Important Truths About Our New Creation
The death and resurrection of Christ secure reconciliation, wash away condemnation, and call believers into a life of faith, surrender, and spiritual struggle.
Indeed, every difficulty standing before us that prevents us from uniting with Christ and accepting our existence in Him and receiving our new creation from Him for a new life, is an illusory difficulty based on the self’s clinging to its old existence, attached to sin. This means that the self evades voluntary death so as not to accept Christ as an alternative existence for itself. Therefore, it clings to sin, considering it an opportunity and a sufficient reason to distance man from Christ, and a sufficient reason—according to the old logic—to deprive man of the other life. And thus, it avoids voluntary death to remain itself instead of Christ.
And here it is necessary for us to pay attention to these truths:
Indeed, the death of Christ lifted the sentence of death from us. Therefore, the mere presence of Christ in us through baptism and communion is a process of justification, redemption, and reconciliation, whereby sin loses its authority. The deadly law of sin, active and manifest in the members, has become a continuous self-reproach and rebuke, working to facilitate the transition from a life according to the flesh to a life according to the Spirit. Its effect is lifted by repentance and remorse, along with appropriate discipline according to the Church’s guidance, but sin never rises to the death penalty.
For the body of sin, in which the curse and death were concentrated, and which is now represented by the human self inclined towards it, has indeed been crucified with Christ and died, and the sentence of death and the curse were fulfilled in it on the cross.
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” — Romans 6:6
Meaning the curse no longer resides in it.
For the new man in spirit, it is no longer correct to say that it is merely upon man receiving the new creation with Christ in us that the old man becomes nothing but a dead body relative to the new spiritual entity, because the law of the curse of death has ceased to have an effective impact in it. Moreover, the body has also become dead—meaning it has actually completed the punishment of death and has become without value in terms of Satan’s threat. For sin, even if it still works in it, does not possess the power to condemn it to eternal death. He who died with Christ has been acquitted of sin, and he lives instead. The new man is in Christ and by Christ. And the grave is the end of this body; it is his baptism, the last act which is completed, by which everything in him is worked upon, causing the loss of the last of what remained in him of faults and permanent sins from the cross. He takes the whole body completely, in order that he may be in the image of Christ’s body.
So we now no longer await any sentence of death after He bestowed upon us a second life by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and we received our new creation by Christ and in Christ by faith in baptism and the Eucharist. The sentence of death has been completed in us as a full penalty for all sins—retroactively and in the future—because Christ died for all, and then all died in Him, a new resurrection that does not die anymore. And it is impossible, after we have executed the sentence of death with Christ on the cross, that it be repeated upon us a second time in any circumstances or any kind of penalty, because the death that Christ died He died for sin once:
“Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has dominion over Him.” — Romans 6:9
But this does not mean that because humanity is reborn a second time by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, every person has completed their salvation automatically without being united with Christ who died and rose. Rather, its meaning is that He has taken all the justifications, means, and facts and prepared them for every person by rebirth. For if this salvation, whose price has been paid dearly, were not to become our share, we would not benefit from it but would fall short of it. For Christ bore the sins of every person in the whole world in His body on the cross, and paid the price of redemption for every person with His blood. But no one will benefit from this who does not take Christ for himself and to himself, to derive from Him the judgment of innocence and the right to life and immortality. If we take Christ through the means of available grace—freely in our souls for ourselves—and He becomes our life, then only here do we benefit from the sentence of death which He bore for us; and in us, with Christ eternally, the power of resurrection from the dead which He accomplished for us and in us raises us with Him.
And if I eat His body, the resurrected one from the dead, this means that my sins, which He bore in His body and died in it—thereby raising me from it and establishing a new humanity for me—all my sins become non-existent and not accounted to me forever. And if I drink His blood, this means that His pure, holy blood, which He presented to the Father as a sacrifice, redemption, and reconciliation, is for the washing, sanctification, purification, redemption, and reconciliation of humanity with the Father.
“But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” — 1 Corinthians 6:11
This means that the presence of Christ in us—through His word, His Spirit, His body, and His blood—is the continuous guarantee for the completion of our new creation and our salvation. However, without Christ, and without His body and His blood, the works of Christ themselves become without any value, and they remain outside of us, not working in us. Therefore, we should never forget that without Christ, we remain rejected. However, our acceptance of Christ does not mean merely a verbal or intellectual faith, but rather it means accepting a new life in Christ with a new conduct and another presence by the Holy Spirit—other than our self-existence—because it includes accepting a real death and a real resurrection from our selves and the world. All these matters are not difficult or far from man; rather, they are granted to him freely through faith. If he accepts them, it is immediately; and if he finds them difficult or does not believe them, then they remain far from him and he remains deprived.
Indeed, the resurrection of Christ from the dead with a new life in the body He took from us is declared with the witness of the Holy Spirit, so that we may know that it is our resurrection and our life for all of us, and so that it becomes for us a positive, visible act working in our lives now—to be lived out every day and every moment, being all realization and certainty. For the life of Christ by faith, hope, and salvation is granted to us so that we may obtain our resurrection with Christ in the Spirit now; rather, it is a gift and a secret act, suitable for each one of us, granting faith at the time of “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
So if the power of Christ is a life in the core of our spiritual being that we seek to increase by the Word and the sacraments, then what about our acceptance of death also as an act, its work and effect regarding our daily lives from the perspective of the body of sin? Meaning that we consider ourselves every day alive from among the dead with Christ by faith, and with a living hope we live every day the fullness of the joy of resurrection with the feeling of those who are justified by the blood of Christ. Indeed, the power of the resurrection that flows in us is the cause of the joy of fellowship in the gratuitous resurrection of Christ, testifying to the power of death, or the mortification concerning sin, where sin can no longer separate us from Christ, nor ever deprive us of the blood of Christ, nor can it hide from us our full stature. For we will no longer commit a sin unto death; rather, if we sin, we will sin for discipline, rebuke, instruction, and warning—a sin capable of repentance and forgiveness, because we live with Christ.
And the good favor that Christ gained with the Father—after the obedience unto death, the reality of the cross, and His resurrection with the Father, and His sitting at the right hand of majesty in the heavens—is in reality and in essence a favor for us. Rather, we received it in the person of Christ to remain eternal. The Father gave it to us in what Christ came; a voice from heaven declared through it that the Father finds Himself in Christ. Christ alerted our minds that this response which came to Him from heaven is for us: “Not for My sake was this voice, but for your sake.” Therefore, we are standing firm and steadfast with Christ, so we are in a state of reconciliation and permanent peace with God, and in a state of abiding grace. We now have peace with God through Jesus Christ, by whom also access has now become ours to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope.
“And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” — 1 John 2:1
Therefore, if I am an existing advocate calling before a Father who interceded for the dead—the divine Judge—Christ as an intercessor means no one can complain against us. And Christ’s intercession is not arbitrary, but rather He paid the price of our sins Himself, and paid it for us because He saw that we were oppressed. By the resurrection of Christ from the dead, it carries in its meaning a complete, unconditional forgiveness and reconciliation. Through His only beloved Son, our judgment was made, we were made good, and our weakness was covered. So the gift is guaranteed by the guarantee of the incarnation of the Son of God in our body, and by the permanence of the resurrection of His Son in our body now in heaven, and firmly established by proof of the person of Jesus Christ as intercessor for us.
God is the one who took the initiative Himself, descending to us. He is the one who spoke and promised and became incarnate and completed all that is necessary for our salvation, renewal, justification, and sanctification, and granted all that from His side—without first stipulating or setting a single condition for us, while we were dead in sins and trespasses. He did not ask us for any request whatsoever. So the gift is beyond assurance, beyond sufficiency, beyond generosity, beyond kindness, beyond mercy.
A complete work God accomplished for us in the person of His only beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be for us a living reality and an object of faith and perspective, and a living hope that we live despite all our weakness and sin and wretchedness and humiliation in the present. For the new man is not the hope of humanity that it seeks behind the mirage and yearns for in its dark present, as some people think. Rather, it is its living hope that it lives with utmost trust and certainty, achieving its existence and being through faith and struggle and conduct in the heart of the present, where weakness and fear and death and sin are swallowed up into triumph and victory in the person of the conquering Jesus Christ, who completed all that openly and publicly, to be our permanent portion, if we hold fast to Him steadfastly until the end.
So we are conquerors and victorious in the person of Jesus Christ, despite our inability and shortcomings and our weakness, which Christ carries for us by His amazing love and self-denial and emptying of Himself, through which He still continues to carry all pains. Everyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame. Christ has guaranteed our salvation, our life, and our resurrection, if we hold fast to Him and keep His commandments and walk in His light. He is the guarantor of that by His own life and His own resurrection.
“Because I live, you will live also.” — John 14:19
Moreover, the guarantee of our salvation and eternal life is also related to the dignity of God the Father Himself, Who gave His Son so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, and the Son, for His part, obeyed even unto the cross, and tasted death by the grace of God for every one of us. So how, after that, can God break His promise or be unable to give us, along with Him, everything necessary for our salvation? Indeed, all the assurances and guarantees which God the Father gave us for our new birth and our new creation for a new life—which He completed for us in His Son with all wisdom and insight, so that they remain living and firm before our eyes, and whose price Christ paid with the sacrifice of Himself on the cross and by tasting death for every one, with all obedience and submission to the Father and all humility and abasement before humanity, even to scandal and shame, without any hesitation or complaint—all this, from God’s side, is accomplished. It is for us to turn to ourselves and ask: How do we respond to this from our side?
Indeed, were it not for the state of misery and distress we are in, and were it not for our being under rejection and punishment, and death ruling over us as part of our cursed inheritance from Adam; and were it not that in all of this, we are almost oppressed and beguiled by an evil authority working in our nature with a power that exceeds our will—it would be impossible to mention all this bitterness and all these tribulations and concessions in Himself. But He made us a new creation for Him, and in His revealed sufferings on the cross and His rising from the dead He stands as a permanent, eternal witness to the superiority of His mercy over the injustice that was woven for us, and to the superiority of His grace over the weakness of our nature which we inherited without our will, and to the superiority of His condescension over our brokenness, our humiliation, and our wretchedness which we endure without hope in ourselves.
So then, the injustice that we suffer from an irresistible enemy, and from our weakness and our sin which we inherited in this body of dust—all this is perceived by God with a scrutinizing, balanced, and deep gaze. It is answered with compassion that exceeds description and countered with great sacrifice that exceeds reason, and with abundant mercy and overflowing grace by His own inherent power, present with us at all times, to guarantee that the balance of power is never disturbed in favor of our life’s enemy, and that our new Creator
“...loved me and gave Himself for me.” — Galatians 2:20
Just as the raging fire swallows a drop of water in an instant, so God swallows our sins by His Holy Spirit and the act of His Son’s blood, with a zeal more intense than the raging fire. And just as the shining sun confronts darkness, dispelling it and transforming it into pure light and a clear vision, so God sent us His Son to dispel our sorrow and our doubts, and our anxieties and our fears, so that we may trust in these pure and vivid, clear truths that embrace the life of the human being He created in His image. That is, all that is within us of sin, helplessness, despair, darkness, and weakness that exceeds our will—all of this God met with mercy, love, kindness, power, and a sacrifice beyond description.
Therefore, though our heart is sometimes filled with our sins, our perishing, our burdens, our helplessness, and our despair from the perspective of our intellectual faith—a companion to our misery and troubles—yet from God’s side, we have received a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in a new life, with peace and victory that surpasses understanding. Rather, we have been granted grace upon which we build all our hope, and in Him, we have peace, righteousness, holiness, and redemption as an eternal right for a new human being, secured by God, from which God cannot withdraw, nor can he fall again from His mercy, as Adam fell in ancient times.
But if we consider these two positions or these two states together—our position or our state with what it contains of weakness, sin, a feeling of injustice, and despair from our side, which is our feeling of our old man; and God’s stance towards us with the guarantee of His Son Jesus Christ for us, who is the source of the qualifications of the new man—oh, what immense mercy, love, kindness, compassion, self-sacrifice even to blood, and redemption offered freely—we say, if we put these two stances together, what should result from that?
A Declaration of Faith and Trust
The infinitude of God’s mercy above the severity of our weakness: faith in the Father’s love and promise above our sins, and trust that is commensurate with the ultimate act of God’s creative and renewing love for our being, and the ultimate effect of Christ’s blood in forgiveness, purification, and sanctification, above the multitude of our sins and the impurities of our thoughts and hearts, however great they may be.
A declaration of God’s life in the resurrection of the dead for us: meaning, faith, hope, and trust that are commensurate with the infinitude of the power of God’s life above the severity of the effects of death and the diseases of death that work within us.
So if we reach the certainty of complete faith, confident in the infinitude of God’s mercy and love in our new life, and His shedding of blood for our sanctification, and the intensity of His power that works in us for our continuous renewal—given our weakness, our sins, and our mortality—indeed, every aspect of our being is crippled—what should result from that? Obedience to Him, reverence for His dignity, and intense submission that should reach the degree of complete clinging—the clinging of a drowning person who has frantically grasped onto the hope of salvation, given God’s continuous concern in His work towards our severe weakness.
Submission to God’s will, a complete surrender without any fear, reservation, or shame, accompanied by continuous gratitude that gives God all the earnestness and dignity with which He has condescended toward us, a submission that guides us in our new life against our old will and desires, with a constant awareness that any inclination towards self-will on the path is a loss of God’s majesty and thus a weakening of the certainty of faith. This would diminish the power of God’s work in us, thus increasing our weakness once again, until we are compelled—without any right—to surrender once more to the hand of ourselves, and to the desires of our lusts and our vanity.
No consideration for any personal righteousness or merit, no matter how great our works may be in the form of piety and worship. Rather, our adherence to God’s work, which He performed for us in the person of His Son alone, remains a firm, tangible adherence, whether from within our consciences or through works that are often not steadfast. His revealed work became in Christ for us—especially in the Resurrection from the dead—a complete image and a model that does not disappear from us ever. And the firstborn of the Resurrection from the dead is the model that overcame for us sin and death and redemption; He is our head and the supreme head of the Church who will raise every body with all its members for the glory of the Father and His honor.
We must feel that God cast all His divine weight—with all His glory and honor, with all His love and His special care, and with His blessing and His continuous living protection and fellowship with Him. Indeed, this feeling ought to challenge every pessimistic view towards the reality of the old man who still groans under the weight of passions, desires, and weaknesses, and acts in the deception of vanity and the cunning of lust. Indeed, such a challenge always makes us cast all our trust and all our weakness upon grace, so that we may be aligned with God’s work, aligned with God’s counsel, aligned in the depths of our conscience with God’s portion—whatever our state may be. Indeed, such a challenge is very beneficial for diminishing the significance of sin, its power, and its vanity. Indeed, such a challenge quickly moves us from the feeling of the hated old man and his dark past, to the feeling of the beloved new human and his happy, bright future.
This joyful feeling, the composer of the Holy Psalmody was able to express it by saying: “He took that which is ours, and gave us that which is His. So let us praise Him and glorify Him and exalt Him.” (Theotokia of Friday).
And this, precisely, is the divine feeling that dictated to Saint Paul the Apostle his words to the Corinthians:
“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” — 2 Corinthians 5:21
And the saying of the prophet Hosea long ago:
“I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved.” — Romans 9:25 / Hosea 2:23
So if man is able—with the certainty of faith and his strong trust in God—to offer obedience and submission to God, clinging to the work of God which He completed for us in the person of Jesus Christ; if he is able to face the weakness of the old man with the challenge of God’s own determination for our salvation and sanctification, which God resolved upon and determined with all the weight of His glory and majesty—yes, if man is able to do that—then he has certainly received power for action, power for struggle, power for conflict, relentlessly against the old man.
So what is this work, struggle, and constant conflict against the old man, and what is its strength?
The most important work necessary for our salvation and obligatory for us as children of God—and at the same time the first work that concerns God Himself, and He has promised to provide all necessary assistance for it—is our attainment of spiritual freedom. For it is impossible for us to become His children while we are slaves to sin and the desires of vanity. Here it is necessary for us to fight and strive and wrestle, not as slaves seeking freedom, but as children who have become free and received their deed of freedom by the guarantee of Christ’s death and resurrection, so they fight, defend, and wrestle to possess what is theirs—what is their inherent right, namely the freedom of sons—which has become an essential part of their new nature that they received through the Holy Spirit of God.
And as children of God, when we work and strive, we struggle before God the Father, in His name and for His name. Therefore, it will not escape our minds that we are aided in our struggle against sin and against the desires of vanity by the Spirit of the Father, to whom we yield with all obedience, submission, and surrender. For we know that all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Therefore, because of the guarantee of God’s glory and His honor for our sonship which we have truly received eternally in the person of Jesus Christ, we must trust that we are certainly victorious in all our struggles if our struggle is truly for the Father, and in His name and for His name.
“The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” — Exodus 14:14
The help of God the Father to us, which He offers us in our continuous struggle and conflict with the old man, is a means for our progress.
“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” — Romans 8:26
If the Spirit of God is the Helper and Supporter in our struggle and conflict against sin and the desires of pride, then this requires that our weapons are not carnal, as Paul the Apostle says:
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 10:3–5
Here Paul the Apostle indicates that although we live in the old flesh, yet God has given us spiritual weapons which are the gifts of the new man. This reminds our mind that the subjugation of the body to the mind is for it to be a tool for performing deeds done by the Spirit, meaning with the fervor of the Spirit and the zeal of the Spirit.
“For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” — Romans 8:13
Fasting must be a spiritual and powerful work. If it is offered by the body only, then it is a bodily work that cannot lead to fighting sin. But if it is offered by the living and indwelling Spirit, with crushing and fervent prayer and zeal, and with supplication for salvation and confrontation, fasting becomes an effective and truly capable work to demolish sin entrenched in the body, where the Spirit is the power of the fast, and fasting becomes an effective tool in demolishing sin’s strongholds. Let the reader notice the word “power,” for our deeds we may see them with activity and zeal, but they cannot rise to the level of the powerful weapon that overcomes sin.
And this boredom that leads to great danger in the performance of spiritual works—even though they are divine works in themselves—in a routine manner makes us perform them in a bodily way, like confession, prayer, communion, prostration, and even reading the Gospel. Despite these works having been prepared for us by God as powerful means of grace and spiritual weapons, effective in fighting all kinds of sins and deviations of the old self, yet because we do not raise them to the level of fervor befitting the spiritual work done in the name of the Father and for the glory of the Father, nor do we raise them to the level of the well-known spiritual weapon against sin, because of this their work weakens and the effort exerted in them is wasted without clear fruit. The call here is to raise spiritual work to the level of a spiritual weapon with all seriousness, fervor, and sincerity, drawing from God the ability to use, persevere, and be effective.