Missed Question From 6.13.21 Q&R

Something glitched in our text messaging service this week and there was a question that came in after the Q&R time was over. It was a good question, I want to do my best at addressing it .

I understand there’s a new heart desire for wanting better when saved. But if we all continuously struggle with sin, can we really call ourselves a new creation?

I think this is a great question with an easy answer and a more complicated answer. The easy answer is that since the Bible calls us new creations in Christ, we should be able to do that as well.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

I think the more complicated answer is helpful though. There is a real sense of tension in this question that, if we’re honest, I think we all feel. I believe that I have been saved by Jesus but so often I find myself living in patterns of thought and action that look more like the life I have been saved from than the life that I want to be saved for. There are probably a lot of ways to think about that, but Paul has some thoughts that are helpful in the context of the passage in 2 Corinthians.

Therefore, since we have this ministry because we were shown mercy, we do not give up. Instead, we have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone’s conscience by an open display of the truth. But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake. For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:1-6)

Paul is talking about his role as someone called to share the good news about Jesus with others. He ends this passage with a clear reference to Genesis 1 and likens the light that shines in the creation to the light of the knowledge of who Jesus is. Paul links the creation event in Genesis with something that goes on in our hearts when we begin to trust in Christ.

Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh. So then, death is at work in us, but life in you. And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore speak. For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you. Indeed, everything is for your benefit so that, as grace extends through more and more people, it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.

Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:7-18)

Paul continues through the end of chapter 4 talking about how hard his ministry is but how because he has been rescued by God he has to get this message out. It is too precious to keep to himself and even though his life is hard right now he is looking forward to a forever kind of life that is so much better.

For we know that if our earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal dwelling in the heavens, not made with hands. Indeed, we groan in this tent, desiring to put on our heavenly dwelling, since, when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. Indeed, we groan while we are in this tent, burdened as we are, because we do not want to be unclothed but clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment. (2 Corinthians 5:1-5)

Paul’s train of thought continues in chapter 5. He begins talking about our physical bodies suffering and wearing out and how we are looking forward to new, eternal bodies. God is the one that is preparing us for these new creation bodies and he has given us the Holy Spirit living inside of us now, as a down payment.

The down payment language is helpful. A down payment on a house or a car gets you the house or the car. You still owe on it, so it’s not technically all yours yet. You haven’t completely come into the ownership of the thing, but you are on your way to it. In Paul’s case it’s a bit of the reverse. God has given us a down payment and it’s almost like he’s the one paying the mortgage to us, slowly forming us into these new creations that he has promised that we will fully be someday.

So we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. In fact, we are confident, and we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. Therefore, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to be pleasing to him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (2 Corinthians 5:6-10)

Whenever I pay my mortgage (which I just got this year) I think about how much money I owe and how little it seems like I am paying it down with each payment. I know however that if I make my payments, over the course of 30 years, in the end I will fully own my house. In a similar way, God is “making payments” into our new creation state. It’s what the Bible calls sanctification. Even though as each day goes by I often feel like I am stuck in the same patterns of sin that I have often struggled with, I have been promised this new creation by God and I can trust, by faith like Paul says, that when my time is up, I will have been fully made new.

Paul recognizes that we don’t always walk in that new creation way. We don’t act like we own the house so to speak, and we will be held accountable for that. We will not be punished as though God hasn’t bought us by the blood of Christ, but we will give an answer for what we do in this life. So Paul can say “we make it our aim to be pleasing to him.” That’s the goal, we don’t always hit it as the questioner points out, but that should be a mark of the trajectory that our life is on: to please Christ.

Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your consciences. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to be proud of us, so that you may have a reply for those who take pride in outward appearance rather than in the heart. For if we are out of our mind, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ compels us, since we have reached this conclusion, that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised.

From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:11-21)

Paul ends the chapter with more reasons why he tells everyone he can the good news about Jesus. All of creation is being made new, “reconciled” is the word that he uses here, and all people can get in on it by putting their trust in Jesus. Jesus became sin, was fully absorbed into the tehom from Genesis 1:2 so to speak, so that we, who are in our natural state trending toward disorder and chaos, can be made the “righteousness of God” which is Paul’s way of saying new, holy, set apart, or as God frequently says in the creation story in Genesis, “good.”

I know that was a lot, but I hope that helps answer the question. When the Bible talks about us as God’s people, it often sees us not as we see ourselves now, but as God sees us, completely new in the future. Hopefully that helps us to be patient with ourselves as we struggle with sin, but also to be kind and patient with others that are on similar journeys as well.