The New Birth in Creation (Part 2)
Notes
Transcript
In that great and terrible day, there will be those white with shock when they find that they have depended upon a mental assent to Christianity instead of upon the miracle of the new birth!7
A. W. Tozer
people are so struggling with their version of salvation, that they miss the elephant in the room.....they become the creator rather than the created.
If we believe the New Testament we must surely believe that the new birth is a major miracle, as truly a miracle of God as was the first creation, for the new birth is actually the creating of another man in the heart where another man had been.6
A. W. Tozer
the first act of creation is our understanding of the shape of the world from the very beginning, it is stated in the book of Genesis this way:
2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Second Act of Creation
Second Act of Creation
2 Corinthians allows us to see the Creation account as a type of the new birth
6 For 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.
God’s second act of creation was to divide the water from the land, the light from the darkness, and to bring perfect order out of chaos. God, who brought order out of chaos, can also calm a troubled lost soul.
Paul said that the same God who caused light to shine out of the darkness when He created the world, has caused the light of the glorious gospel to shine into our darkened hearts!
In this, Paul declared, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [or new creation]” (II Corinthians 5:17).
Like the potter who breaks a piece of clay, melts it, and shapes it into an entirely different vessel, so God makes us into a new creation through the new birth experience.
We are His workmanship, or in other words, we are the ones God is working on and fashioning into a people who will be like Christ, who can know him in the power of his resurrection.
Paul said that we are created in Christ. Therefore, when we are placed into the body of Christ, we are placed there by an act of creation—
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
not by the first act of creation.... for in Adam (the first creation) all die, but in Christ (the beginning of this new creation) all shall be made alive
Christ was the beginning of this new order of creation:
In other words, Instead of starting over, God is taking what already exists and creating something new.
and in order to do this, what already exists, must be redeemed.
the old must be done away with to make way for the new birth or the new creation.
14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
Christ was the first seed planted, which shall bring forth a harvest of recreated beings in the which…we are a part of.
When we preach the message of the new birth in light of the creation account as Paul did, a sinner cannot go away simply hoping to do better in order to earn salvation.
For they will see that, since they have not been born again, they are still in their sinful state, a shapeless mass, of no use to God or anyone else.
They will see their need of the new birth whereby God makes them into an entirely new person,
an instrument suitable “for the master’s use” (II Timothy 2:21).
20 But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour.
21 If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
This message makes salvation more than trying to do better—it shows salvation to be an act of creation as mighty and miraculous as God creating the planets in the beginning
We are “created” a new creature in Christ after him who hath created us
10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
Our new birth is a reflection and a likeness of the creation of this world by God from the very beginning.
If regeneration is a work of new creation, sanctification is a work of new formation. If regeneration is a new birth, sanctification is a new growth.
J. I. Packer
When we where born into this world…darkness was upon us, the stain of sin was overshadowing us all
Where there was once darkness…now there is light
That wrong had to be made right....the stain of sin had to be removed
Sin had to be atoned for..
this flesh had to die to make room for the new man that would be pliable and mold-able in the potters hands
a vessel no longer in darkness, but now having the light of the glorious gospel of Christ to shine down on us
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
Just as it was in the beginning…when God commanded “let there be light”
6 For 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.
In the beginning, there was at first,nothing desirable to be seen, for the world was without form, and void;
it was confusion, and emptiness.
In like manner the work of grace in the soul is a new creation:
and in a graceless soul, one that is not born again, there is disorder, confusion, and every evil work:
it is empty of all good, for it is without God; it is dark, it is darkness itself:
this is our condition by nature, until the grace of Almighty God worked through his most powerful redemptive act of creation, Jesus Christ, to perform a change in us.
God said, Let there be light; he willed it, spoke it into existence and at once there was light.
Oh what power we find in the word of God.
And in the new creation, the first thing that is wrought in the soul of man is light:
the awesome and powerful Spirit of God begins his works upon our will and affections by enlightening our understanding.
We are, by his miraculous act, pulled from darkness to light.
Those who by sin were darkness, by grace become light in the Lord.
Darkness would have been always upon fallen man, if the Son of God had not come and given us understanding,
20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
what is this scripture truly saying?
by the grace of almighty God through the very act of redemption through his son Jesus Christ
24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
We have been given grace by God (unmerited favor) to become the sons of God through the redemptive power of the blood
The light which God willed, he approved of.
The bible says God divided the light from the darkness;
for we see that in the word of God it says....what fellowship has light with darkness?