreated human spirit never grows old. It has received Eternal Life. It has become one with the Father. Our bodies will grow old. Our minds will grow old because they derive all their knowledge from the body. If our spirits can gain the ascendancy over our bodies, they will keep our minds from aging, and our bodies in a vigorous, healthy, youthful condition. Sense Knowledge wanes with the senility of the senses. The senses will wear out and lose their freshness and beauty unless they are renewed by a recreated spirit. The development of our recreated spirits comes by meditating in the Word, acting on the Word, and letting the Word live in us and become a part of us. Some Facts Christianity is a relationship between the Father and His Family. It is not a religion. It is not having your sins forgiven. It is not joining the church. It is being made a New Creation in Christ; it is being born from above. It is receiving the Nature and Life of God. It is being united with Christ. Romans 6:5, “For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” We are united with Him in Resurrection Life. The New Creation is to enjoy the dominion that Adam lost in the fall. In Ezekiel 36:26, 27, He speaks out His hearts dream: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, and do them.” Man was to have a new heart. That means that his heart was to be recreated. When the Lord speaks of the heart, He means the spirit, the real man. The New Creation is the outstanding miracle of Redemption. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit recreated one hundred and twenty in the upper room, God began the “New Thing.” They had more than forgiveness of sin. They had new Natures. It was the union of Love with man. It was the new order of things. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a New Creation.” They are a new species. The expression, “New Creation,” means a new thing, something unheard of before. This new man was an unknown thing just as the first Adam was an unknown being. This new love nature means that the old order of selfishness is ended and the new love life is begun. The New Creation is a God-man, born of heaven. He is to be ruled by the Lord. He has been ruled by Satan. He is called in Hebrews 10:38, the righteous one, the God-made one. “My righteous one shall walk by faith.” He is the new love man ruled by our Love-Lord, Jesus. He was by nature a child of wrath. He is by the new nature, a child of God. The God who created man in the beginning is recreating man now. John 3:3-8 says that the recreated man is born from above: “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee; except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mothers womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” He is born of the Word and of the Spirit. Read these verses carefully and you will notice that he is recreated by the will of the Father. He is a wanted child. James 1:18, “Of His own will he brought us forth by the Word of truth.” We are recreated by the Spirit through the Word. 1 Peter 1:23, “Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the Word of God, which liveth and abideth.” No man recreates himself. It is purely the work of God. The only part we have in it is to consent to Gods giving us His Nature and to recognize the Lordship of the New Head of the New Creation, Jesus. Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory.” Ephesians 2:10, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” When you know that you have been recreated by God Himself, you know that the work is satisfactory to the Author of the work. It gives you a real foundation for faith. Our chief difficulty has been the sense of unworthiness which has robbed us of faith and fellowship with the Father. This is due to our ignorance of what we are in Christ, and of what the New Birth means to the Father, and may mean to us. Ephesians 4:24, “Put on the new man that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” We are created in Righteousness. We are created out of the very Nature and Heart of the Father; so that when He declares that we are created of Righteousness and Holiness, and of reality (or Truth), we know that we can stand before the Father without any sense of guilt or sin. We know that the New Creation is the Righteousness of God in Christ. 1 John 5:13, “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have Eternal Life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.” So, then, Eternal Life is received in Jesus Name. Romans 8:14-17 is the climax of Redemption as outlined in this epistle: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” This is the climax of Redemption. This is the objective toward which God was working: to bring man into the actual relationship of a son through his partaking of Gods Nature, Eternal Life. Galatians 4:5-7, “That He might redeem them that are under the law, that we (Jews) might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit that thou art no longer a bond-servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” The Jews were the servants of God; we are the sons of God. 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” John 1:13, “Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This should forever settle the question of whether there is anything that an unsaved man can do to give to himself the New Birth outside of his acceptance of Christ as his Saviour and Lord. All of his crying, weeping, repenting, and confessing of sins has no bearing upon it whatever. This is hard for us to accept because we have been ruled by the teaching of the Dark Ages-the teaching of works. The church is under bondage today to the blend of Hinduism, Grecian philosophy, and the Christianity that we find during the Middle Ages. All that Luther saw was Justification by Faith. He had no clear conception of a New Birth, of righteousness, of God as a Father, or of our place as sons and daughters of God. He saw it vaguely. He saw one truth. That one truth brought him out of bondage and gave to Germany a new civilization. 1 John 5:1, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is begotten of God.” The fourth verse reads: “For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.” The New Creation is an overcomer. He is begotten of God. He is united with God. He is a partaker of Gods Nature. QUESTIONS Tell how recreating the spirit solves the human problem. Explain 2 Corinthians 5:18. What is the work of an ambassador? To what part of man does God reveal Himself? How? Why does the recreated human spirit never grow old? Tell what being united with Him in Resurrection Life means to the believer. Explain Ezekiel 36:26-27. In recreating the human spirit, what is mans part? What gives to the believer a real foundation for faith? What is the objective toward which God was working in Redemption? Advanced Bible Course Kindly share this post
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 16:00:01 +0000