A New Creature in Christ

If any man he IN Christ, he is a new creature.” — 2 Cor. v. 17. **1n Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, hut a new creature.” — Ga.1. vi. 15. “Created IN Christ Jesus.” — Eph. ii. 10.

THESE inspired utterances bring before us the completeness of the transformation involved in the Apostle’s monogram. “In Christ,” it is nothing short (for so in the first of the verses it is implied in the original) of “a new creation:” “old things,” it is added, “are passed away, behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. v. 17). Not more did the world emerge radiant with material beauty from chaos and night, when the summons was given, “Let there be light,” than does the soul when it is called “out of darkness” into spiritual life and being.

See Dean Alford on the above motto-verse; Kriats. “He has received-r-* passed into’ — ‘anew life.’ The old things of his former life ’ all the old selfish and impure motives, views, and prejudices ’ (De Wette) have passed away.... The new birth, the antiquation of the former unconverted state, with all that belonged to it; ’ behold ’ (a reminiscence of Isa. xliii. 18, 19), ‘all things have become new.’” — Greek Test. ii. 629.

This new creation is at once God’s work, and (being God’s work) it is, as we have just said, complete. It is no mere human effort of self-rectification; — the attempt to piece together the fragments of a broken mirror. To do so, would only result at best in the production of a dim and distorted image. But “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. iv. 6). Of the three Persons in the ever-blessed Godhead, this restoration is effected by the special agency of the Holy Ghost. “Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (Or rather, “as by the Lord the Spirit.” ^) We cannot agree with the few commentators who would wrest the high resurrection argument from the 1 5 th chapter of ist Corinthians, and make the Apostle therein to discourse rather of a spiritual resuscitation from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. But we may accept this latter interpretation of the passage with a secondary or subordinate meaning: we may regard the one as the pledge and prophecy of the other. “Who hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places IN Christ Jesus” (Eph. ii. 6).

1 2 Cor. iii. 18. — “This seems the obvious and most satisfactory way of taking the words.” — Ih., Greek Test. ii. 629, in loc.

2 “In heavenly places:” or rather, “In the heavenlies.” This peculiar phrase we shall speak of in Chap. vi.

Note further, this ‘new creation in Christ’ is o. present transformation. It is, in the truest sense, heaven begun here. The popular idea of Heaven and its joys is associated with the future. The blessings of eternal glory with many, with most of us, are prospective. The death-sigh of the poet is —

*’ Let me languish into life; “whereas, in reality, the new being, begun on earth, is then only amplified, intensified. We have previously quoted, regarding that life of the believer, not that it” SHALL be hid,” but it “is hid with Christ in God.” He can, and does even now, antedate the heavenly experience. When the Apostle speaks of Christ’s appearing, he takes care to tell that that appearing is not to be regarded as the commencement of spiritual existence, — a “morn of glory “which is to irradiate some far-distant horizon:” When Christ,” (he says) “who IS our life, shall appear “(Col. iii. 4). It is not the natal day, but rather the day of” the manifestation of the sons of God.” The seed is already sown, and has germinated; and though then it will be “fully ripe for the golden sickles of the reaper-angels, it is already “growing up unto the harvest.” In one of the most beautiful and memorable of His sayings, the Saviour Himself emphatically declares that the Gates of Immortality are not to be unbarred for the first time at the hour of death. “I am,” says He, “the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die” (John xi. 25, 26).

How glorious the condition into which this second birth IN Cheist introduces us! As the new-born child has no former history, but is ushered all at once into a new realm of existence; — so is it with the new-born soul. Or, if in one sense it does inherit a past, that past, at all events as regards sin, is cancelled and obliterated; while before it — “accepted in the Beloved “— lies a boundless future of higher bliss and being. Speaking, “as unto babes in Christ,” another Apostle thus refers to this oblivion of the past — “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake” (i John ii. 12). Take one illustrative example, out of many that might be given, of this great transition — “The happy period,’* says Cowper, “which was to afford me a clear discovery of the free mercy of God in Christ Jesus, was now arrived. I flung myself into a chair near the window; and seeing a Bible there, ventured once more to apply to it for comfort and instruction. The first verse I saw was the 26th of the third chapter of Romans: * Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.’ Immediately I received strength to believe; and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency He had made for my pardon and justification.”

Southey’s Life of Cowper.

It need hardly be added, after what has just been said, that the new creation in Christ’ consists exclusively of a spiritual union with Him. The Apostle, in one of the verses which heads this chapter, guards against the acceptance of any other substitute in the shape of creed or ceremonial, sacrament or ritual. To be “IN Christ “is not membership in any exclusive, ecclesiastical society, arrogating to itself a monopoly of spiritual privilege and grace. To be” IN” Christ “is not attained through the mystic sprinkling of water by the initial ordinance of the Church. We read in Sacred Story of those thus baptized (and that too by apostolic successors in the apostolic age) who were never “in Christ;” but who remained in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity (Acts viii. 23); while Paul’s own baptism and * ordination,’ we have reason to infer, were administered at the hands of a lowly disciple — “one Ananias” (Acts ix. 18). To be IN Christ is not to be attained nor tested, by the multiplication of services or the repetition of liturgies. Nay, though precious and blessed (alike as a memorialrite and seal of grace) the Holy Communion is, — to be IN Christ is not secured through attendance on so-called “Celebrations;” — counted as the Eomanist counts his beads, or mutters his paters. It is something truer, deeper. It is something inward, not outward; — something subjective, not objective. “In Christ Jesus,” says our Apostle, “I have begotten you through the Gospel”’^ (i Cor. iv. 15.) “Neither circumcision, nor nncircumcision;” — no lustration, no priestly absolution, no hierarchical prerogative, no sacramentarian efficacy, no Church, no party Shibboleth; — not the circumcision of the Old, nor the baptism of the New Testament “availeth anything,” but the new creature IN Christ Jesus (2 Cor. v. 17). “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. iii. 26). Nor is it, on the other hand, any mystical or senti-

We object much to the increasing employment of the term “Celebration;” and, of course, still more to the erroneous views that term represents and attempts to vindicate. When will ‘Sacramentarians,’ as they are distinctively called, cease to pervert and falsify the Word of God by distorting alike the chronological place and the plain meaning of that oft-quoted verse from which their theory mainly derives its support — “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you”? (John vi. 53). A verse not only uttered by our blessed Redeemer in a totally different connection, but spoken at all events an entire year before the Lord’s Supper was instituted? When will ‘Sacerdotalism,’ surrendering man-made assumptions, be content to fall back on the beautiful definition and design of that sacred Feast as given by the Master Himself at the real hour of its Institution — that of a simple memorial and commemoration of His dying love? “Do this in remembrance of Me.” The Apostle tells us to the same effect (i Cor. xi. 23): “I received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you:” What did he receive? and what the design and object for which it was received? Not a word about Sacrifice or ministering Priest, or Celebrant or Altar; not an allusion of any kind to one of these things. But “as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do sheiu forth the Lord’s death till He come.”

“St. Paul summons Timothy” (is the remark of Dr. Reynolds on the verse, “rightly dividing the word of truth” — 2 Tim. ii. 15), “to a right, straightforward dealing with the divine Word. This expression is a protest against all dishonest interpretations of Scripture; all drawings forth from God’s Word what we have first put into it; and all that morbid exaggeration of half-truths, which turns the truth of God into a lie.” — See “Bible Expositor,” 1S79.

mental union, — a mere naked theological dogma. St. Paul specially avers (what will be subsequently considered) that believers are “created IN Christ Jesus unto good works” (Eph. ii. i o).

In Christ, “a new creation!” Does that, however, imply present and absolute perfection? In one sense it does. “Ye are complete IN Him.” Of the believer it is said, “He cannot sin, because he is born of God” (i John iii. 9). Justified once, he is justified for ever; recreated once, he is recreated for ever. But the hidden life, like the seed we have spoken of, which has to struggle through darkness and superincumbent clod up to the pure light of day, is often impeded and interrupted by reason of sin and moral weakness, the infirmity of the flesh, and successful temptation. The outer world is ever and anon swathed in clouds and drenched in rain-torrents, — ribbed here with ice, dislocated there with earthquake and volcanic fire; palled here in darkness, and swept there with tornado and storm. So with the “new creation.” It has “scars upon its brow.” There are warring elements within and around which tell too plainly, that for the ’ ideal life,’ we must look upwards and onwards to “the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. iii. 13). Here “we see,” but it is “through a glass, darkly” (i Cor. xiii. 12). The full day shall only then break, and the shadows flee away (Cant. iv. 6). Too acutely did the Apostle know by experience the reality of the two antagonist natures — “the law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which was in his members” (Rom. vii. 23): the fightings without and the fears within; — the ‘Hill Difficulty ’ encountered in so many parts of the journey. Well did he understand the need of his own hortatory words, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in THE Lord, and in the power of His might.... Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Eih. vi. 10, 13).