New Creation in Christ: What Actually Changed in You

What does it mean to be a new creation in Christ?

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV)

When Paul says that a person in Christ is a new creature, he is describing something that happened to you and not something you are working toward. The verse does not say that you are a forgiven version of your old self, and it does not say that the old things are being managed, patched up, or kept under control. It says that old things are passed away and that all things are become new, and I take that verse phrase by phrase on the page about what 2 Corinthians 5:17 means.

The word Paul chose for “new” matters a great deal. Greek has two common words for new, and the first, neos, means new in time, the way an updated version of the same thing is new. The second, kainos, means new in kind, something of a different quality that did not exist before at all, and Paul uses kainos, so when you were born again God did not renovate the old you or hand your old nature an upgrade but brought into being someone who had never existed before.

I do not say this as a theory, because it happened to me. I was eighteen and had been going to church for years without being born again, and one day in a trailer in my backyard I asked God to rip an addiction to weed and nicotine out of me. The next morning I woke up a different person who desired the Bible, worship music, and church, and nobody had taught me to want them, which is what it means to be a new creation: something was born in me that wanted the things of God.

Where did your old nature come from, and what happened to it?

"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin."Romans 6:6 (KJV)

To see what changed, you have to see what you started with. God made Adam holy, with a righteous spirit that carried His image, and when Adam obeyed the devil instead of God, something died that day that could not be seen, which was his spirit. After that every child was born in the image of the father who bore him, because Genesis says that Adam “begat a son in his own likeness, after his image,” so the nature passed from father to son all the way down to you.

That means you were not a sinner because you sinned; you sinned because you were a sinner, having inherited that nature, and Paul says that by one man’s disobedience “many were made sinners.” The old man in the Bible is that inherited nature, which is my old spirit, and it is not my body and it is not my personality. Paul tells us what happened to him, which is that he was crucified with Christ, so the old man is not sick, sleeping, or merely weakened but dead.

That is the best news a believer can hear, because it means the very thing in you that ever wanted to sin is gone. Nothing in the real you wants to sin anymore, and what still reaches for those things is only the part of you on the outside that remembers what it used to get from them.

How did you become a new creation?

"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever."1 Peter 1:23 (KJV)

You became a new creation by being born again, and the way it happened matters. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and Jesus was born with a living spirit, and in the same way the new life came into you from above, from a new Father, by the life and breath of the Holy Ghost. Your first birth gave you Adam’s nature through Adam’s seed, and your second birth gave you God’s nature through His incorruptible seed, which is the Word of God.

Forgiveness alone could never have done this, because you can forgive a dead man and he is still dead, and the Law could restrain a nature but could not change one. So Jesus did not only die for you; He died as you, going all the way down into the death you were in, and God “hath quickened us together with Christ.” When He came up He brought you up with Him, so your dead spirit was not patched or excused but replaced with a spirit that had been born from the dead.

What you received is a nature, and not merely an ability or a desire to be righteous. Paul says it as plainly as it can be said: “ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.” I was not just living in sin but was sin, and now I am righteousness, which is not an opinion of myself that I invented but simply what God did.

What changed when you were born again, and what did not?

"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."1 Thessalonians 5:23 (KJV)

God made you in three parts, spirit, soul, and body, and only one of them was born again. Your spirit was the part that was dead, so your spirit is the part God made new, and He made it new righteous. He did not hand you a new body or a brand-new soul, which is why you woke up the morning after you were born again living in the same body and thinking with the same soul as the day before.

The whole picture, then, is that your spirit is complete, righteous, and alive, your soul is being renewed, and your body is waiting to be redeemed. Paul says to “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” and you do not have to renew something that is already brand new, so that work belongs to the soul and not to your born-again spirit. You can read more about the three parts on the page about spirit, soul, and body and about the soul’s side of it on renewing your mind.

Your new spirit is also protected, because Paul says that “your life is hid with Christ in God.” The enemy can pressure your soul with fear, offense, and doubt, but he cannot touch the part of you that is hidden in Christ, and he cannot corrupt what God has made new.

If I am a new creation, why do I still struggle with old habits?

"And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."Ephesians 4:24 (KJV)

This is the question every honest believer eventually asks, and the answer in the book is that the habits outlived the man. Your flesh was trained for years on the old nature, so it learned to get pleasure, relief, and comfort in specific ways, and it remembers them. Paul describes the old man as a garment to be put off, and an old work coat hanging on a peg still holds the shape of the man who wore it even though nobody is inside it anymore.

That is why feeling the pull of an old habit does not mean the old man is alive; it means your flesh remembers what it was trained to do. When I was first born again, many of my old habits were habits of how I saw myself, like looking in the mirror and looking away quickly, because the old man had taught me for years that nobody enjoyed my presence. None of that came from my new spirit, since it was only the old man’s shape still hanging in my flesh.

The good news is that you cannot retrain a man who is alive and in charge, but you can retrain a body whose old master is dead. You are not fighting a civil war against yourself, because you are teaching a student who had the wrong teacher for a very long time, and I go through that more fully on the pages about habitual sin and putting off the old man.

How does a new creation grow?

A new creation grows the way a seed grows, by receiving and not by striving. Peter says you were born of incorruptible seed, and Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that is less than all the seeds in the earth but “becometh greater than all herbs.” It may look small at the beginning, but it is small only in appearance and not in nature, because the seed is perfect and what is still growing is its expression.

That is why you cannot judge what God did in you by what you see in your life this week. The seed does not need to be made alive, since it already is, and your part is to tend the ground it grows in by receiving the Word, praying in tongues, fasting, and worship, until the new nature overshadows the old patterns and they no longer rule the field.

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Keep reading

• 2 Corinthians 5:17 Meaning: Reading the Verse Phrase by Phrase
• Spirit, Soul, and Body: What the Bible Says About the Three Parts of You
• Sinner Saved by Grace: Is That What You Are Now?
• Habitual Sin: Why You Keep Sinning and How the Pattern Breaks