New Things Have Come

and reading the scriptures today. I think it's gonna work out pretty good. You probably can't see that very well, and I hadn't intended to do this, but when I knew Jim wasn't here, this is a good opportunity. I'm gonna read 15 verses, and you'll see in a minute why I'm doing what I'm doing, but I want you to particularly notice as you're going, and open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 5, chapter five, verse one. And I think you'll be able to see, follow my lead, I want you to keep in mind where the therefores are. One of my favorite questions in Bible study is when you see the word therefore, I always ask the class, what's the therefore therefore? And so it's important to understand why that word is used so much. So starting in verse one, chapter five, and I'm gonna read from the New King James.

We know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. If indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent grown, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but we want to be further clothed that mortality may be swallowed up in life.

Now he who has prepared for us this very thing is God, who also has given us The Spirit has a guarantee. Therefore, we are always confident knowing that while we are at home in this body, in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight. We are confident, yes, well-pleased rather, to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are well known to God and also trust are well known in your conscience. For we do not commend ourselves again to you, but give you opportunity to glory on our behalf that you may have something to answer those who glory in appearance and not in heart. For if we are besides ourselves, it is for God. Or if we are of sound mind, it is for you.

For the love of Christ constrains us because we judge this, that one died for all, then all died. And he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

Old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new. So, with that in mind, What I decided to do was to just slowly go through, well, not slowly, maybe a little faster than slowly, slowly go through the therefores. If you look at therefore in verse six, it refers back to what was said in verse one.

We have a new body built by God in the heavenly waiting for us. We've grown because we want to be in that new body. we don't want to be found naked, we have been given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee. And then in verse 10 we see that therefore, it refers back to verse 6, we are always courageous because we know being in this body we are not with the Lord. And we walk by faith. Then in verse 11, the therefore there refers back to nine and 10. We are ambitious to be pleasing to him. We are to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And then the therefore in verse 16 refers back to verse 11 through 15.

Knowing the reverential fear of the Lord, we persuade men We're not again commending ourselves. We are giving you an occasion to be proud of us so that you will have an answer to those who take pride in appearances and not in heart. We're not crazy. That's what beside ourself means. We are a sound mind for you.

And the love of Christ controls us because one died for all, then all were dead. He died so that we might no longer live for ourselves, but unto him who died and rose again. So when you work those therefores back, they all come together and make a lot of sense. J.B. Stoney said, there we come on to what is more general. My impression is that everyone has something from the Lord to do for him. There is no scripture perhaps so little understood than verse 15, that he died for all, that they which live should henceforth not live unto themselves, but unto him who died and rose again. Well, we don't realize, I think, by a verse like that.

We belong to the person of Christ because of what he did. I have had this thought my whole Christian life, that he paid for me, he bought me on that cross, and so I belong to him. Everybody here belongs to Christ. If you're gonna be somebody's possession, he's the best.

So, verse 16 says, therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh yet, we know him this way no longer. We recognize, we regard, we understand, to know or by perception, what do we know? We recognize no one according to the flesh. Well, that's not an easy to get in our mind because we're all walking around in a fleshly world and that's all we see.

But what he's saying here is that we do not regard them anymore according to the flesh. So I ask you, how many different kinds of people exist on the earth today if we look at the whole population of the earth not according to the flesh? Not according to the flesh, there are two. You're either lost or you're saved. There's nothing in between. You're either lost or you're saved. But if I look at the world according to the flesh, what do I see? I see hundreds of differences. And a list is growing all the time. In the society we live in today, the list just keeps getting bigger. How many genders are there now? How many different colors of people? How many tall ones, short ones? How many different denominations? I mean, the differences go on and on and on.

But from being in Christ, there's only two. You're either in him and saved or you're not, you're lost. So, it's hard sometimes to think about that, but that's really where we are and what we're doing and what we're faced with every day. So, We recognize no one even though we had known Christ according to the flesh.

And that's, in the Greek, it's indicative, which means it's reality, it's true. Perfect tense, which means it happened here with abiding results going on into the future. And it's right now, it's active. We did that. We knew Christ that he was in the flesh. Now, A good example of what he's talking about here that I think we have a tough time understanding.

If you refer back to John chapter 20 and verse 17, what's going on there is that the two apostles, Peter and John, had been told that the grave that Christ was in was empty. And so they go racing down there and they go into the tomb and there's no body.

Well, standing there is Mary, Mary Magdalene. And she is totally lost because she did not, she could not take things as quietly as those two disciples did. What was Mary's home? Where was her heart? Her heart was with the Lord Jesus. He's crucified and now she's looking around in the tomb for him and he's not there. His body isn't there. So she only has now an empty tomb to look at. The other two disciples, what do they do? They depart and they go to their homes. For her heart, she can't do that. She can't leave. And so she sees this man standing there and she thinks he's the gardener.

And she inquires of him, what have they done with the body of my Lord? And she doesn't recognize who he is. And he turns around and says to her, Mary, and as soon as he says that, she totally recognizes that it's Christ. Now, how had Mary known the Lord Jesus? She had known him according to the flesh. That's how she knew him. And she thought that she was going to still know him in that respect going forward.

But that isn't gonna be the way the Lord has it planned. Going forward, she was to know the Lord Jesus not after the flesh. This word for, and when Jesus says to her in verse 17, stop clinging to me, excuse me, for I have not yet ascended to my father. But go to my brother and say to them, I ascend to my father and your father and to my God and your God. He's saying to her, don't fasten yourself to me, don't identify yourself to me as you've known me in the flesh.

The thing is, is that Christ had been, had died and had risen and he's about to take his place in heaven according to the counsels of God. He's a human being and he's gonna be in heaven and he's gonna be the man that God deals with all humanity from now on. We as believers are called to know him as the man in heaven. Always the son and now the glorified man.

So therefore the force of that which follows, Mary must learn to regard the Lord Jesus in an entirely new light, not in bodily presence here below, but for an object of her faith received up in glory. She has been delivered from all of her former associations is the example given of a Jewish remnant in the future to become a Christian.

That was from William Kelly. What's interesting is that I've often looked at that verse and thought, what does he mean? Well, he's in essence telling her, you've known me after the flesh, well, now you're not gonna know me that way any longer. And that's the same with us.

What has God done here? He's removed the distance from his side that man was as far away as he possibly could. He removed the distance between man and himself by the death of Christ. The first man, Adam, and all of his progeny are gone before God. The end of all flesh has come before God.

He has accomplished this by the cross, and now he feels about us according to what Christ is. In reconciliation, that all is for God and God's own pleasure. That's another thing I think we have trouble realizing, that because we are in Christ, that's the thing that pleases God about us.

He loves having us close. It is from his side. We welcome, we come under his eye, and what does he see? He sees the satisfaction of Christ. And what does he see you and me? He sees us in Christ. He's totally satisfied. God works now, as we talked about last week, downward towards man from himself in the Lord Jesus. So in the gospel, it is Christ come to me. In the church, it's that we go to him. So let's talk a little bit about what the new man, what the new man might be.

I think I have, that's all right. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold, new things have come. I think the thought in most of Christianity is the fact that, in a general way, the Son of God became flesh and blood, he became a man, in order to repair man, rehabilitate the first man, the whole race of Adam, to make him somehow acceptable.

The Lord Jesus Christ risen is an absolutely unique man. He's a man of his own order. He's a man of a new kind of man that never has been that kind of man before. In his death unto sin, the first man was completely set aside in judgment. And the new man is therefore now according to God. This is God's man.

So in Christ Jesus is a really good place to be. I've always loved the word in Christ Jesus because I was a realtor and location was everything to me. If I'm in Christ, that's the location I want. I wanna be there. And it's the definition of all of us as believers. We are in Christ. It defines us as a people identified with the one who as a man has entered into the presence of God.

Romans 6.10 tells us, for in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he lives, he lives unto God. In Christ risen, the Holy Spirit establishes us in our realization of the close proximity to God, He does that first before He develops our fellowship with Him. We are before the Father in Christ and that position will never change. It's eternal.

Our citizenship, according to Philippians 3.20, is in heaven. That's where we're from. We have the right to be there. And we have the nature to be there. And what happens?

Matthew 6.21 says, where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. If your treasure is the glorified Christ at the right hand of the Father, that's where your heart will be. We're not there in our own condition. We're not there because we merited it ourselves. We're not there in the flesh, but in the spirit.

Colossians, 1 Corinthians 1.29, that no flesh, no flesh should glory in his presence. So we can't be there in flesh. We are there in the one, the Lord Jesus, who is our new life.

1 Corinthians 1.30 says, of God are ye in Christ Jesus. Where he is, who of God has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Where did this all start?

Think about it. Nicodemus sneaks out to see the Lord Jesus at night, and he starts giving accolades to the Lord Jesus, and Jesus stops him and said to him, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And the next verse he says, unless a man is born of water and a spirit, he won't ever get into the kingdom of God, let alone see it. What's he telling Nicodemus? He's telling them a transaction's gotta take place based on the work of Christ in order for you to get in the kingdom. Well, Nicodemus thought, well, I'm a Jew, I'm a Pharisee, I'm already in, right? And the Lord Jesus said, no, you're not, not yet.

Then we find out in Romans 6, 4 that we were, well, 6, 3, and 4, therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death. The Spirit of God on that cross when the Lord Jesus died, he took us and he identified us with the Lord Jesus at the point in which he died. The word death means separation. So what did we get separated from? We got separated from the world, we got separated from the flesh, the sin nature, the law, and we got separated from the power of Satan over us.

So as Christ was raised from among the dead by the glory of the Father, what's the rest of that sentence? So we too might walk in newness of life. And when you study that, we think that we're walking in life. No, we're walking in newness. Newness is the noun there.

Galatians 6.15 tells us, for neither circumcision avails us anything or uncircumcision, but a new creation. A new creation. So, what does this new creation mean?

Does it mean just a fix up of the old? When I was putting the cigar, I was thinking about people who do fix and flips in houses. They go in there and they take the existing structure and they put new cosmetics on it, but it's the same old house. What we're talking about here is that the house got demolished and he started over.

And he started over, not only with us individually, but an entirely new creation. So, does this not mean a new sort of creation, as the word implies? Or do we go back to Adam, the innocent man in the garden in which God set him to take care of and have dominion over? The answer to that is no. That would not be a new creation creature of any kind.

Adam even pure and good before his fall. What's the problem with Adam? He's an earthly man. He was made for the earth. So is the Lord Jesus, but the first man refurbished, set up afresh? No. He is the second man, the last Adam, and he's the Lord from heaven. He's not an earthly man.

So we find out that there is a heavenly man referred to as the last Adam. And why is Adam so important? Adam the first and Adam the second are heads of human races. Every human being is born in Adam the first. At some point, hopefully, they meet the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God takes them out of Adam the first and puts them in the last Adam.

They're now in Christ. That's why that term is so important. The beginning of the new creation and you and I who believe in him, seen and accepted by the Father in his beloved. Now, we don't have the full image yet true. That will be ours in the day of His coming. The thing that we are. F.W. Grant said that. He said the full image we have not yet true. But that will be ours in the day of His coming. The thing that we are. So, new position. We have an entirely new position before Christ. And before the Father. So let's talk a little bit about the new creation.

After the total termination of the first creation on the cross, and oh, by the way, nobody saw it happen, but that's what was happening. The last Adam, Christ, was free to rise as the head and life of the spiritual, eternal, all-new creation. He stepped out on resurrection ground. bearing in his heart every single believer, you and I, whom by death he had separated from the first Adam. The first creation began with the heavens and the earth, and it was followed by the creation of the earthly man. The new creation begins with the heavenly man and will be followed by a new heaven and new earth.

If you take a look at Revelation 3.14, he says, These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the new creation, talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Each believer's relationship to the fallen race of Adam was positionally terminated in the cross. We have no allegiance to the old Adam, none whatsoever.

Romans 6.6 and 6.5, turning them around, our old Adamic nature was crucified with him. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

The risen Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the body, Colossians 1.18. He's the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning the firstborn from among the dead. There's no restoration going on here. There's no reforming of the old man, but a totally new beginning from death unto eternal life.

Romans 6.4 tells us again, therefore we were buried with him in baptism into death. so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of God, the glory of the Father, even so we should also walk in newness of life. So let's talk about some of those old things passed away. I think we have to understand that it's impossible that we should have at the same time a standing in the old Adam to answer for ourselves under a lost system and a standing in the Lord Jesus Christ who has answered for us by grace. It's the total relegation morally for faith of the former and abolished creation. Now no longer acknowledged and carrying with it the final repudiation of the flesh and its flesh's activities.

When you start to think about this idea, you begin to see that what God did was thorough, it was perfect, and the deliverance that he calls us to is totally accomplished. You don't have to deliver yourself. It is God's solution for us and every single problem that we have. It's our relationship to relation morally to man's world.

I have died in the death of Christ. as the reckoning of faith, and in the same reckoning, the old things, the old things in which the life of the first man found his gratification have passed away. What about the believer? We were chosen in the Lord Jesus. We have redemption in Him. We have been brought near to God. We're sealed by the Holy Spirit. We're blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. We are totally accepted in the Beloved. We're seated in Him at the right hand of the Father. And in Him we have obtained an inheritance.

And Colossians 3 says, having put on the new man. The new man is renewed into full knowledge according to the image of him that has created him. Wherein there is neither Greek, nor Jew, nor circumcision, nor uncircumcision, nor barbarian, Scythian, Republican, Democrat. None of that works in Christ. bond are free, but Christ is all and in all. That's who we are. None of those differentiations matter.

So what do we do? Romans 6.11 tells us that we should reckon ourselves, we should count upon the fact because we know the fact. to be dead unto sin, totally dead unto the sin nature. And we should reckon ourselves to be alive unto God. In verse 23 of chapter six, he says to us, the wages of sin is death. In other words, you had to work for it to die.

That's the old creation. But here's the new creation. But the gift of God, something you didn't work for, is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's the new creation. He didn't work for that. Be it observed, it's not only eternal life, but it's in Christ Jesus our Lord, which establishes as this new positive order of blessing, which is ours in union with him. He is the beginning of the new creation. and which is perfectly exemplified only in moral beauty of his own character. What's that moral beauty look like? The fruit of the spirit.

And then Romans 8 tells us that there is now no condemnation, no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. So back to verse 17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. You can't be condemned if you're not a member of the condemned creation. So we have a present position is that we are actually upon brand new virgin soil, as it were, of the new creation. In Christ, a new creation.

Now, this next part, Roger and I had a discussion about. And the only reason I'm bringing it up is because we are, one of the doctrinal things that we face is what I call reformed theology. And what reformed theology tries to convince us about is the fact that the church is just an extension of Israel. And so all the things that are true of Israel are true of us. We've gotta live under the commandments and all of those kinds of things. It doesn't allow for resurrection life, new creation.

So there's gonna be people who are saved in the millennial kingdom. Are they gonna be just like you and me? Members of the new creation? So let's identify them. I'm gonna call them millennial saints. And a millennial saint is generally a person of the earth. That's one of the differences. They're a man of this order of the earth in the millennium, and they're understood that their status, when you understand that about them, their status is a little easier to understand what's going on. And the millennial saint, Well, yeah, let me do it that way. The millennial saint is born of water and the Spirit, right? He believes in Christ. He believes in the eternal redemption effected for him in the presence of God.

All his sins have been carried into the line of forgetfulness. Remember the two goats every year with the Jews? The escaped goat and the other one was a sacrificial goat, the escaped goat, they put all, the chief rabbi put his hand on the head and transferred all the sins of Israel to the goat and they sent him out in the desert and he never came back. That's gonna be true of them. He's assured by the presence of Melchizedek that God has given him the things on the earth to possess.

Besides this, the law's gonna be written in his heart. I will put my laws in their heart and their minds. Will I write them? This new millennial saint not only delights in the law of God, but it's his nature to do so. He doesn't even have resistance to it because he has a law in his heart. And the Holy Spirit will be the one who maintains him in that. This new saint, he loves God with all his heart, his neighbor as himself, while touching all the commandments and ordinances of the law. He's blameless, he's free of any fear of death and judgment. He's assured by the presence of Christ who has the keys to death and hell. And all the sacrifices he calls to mind the death of Christ as the only ground and security for his blessing. When we have a true idea of this saint, I think we're ready to say that there cannot be anything more.

Most Christians with reformed thinking think that this is where we're headed. The fact is that Christians generally, they don't think generally beyond this point. So let's take a look at this, what a Christian is, what you and I are. Number one, we're not after the flesh. And we're not earthly people. We're heavenly and we're spiritual. As is the heavenly such as they also that are heavenly.

There's nothing of the first man of any nature or quality. Christ is everything and in all. No one can comprehend the nature and quality of the Christian, but as he apprehends the nature and quality of the Lord Jesus. I had a man tell me when I was a young believer, he said, you know, when you get in Paul's epistles and you start reading about the wonders of the Lord Jesus, you're also reading about yourself, your position in Christ. We know that because the children were partakers of flesh and blood that the Lord Jesus also, himself took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil. So the Lord Jesus became a man, that through death he might make in himself a twosome, which was a twosome, Jew and Gentile, into one new man. So making peace. So we as believers are men and women of an entirely new and different order of things with different tastes.

The great exercise of a Christian is to be able to discern what's of Christ and what isn't of him. There is nothing to correct or improve the new man. There's nothing you can correct or improve Jesus about. And because we're in him, your position can't be improved or corrected. As we put on Christ, we put on the new man.

The believer finds that even what was gained to him As in Adam, he must count it for loss because it's not of Christ. He can be amiable. He can have the best natural virtue that any man could possibly have. Problem is, it's not Christ. And it's only as Christ is formed in us as believers that we're able to be kept by the power of God that we can even resist the flesh, but we can. The flesh in the Christian is unaltered. Your flesh is no different than the non-believers. It is the thing it is. It does the thing it does. It always desires. It never stops desiring. So it's unalterable.

And consequently, if I don't walk in the Spirit as a believer, I can be carried away by the flesh, because it's in me, but it's not part of me. As Christ is in us, the traits of the old nature are kept in abeyance. And his consequence is good, he's sanctified, but we're still the same person, the same person. A believer like us who's led by the Spirit is a manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, Him. He surpasses any kind of millennial kingdom saint. He magnifies the law of God. All the duties and trusting of the man and the flesh and all the ordinances of God are better fulfilled by the Christian than any millennial saint. Under the law, there is very little direction as to domestic duties, except that children should obey their parents.

While the man in Christ is most ideal in the home circle, as we see in Ephesians 5 and 6, where he gives explicit instructions about what a believer in Christ, how he is to live because of this new life that he has. The issue really boils down to us in terms of practicalness. The nearer I am to God, the more I answer to every desire that's in his heart. And this, thank God, is the Christian's par excellence.

That's what we get to do. In closing, I need not add that the Christian is a man altogether suited to God. just as a Son. And where did the Son come from? He came out from the bosom of the Father. And He went back there and He took us with Him. He is a man after God's own pleasure, and so are we, because we're in Him.

And we live totally under His grace. Totally. We are of Him. We're a new man. And as we walk in the power of the Spirit, we glorify God and our bodies which belong to him. So let's close. Father, how we thank. are so thankful that you're careful to teach us the unsearchable riches that we possess in your son, the Lord Jesus, in all aspects. But more importantly, we would desire to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus and be able to abide in him as new men resurrected in Christ and to behold his glory and be conformed to his very image. so that we would be in condition, walking around more pleasing to you than we are today. And that's all made possible by the fact that you raised us up in Christ and we're new creations and we're suited out for it. And we thank you, Father. We pray in your son's precious name, amen.