On Being a New Creation

The word “create” and its variations are used somewhat frequently throughout the Bible.  If you use some sort of Bible software (Biblegateway.com, E-Sword) you can search and you will find that in the majority of instances, it is speaking of God and His creating the world and all that is in it.  In all of these cases, whether it is in the Old Testament or New, Hebrew or Greek, there is a definite meaning to the word “create.”  We have the exact same meaning in English.  Webster’s Dictionary defines the word as follows:

“To Cause to come into existence; bring into being.”

Although there are other meanings, this is the primary meaning, and the same goes for the word when used in the Bible.  To created assumes that one is not simply changing something that exists into something else.  It is producing something where there was nothing before.  When God created the Heavens and the Earth, he did not simply rearrange what existed, he made them from nothing.  When God created the plants and animals of the world, he did not rearrange what already existed, he created them new.  When God created man, he may have produced man’s body from the dust he already created, but the soul and the human intellect and mind were brand new creations. 

One of the few cases (the only I found, not necessarily the only one in existence) in which the Bible uses create when referring to man and not God is in Romans 16.

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.
[Rom 16:17 ESV]

Even in this case, those who create obstacles are creating them from nothing.  God did not give us teachings that set up Obstacles, we in our sin create them.  Even in this case, the word create means to bring somthing into existence.  To bring into being from nothing. 

That is what the word create means and we cannot get around the word create when the Holy Spirit uses through the writer’s of the Bible.  When King David says in Psalm 51 “Create in me a clean heart”  he is not saying that his heart needs to be cleaned.  Nothing in his heart is good enough to carry on, he needs a brand new one, a clean one that can only be created by God himself.  We too are sinful and our natural hearts too are not worthy of having anything to do with a Holy God.  We too need to beg God to create a clean heart in us. 

Fortunately God hears our prayers for a clean heart and is Happy to answer them. 

to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
[Eph 4:22-24 ESV]

God creates for us a new self, created after what our old selves could never match, what our old selves could not even tolerate, the true righteousness and holiness of God.  We are given this new self and the old, filthy, sinful self is given what he deserves, death.  The old self is drowned in the waters of our Baptism and our new self created by God Rises.  There is no good in our old selves, there is no way for our old self to come to Christ and work towards our own salvation.  The Old Adam’s only destiny is Death:

How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
[Rom 6:2-4 ESV]

We are told even more clearly in Ephesians 2 that in Christ we are a new creation in Christ:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
[Eph 2:10 ESV]

He made us a new creation, not because we have done good works, not because we have earned or deserved it, or even because we asked for it.  The Old Adam, he who has no future but the wages of his sin, is not capable of any of these things.  It is only the new creation that can do the good works that God has prepared for us to do.  It is only the new creation that will walk in the path God has laid out for him. 

What a blessing and comfort it is to be a new creation in God’s sight.  To know that we have been created in “true righteousness and holiness.”  The true righteousness and holiness that comes to us only from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

SOLI DEO GLORIA