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SERIES C - COMPLEX OR CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES.
SEVEN.
C7 NEW CREATION
C7.1. “IN ADAM” OR “IN CHRIST”.
A new creation.
Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, things of the past are finished, everything is new and it is God who has done it.
(2. Corinthians 5:17)
Two humanities.
The first man became a living soul - an individual personal identity.
The last Adam became a life-giving spirit; ordinary human life had to come first, then spiritual life.
The first Man was made from the dust of earth - humanity Mark I.
The second Man is the Lord from Heaven - humanity Mark II.
People who belong to earth have Mark I human nature; but those who belong to Heaven, Mark II. (1 Corinthians 15:45-48)
Mankind was created in God’s image, but went wrong. Going back to Genesis 3 we find that it went wrong in two ways, one obvious, one less noticed but actually more significant. There was a wrong choice made and a right choice missed.
The Tree of Life symbolises the life for which God had created us, but which could not be imposed, it had to be chosen freely. God did not mention it. He just put it there and waited for Adam and Eve to find it and choose it. They never came that far.
If they had, they would have moved from ordinary human life to spiritual life, as Paul states (see above) “Ordinary human life had to come first, then spiritual life.”
Old humanity missed its destiny. So God the Son in whose image the old humanity had been created, became a man in order to head up a new humanity.
This teaching is contained mainly in Romans and 1 Corinthians and the relevant passages are paraphrased below. Work carefully through them to find what the Bible really does teach on the subject, before we look at a popular distortion.
Christ has been raised out from the dead, first fruit of the sleepers.
Since it was humanity that brought death upon itself, it is a human who has brought resurrection from death.
In “The Adam” all die, in “The Christ” all shall be made alive - each in their own proper order - Christ the first fruit, then those who belong to Him when He returns.
Then will come the completion of it all; when He has wiped out all other rule, authority and power, He will hand the kingdom over to God the Father. He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last of those enemies will be death itself.
Everything, apart from the Father Himself, the Father has placed under Christ’s feet; so when everything is subject to Him, the Son in turn will submit to the Father and God will be totally supreme.
(1 Corinthians 15:20-28)
C7.2. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “IN CHRIST.”
It is God’s doing that you are included in Christ Jesus. (1 Corinthians 1:30)
All who were plunged into Christ Jesus, were plunged into His death. We were therefore buried with Him. (Romans 6:3-4)
A new apprentice comes home from his first day’s work at a builder’s yard and proudly tells his parents, “We built the Town Hall, the Cathedral, the Hospital and the Jail.” These buildings were up before he was born, but already he has identified himself with the company sufficiently to claim its achievements.
Or there was the Englishman who took American citizenship and declared, “Yesterday we lost the War of Independence, today we won it.” It was not the outcome of the long-past war that had changed, but the meaning for him of the word “we”.
The day I was transferred out of the old humanity into the new one, of which Christ is Head, I took on a new history. I am crucified with Christ, and dead corpses are not troubled by guilty conscience or by the law. His history has become mine; so I have died and death has put me beyond the reach of guilt.
Just as the new person he has made of me will be for ever included in Christ; so the person I used to be has already been included in Him, crucified and dead. Christ is the end of the old humanity and first of the new.
(extract from A3 The Completed Rescue)
Being “In Christ” is not just an old fashioned term for being a Christian. It is a profound statement of what it really means to be a Christian.
It is at the Cross that the two humanities meet, because there Christ, who is head of the new, died the death of the old. Those who come to Christ as the Saviour who died for their sins, become identified with Him - He having identified Himself with them enough to die for them - and those He saves find themselves included in the Mark II human race, from which it is impossible to be transferred back again.
Through one human being, sin entered the world and through sin, death. The whole race became subject to death because all have sinned.
Even when there was no law to expose it, sin was in the world. From Adam until Moses, death ruled over sinners, though their sin was not in the same category as Adam’s.
Adam is an earlier model of the one who was to come. Is there not a parallel between the offence and the free gift? Because of one person’s offence, many died. Because of one person, Jesus Christ, God’s free ungrudging open-hearted open-handed goodwill, and the gift that flows from it, is enjoyed in overwhelming measure by many.
The gift matches the sin. The sin brought a guilty verdict and a sentence. The gift brings free pardon for many offences.
By one person’s offence, death came to the throne. By one person, Jesus Christ, those who receive His much greater gift of righteousness, come to the throne of life.
So one offence brought condemnation to the race and one act of righteousness brought free pardon and life. One person’s disobedience made many sinners and one persons’ obedience made many righteous. (Romans 5:12-19)
Saint Paul goes on to use the fact of being dead to sin as motivation to live right. After asking the question whether our freedom from law gives us freedom to sin, the answer is that we only have freedom from law because we have been united to Christ; the new loyalty has taken over.
Law came to show up the horror of sin, then when sin was seen to be great, God’s free ungrudging open-hearted open-handed goodwill was seen to be even greater. As sin used to rule and bring death; so goodwill rules in righteousness and brings eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
What then, do we keep on sinning to give God a chance to show more goodwill? No way! How can we who have died to sin, go on living in it. Don’t you realise that when we were plunged into Jesus Christ it was His death that we entered. We were buried with Him by baptism so that just as Christ was raised up from among the dead by the Father’s glory; so should we live new life.
If we have been joined to Him in His death, we are joined to Him in His resurrection.
Realise this, our old self was crucified with Him - that body which sinned is dead and we are no longer sin’s slaves. Dead people are clear of sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we trust Him that we shall also live with Him. Christ has been raised - He will not die again - death has no more rights over Him. Once and for all He died to sin but living, He lives for God.
Calculate then, that you are dead to sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Don’t let sin rule your mortal body. Don’t obey its wishes. Don’t hand over the parts of your body to Evil so that it can use them as tools for sinning.
Hand yourselves over to God as those who are alive from the dead. Let Him use the parts of your body as tools for what is right.
Sin is not your Lord because you are not under law but under God’s free ungrudging open-hearted open-handed goodwill.
(Romans 5:20 - 6:14)
C7.3. A DISTORTED DOCTRINE.
God’s truth needs to be stated God’s way or it becomes distorted. Most of the so-called “doctrines” of theology are like this; human attempts to restate God’s truth in terms which do not quite fit.
This has happened to what is called, “Original Sin” - not a Bible term for it.
To find what the Bible says on the subject, read the passages quoted above. They make it clear. Two humanities, one gone wrong, and the possibility of transferring from that one to the other; of being “In Christ” rather than “In Adam.”
Theologians have described sin as if it were a hereditary disease. From that there developed all kinds of odd teachings, such as the idea that baptism is to take away original sin, that unbaptised babies are lost, or go into “limbo” or suffer loss in some way. Other ideas vary from a guilt-laden stress on the evil born into us, to a guilt-free irresponsibility of blaming everything onto our heredity.
The Virgin Birth of Christ.
Along with these have gone a misinterpretation of the virgin birth and fanciful theories that original sin comes from the paternal line. This is nonsense and the Bible says nothing to this effect.
Christ’s birth was unique because He existed before He was born. For everyone else there is a moment of miracle at conception when a new eternal person comes into existence. Christ’s conception was a different kind of miracle. He who could fill all space put Himself into a microscopic cell inside a virgin’s body. He brought His whole personality with Him into His earthly life and there is no way that the experience of passing through birth could have changed His spotless character.
Christ’s unique birth marked the arrival of “The Second Man,” the beginning of the new humanity; also “The Last Adam” who would roll up the old, take it into Himself and die for it.
A misused verse.
Ask a theologian to show original sin in scripture and almost invariably you will be shown Psalm 51:5 “I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
Beware of any major doctrine which is founded on only one verse. Here it is not so much a false teaching that we are dealing with as a wrong emphasis and explanation, but this verse is not enough to justify all the theorising that has gone on.
Hebrew idiom often uses terms which sound like heredity to emphasise a characteristic. Jesus called James and John “Sons of Thunder” no doubt describing a feature in their character. So when penitent David used such terms of himself, he was expressing his shame for a real sin but not laying down the basis of a doctrine for future theologians.
An analogy.
Today many Germans are included among my friends and in my family, but I grew up in a country at war with Germany. At that time all Germans, from the worst of its Nazis to the best of its loyal citizens, were to me enemy aliens. Even a German baby was a person of enemy alien status. It was Hitler and Nazism we were fighting, but all German people were constituted enemies by the existence of the war. Once the war was over, however, it was only individual war criminals who were put on trial. No one was punished for being German.
Similarly, the whole human race “In Adam” is corporately in a state of war and its members are enemy aliens to God and the Kingdom of Heaven. But sin and guilt and judgment are individual matters and God’s anger is aroused by evil actions done, not by membership of the race. There is no suggestion that all humans are totally evil any more than there was that all Germans were Nazis.
Preachers who talk as if we were born subject to God’s wrath are cheapening that wrath. God is angry with real evil, and for good cause. Sins committed need to be forgiven or they will have to be judged. But enemy status needs to be dealt with in a different way. We identify with Christ’s death and resurrection, leave the old human race behind and are included in the new.
Salvation involves both forgiveness for sins personally committed, and entry into this new life “In Christ.”
C7.4. CHRIST’S HISTORY IS NOW MINE.
Now that I am in Christ I find that I have a history going back to before creation, and a destiny for eternity.
I was chosen in Him before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4)
- a truth which is often distorted and therefore needs a separate study.
I was crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20) and raised in Him to new life.
I am blessed in Him with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 1:3)
Ultimately I shall be included in Him when everything is brought together in one and He is the Total at the Top. (Ephesians 1:10 - Totals were written at the top of the column in those days and the sense of this verse is that Christ will be both total and Head.)