CHRIST THE MAKER OF ALL THINGS NEW – Charles Spurgeon

CHRIST THE MAKER OF ALL THINGS NEW

Introduction
“Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17.
We shall try to preach this morning of Christ as the Author of the new creation, and may we be enabled by the Holy Spirit to speak to His glory. To create all things new is one of His most famous achievements! May we not only gaze upon it but also be partakers in it.

The Newness of Christ’s Work
What says Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes? Does he not tell us that “the thing that has been shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun”? No doubt Solomon was correct in this declaration, but he wrote of this world and not of the world to come, of which we speak. For behold, in the world to come—in the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ—all things are new! To the wisest mind, if unrenewed, there is nothing new, but to the humblest of the regenerated ones, all things have become new.

The Name and Work of Jesus
The word “new” seems to harmonize sweetly with the name and work of our Lord Jesus, inasmuch as He comes after the old system had failed and begins anew with us as the Father and Head of a chosen race. He is the Mediator of the new covenant and has come to place us in a new relationship toward God. As the second Adam, He has delivered us from the old broken covenant of Works, wherein we lay under the curse, and He has placed us under the new infallible covenant of grace, wherein we are established by His merit. The blood of Jesus Christ is said to be “the blood of the new covenant”—there is thus a connection with newness even in the most vital point of our dear Redeemer’s person. The blood is to Him the life thereof, and apart from that blood, He can bestow no remission of sin.

Christ’s Role in the New Creation
Thus, there is newness about that essential life-flood, for when He gives us to drink of His cup of remembrance, He says, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” “Now has He obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much, also, He is the Mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.” The old covenant, the old ceremonial law, the old spirit of bondage, and the whole of the old leaven, Jesus has purged out of the house. He has admitted us into a new dispensation wherein grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life.

The New Birth of Jesus Christ
When our Lord Jesus came into the world, His birth of a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit was a new thing. For thus had the prophet Jeremiah said of old in the name of the Lord, “How long will you go about, O you backsliding daughter? For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth, a woman shall compass a man.” Unto us a child is born, who is the virgin’s son, in whom we do rejoice because He comes into the world without the taint of original sin, in a new way, as never man was born before! Coming thus into the old world, He publishes new doctrine, for His doctrine is called gospel, or good news. It is the freshest news that an anxious heart can hear! It is the most novel music by which a troubled breast can be soothed.

The New Kingdom of Christ
Jesus Christ’s teaching is still the best news of these days, as it was centuries ago. Though the world has had nearly 1900 years of the glad tidings, the gospel has the dew of its youth upon it. When men hear it, they still ask, as the Greeks did of old, “What new doctrine is this?” Our Lord Jesus has come to set up, by the preaching and teaching of the gospel, a new kingdom—a kingdom having new laws, new customs, a new charter, and new riches. It is a kingdom that is not of this world—a kingdom founded upon better principles and bringing infinitely better results to its subjects than any other dominion that has ever been. Into that kingdom, He introduces only new men, who are made new creatures in Christ Jesus, who therefore love His new commandments and serve Him in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

A New Way to God
Moreover, Christ has opened for us an entrance into the kingdom of heaven above, for now we come to God “by a new and living way, which He has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.” When, in days to come, we shall meet Him again, there will still be novelty, for He has said, “I will not drink from now on of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” Indeed, concerning our Lord and Master, everything is new. Was it not so prophesied? For did not Isaiah say, in the 43rd chapter, 18th verse, “Remember you not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it?” And to the same effect was his prophecy in the 65th chapter, 17th verse: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.”

The Newness of All Things
This newness of everything was to be a leading feature in Messiah’s reign, and it has already been so, but far more shall this be seen in the latter days. Does not John in Revelation 21:5 say, “He who sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new”? Foretold in former ages as the Creator of new heavens and a new earth, our Lord shall, at last, in the summing up, be plainly seen to be the Maker of all things new.

The New Creation in Christ
Do you wonder, beloved, that if a man is in Christ, he is a new creature? If everything that Christ touches is made new, if He refreshes and revives, if He re-establishes and re-edifies, and new-creates wherever He goes, are you at all astonished that those who live nearest to His heart—no, are in vital union with His blessed person—should also be made new? It would be very astonishing if it were not so!

The Ground of Newness
Let us direct our attention, then, to the teaching of the text, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.” We shall first consider with brevity the ground of the novelty which is here spoken of. It is, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature,” not otherwise. No man comes to be a new creature by any process apart from Christ. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature,” but if any man is not in Christ, he is not a new creature, nor can he become so except by connection with Him of whom it is written that He is “the beginning of the creation of God.” As in the old creation, “without Him was not anything made that was made,” so is it in the new! He makes all things new, but the things that are apart from Him have waxed old and are ready to perish—neither can they renew their youth. As well might the face of the earth hope to be renewed with spring apart from the sun, as for a soul to hope for spiritual renewal apart from Jesus!

The Role of the Holy Spirit
The wonderful newness produced by regeneration and new creation is the work of the Holy Spirit, and His operations are all in union with the Lord Jesus and aimed at His glory. “He that believes on the Son has everlasting life: and He that believes not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” But how comes it that a man is indeed a new creature if he is in Christ? I answer, first, it comes necessarily from the representative character of Christ toward those who are in Him.

Christ’s Death and Resurrection
If you wanted a man to be made a new creature, and were Omnipotent, what process would suggest itself to you? I think a double one. To make an old creature into a new creature, there must first be the stroke which ends him and then the touch which begins him anew. To put it more plainly, there must be death and then life. Now, has that taken place upon those who are in Christ? Of course, it has, if it has taken place upon Christ Himself because He is the Head and represents the members! As Adam acted for the seed in him, so Christ has acted for the seed in Him. See, then, beloved, Christ has died. He came before the judgment seat with our sins upon Him, the representative of those of whom He is the Head. And in Him, death, which was the penalty of sin, was fulfilled to the letter—its most bitter dregs being drunk up. Jesus died.

Our Union with Christ
We are certain that He died, for the executioners broke not His legs because they saw that He was already dead. So one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and there came out blood and water. We know that He died, for the jealous eyes of His enemies would not have permitted Him to have been taken down from the cross unless the life had assuredly departed. He was laid in the grave, assuredly dead, under the dominion of death for the time being, and you and I who are in Him, at that time, died in Him. “If one died for all, then all died”—such is the proper translation of that passage. We died, for He died in our name. Our sin was punished in Him by the death which He endured.

The Resurrection of Christ
You see, then, brothers and sisters, we are dead—dead by virtue of our federal union with Jesus Christ. I mean not all of you, unless you are all in Christ Jesus. Judge whether it is so with you or not, but I mean as many as the Father gave to Christ! As many as Christ, in His intent, did specially redeem by becoming their substitute—these were in Him and in Him they died—being crucified with Him. In Him, also, all His people rose again when He rose! On the third day He burst the bonds of death and left the grave on our behalf!

Newness of Life in Christ
See how the Holy Spirit, by His servant Paul, identifies us with all this. “Now if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him: knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death has no more dominion over Him, for in that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He lives, He lives unto God. Likewise reckon you, also, yourselves to be dead, indeed, unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” As far as He was our representative, He was a new man when He rose. The law had no claims upon Him—He had been dead and so had passed out of its jurisdiction. The law never had any claim upon the risen Christ—it had a claim upon Him when He came under the law, but when He had satisfied it to the last jot and tittle, by death—He was completely clear!

Conclusion
Has the law of our country any claim upon a man after he is dead? If a dead man can be raised again, all his past offenses are done with—he begins a new life and is not under the old law. And so with Christ and so with us, for here is the point of union—we are risen with Him by faith of the resurrection of Christ. We have been dead and buried, and now we are risen. Thus, this, which is the very best and surest process for making a person a new creature, has been undergone by all God’s elect, by reason of the representative and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ and His glorious representative resurrection on their behalf!

The New Creation in Christ

Introduction
When we believe in Jesus, a sword goes through the very loins of sin, and the arrows of the Lord stick fast in the hearts of the King’s enemies that lurk within our spirit. There also comes a new life into us as we behold Jesus risen from the dead. When we believe in Jesus, we receive from God a new vital principle of superior and heavenly character, akin to Deity. There drops into our soul a sacred seed from the hand of the eternal Spirit, living and incorruptible, which abides forever—and forever brings forth fruit after its kind. As we believe in Christ living, we live in Christ and live after the fashion of Christ—and the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ from the dead dwells in our mortal bodies, making us to live in newness of life!

The New Creation in Christ
Now, beloved, do you know anything about this? Have you been made new creatures by death and resurrection? If you have been baptized, you have professed that so it has been with you. “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we, also, should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.” In the ordinance of baptism, by burial in the water and rising up from it, there is a setting forth, as in a type and figure, of our Lord’s burial and resurrection, and at the same time, it is an emblem of the process by which we become new creatures in Him. But is it really so in your souls? Are you, from now on, dead to the world, and dead to sin, and quickened into the life of Christ? If you are so, then the text will bear to you a third and practical meaning, for it will not merely be true that your old man is condemned to die and a new nature is bestowed, but in your common actions, you will try to show this by newness of actual conversation. Evils which tempted you at one time will be unable to beguile you now because you are dead to them! The charms of the painted face of the world will no longer attract your attention, for your eyes are blind to such deceitful beauties! You have obtained a new life which can only be satisfied by new delights, which can only be excited by new objects, and constrained by new principles suitable to its own nature! This you will continually show. The life of God within you will make your actions pregnant with holiness, and the end thereof shall be everlasting life! Your faith in Christ clearly evinces you to be a new creature, for it kills your old confidences and makes you build upon a new basis. Your love to Christ also shows your newness, for it has slain your old actions and captured your heart for Jesus only. And your hope, which is also a gift of the blessed Spirit, is set upon new things altogether, while your old hopes are things of which you are now ashamed.

The Legal and Vital Process
Thus it is that first, by the headship of Christ, you are legally dead and alive again. Next, by your vital union with Christ, you are dead and alive again, as a matter of experience. And now it is practically proven in your life, from day to day, that you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. In all these three ways, you are new creatures by the double process of dying and quickening. You are under a new Adam and so start life afresh as new creatures. You are under a new covenant and commence to act under different principles and so are new creatures. You are quickened by a new Spirit, and so in thought and word and deed are seen to be new creatures. But all this is in Christ, and if you are not in Christ, you are still in the old world, which must shortly be destroyed. As “by the Word of God were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth,” so have you been created by Jesus, the Eternal Word, and quickened by His Spirit, or else you still abide in death. If your faith has never laid her hand upon Christ’s sacrifice for sin, then your soul has never felt the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit! And all the baptismal regeneration and all else of human invention that may now comfort you is but a vain deceit. You must be born again, but it can only be in Christ Jesus, for to “as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” “He that has the Son has life; and He that has not the Son of God has not life.” O that we may all believe in Him and enter into the new life— “Author of the new creation, Come with all Your Spirit’s power! Make our hearts Your habitation, On our souls Your graces shower.”

The Essence of the Novelty
II. I shall, in the second place, lead you to consider the essence of this novelty. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.” Read, and the reading will be accurate, “He is a new creation.” This is a very sweeping statement. A man in Christ is not the old man purified, nor the old man improved, nor the old man in a better humor, nor the old man with additions and subtractions! Nor is he the old man dressed in gorgeous robes! No, he is a new creature altogether! As for the old man, what is to be done with him? Can he not be sobered, reformed and made to do us useful service? No, he is crucified with Christ and bound to die by a lingering but certain death! The capital sentence is passed upon him, for he cannot be mended and, therefore, must be ended. “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be.” You cannot change the old nature! It is immutably bad and the sooner it is put away as a filthy and unclean thing, the better for us! The believer, so far as he is in Christ, is a new creation! He is not the old stuff put into a new fashion, or the old material worked up into an improved form, but absolutely a new creation! To create is to make out of nothing, and that is precisely how the newborn life came into us. It is not a development, or an outgrowth, but a creation—a heavenly something called into being by a power from above. The new man in us is made out of nothing that was in us before, for nature does not assist grace but is opposed to it. Christ has not found light stored away in our darkness, nor life amid the corruption of our spiritual death! The new birth is from above and the life produced thereby is a new creation and not the goodness of nature educated till it becomes grace! They are getting up a notion, in certain quarters, that the children of pious parents, if not of all mankind, are the children of God by their first birth and only need certain training and influences to be brought to bear upon them, and then they will develop into Christians as they grow up into manhood and womanhood. One divine says that our children ought not to need conversion! This theory is false throughout, for the best of children are, by nature, heirs of wrath even as others! The grace of God in the soul is a new creation and not the natural development of a pious education and training working upon the innate goodness of men! Indeed there is no such goodness there at all! It is altogether a dream! The new man in Christ is not the old creature washed and put out to school and elevated by “modern thought and culture.” No, the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor can the leopard his spots—do what you will with them—they will still be an Ethiopian and a leopard! But the new man in Christ is another creature altogether. Mark you, it is not said that the man has something new about him, but he, himself, is new! It is not merely that in a spiritual sense he has new eyes, new hands, and new feet—but he, he, he, he, himself, is a new creation! Mark that! Do you not see, then, that salvation is the work of God? You cannot create yourself and you cannot create anything at all! Try and create a fly first, and then you may dream of being able to create a new heart and a right spirit in another person! But even then it would be quite another matter to new-create yourself. Is not the very idea an absurdity? Shall nothing create something? Shall darkness create light? Shall sin create holiness? Shall death create life? Shall the devil create God? None of these questions are more absurd than the idea of the sinner’s being able to new-create himself. No, beloved, regeneration is an extraordinary work, demanding omnipotence to accomplish it! It is, in fact, a divine work, for it is the supreme prerogative of God to create— “Know that the Lord is God alone, He can create, and He destroy.”

The Nature of the New Creation
If any man is in Christ, it is not only said that he is a creation, but a new creation, and the word here translated, “new,” as has been well observed, does not signify recent, but something altogether different from that which previously existed! A book may be new, and yet it may be only a fresh copy of some old work. But that is not the case in this instance. The creature is not a new specimen of the same kind as the old, but another and different creation! We might almost read the text as if it said, “If any man is in Christ, he is a fresh creation, a new kind of creature altogether.” The new creation differs essentially from the old, although the first is an instructive emblem of the second. The first creation was the work of physical power, the second a work of spiritual power—the first created, for the most part, materialism in its various forms—but the new creation deals with spiritual things and manifests the most sublime attributes of the divine character. God, in nature, is glorious, but in grace He is all-glorious! The second is a creation nearer to the heart of God than the first creation was, for when He made the world He simply said it was good. But when He makes the new creation, it is written, “He shall rest in His love; He shall rejoice over you with singing.” So gladdening to His heart is the sight of the new creature which His grace has made, that He sings a joyful hymn!

The Result of the New Creation
IV. Fourthly, let us consider the result of this novelty. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.” Well, the result of this novelty is, first, that the man is already a great wonder to himself. You know the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls—the soul passing, first, into one body and then into another—and so existing under different conditions. We do not believe that fiction for a moment, but if it had been true, the memories of such souls must have been stored with varied information, surpassingly strange to hear. Ours is another transformation. It is death and resurrection—the old passing away and the new being created—and how remarkable are the experiences of the men who have been so transformed! Here is a man who is a new creature and he has a very distinct recollection of the time when he was something far other than he is now! What a change he has undergone! Suppose a swine could suddenly be turned into a man and yet remember what it did when it was one of the herd! What an experience it would have to tell! If you could take a hog from the trough and turn it into an emperor, that would not be half so great a change as is accomplished when an unregenerated sinner becomes a saint! I guarantee you the emperor would not find much cause for glorifying in his former swinish state! He would be silent and ashamed when others mentioned it. If he alluded to that state, it would always be with the blushes of humiliation and the tears of gratitude. If anybody began to talk about it and he knew that there might be others about him that might be helped by hearing what the Lord had done, he would begin to tell, in a gentle, modest way, how the Lord transformed him from a swine into a monarch. But he would never, never boast—how could he? In such a case, the poor swine would have no responsibility and could not be blamed for wallowing in the mire. But this cannot be said of us, for when we acted as swine we knew better and sinned willfully. Still, what a change it is! How I wonder at myself! How I marvel at the goodness of my God! How I adore that sacred power which has made me the child of two births, the subject of two creations! He first made me in the fashion of a man and then made me in the image of the man, Christ Jesus! I was first born to die, and then born to live eternally! Let us bless God and be full of lowly wonder this morning!

The Longing for the New Creation
The next result of this new creation is, however, that the man does not feel at home in this present evil world, for this is the old creation. The new man, the twice-born man, feels as if he were out of his element and not in a congenial country. He dwells in a body which is nothing better than a frail, uncomfortable, easily removed tent in which he groans, earnestly desiring to enter his own house at home, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Wherever he goes, things seem out of order with the rule which is set up in his soul. He loves not the world, neither the things in the world. The world’s glories do not charm him and its treasures do not enchant him. Earth’s music grates upon his refined ears, which are tuned to heavenly harmony! Its dainties do not delight the taste which has learned to enjoy the Bread of heaven. The new creatures pine to be in the new creation! And beloved, while we are pining we are preparing! The Spirit of God is working us to this same thing and filling us with groans and pangs of strong desires which indicate that we are becoming more and more fit to be partakers with the saints in light—they who see the face of the beloved without a veil and drink in ever-new delights!

Charles Spurgeon