New Creation

I want us to take a few minutes to open up the word together and think a bit about the theme of new creation found throughout the Bible. From the hopeful moment in the garden after the fall, where we’re told the serpent’s head will be struck, crushed; to the picture of life after the end of all things in the book of Revelation, new creation is a bold and hopeful thing to set your imagination on. It’s the ridiculous idea that failures everywhere daydream about. What if God were to hit the reset button? What if, to paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, everything sad is going to come untrue? New creation is not the dream of worldly winners. They are already living their dream. New creation is the hope of the lost, the screwups, the failures, the lowly, whether by choice or consequence. It’s the hope of children and the childlike. 

There are a few different concepts that can rightly wear the label “New Creation.” It takes on different facets in different portions of the Bible. But since we’re here at New Creation Anglican Church, at it’s first service, we’ll take a few minutes to draw some of these ideas together to look at the broader theme of new creation before we look at where Paul takes us in our passage. 

OK, so let’s get right into it. Why are we talking about new creation? What do we see in Scripture?

So, first, new creation brings the miracle and wonder of Genesis into the last things at the end of the world. The wonder of the first moment when darkness turned to light, followed by the heavens and the earth, the sea and dry land, vegetation, sun, moon, and stars, the animals, man, both male and female, followed by God’s enthronement, his resting. A miraculous place like ours is going to be remade, a new heavens and a new earth, says Revelation chapter 21.

The return to Eden is a dream that humans have entertained as long as there have been humans. And this will be something perhaps grander. Where Genesis has a garden, Revelation has a Holy City. There is unimaginable beauty in this fallen world. I was recently visiting up at Chuckanut Bay and took in the view. It would take up the rest of our time to do it justice, it was so breathtakingly beautiful. And to think that something like that would be remade, but somehow better, is a delightful mystery that  declares the glory of God. The power it would take to make it in the first place, but the genius of God to refine it and bring in new elements, stirs up praise in our hearts. We see it and we say O Lord, open our lips. And our mouth shall proclaim your praise. So new creation points to the beauty and wonder of the first creation and casts it into the future.

And where the world of Genesis has no sin, for a time, the world of new creation has faced sin and won. The new creation will never have to defeat sin and death like the first creation did. In the new creation Jesus has already faced sin and death and conquered them. There will be no more challenges to to the fate of humanity in the new creation.

Another way we can see the theme worked out in the Bible is that the resurrection of Jesus is a moment of new creation. Some of the early Christian theologians viewed the resurrection of Jesus as a new day of creation. For them, there’s a sense that Sunday is not only the first day of creation but also the eighth day of creation. A new kind of life, an incorruptible resurrection life came into the world through Jesus on Sunday, the eighth day of the week, and the world was forever changed. The impact of the resurrection reverberates through our own salvation on to the new heavens and the new earth and throughout the ages. The death of Jesus maps to the old heavens and earth passing away just as the resurrection of Jesus is connected to the new heavens and new earth being established.

Now it might seem for a second that all of these momentous things are far, far, away. The beginning of creation?  The new heavens and the new earth? It can seem like the closest thing to me and my time that’s been mentioned so far is the death and resurrection of Jesus 2000 years ago.

But because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, if you are in Christ, you are a new creation. And that’s what we see at work in our passage today. Here we see that no matter what our circumstances—no matter how low a position we find ourselves, our identity of new creation in Christ is always accessible, ready to give us strength, and life, and hope.

As Paul writes from prison about the boasting of super-apostles, Paul tells us in the section before our passage that he is afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. In contrast to the fancy, impeccable churchmen in Corinth, Paul reminds us in chapter 4 vs 5 that “what we proclaim is not ourselves, [our programs, our accomplishments,] but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God who said, [in the old creation] “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

So Paul is being mocked by the megachurch pastors of his day. Because Paul is in jail. And that would be enough to deal with, but just like the Osteens of our day, their teaching wasn’t pointing to Jesus the way it should. His mockers are unfaithful in their teaching and they are rewarded nonetheless. But a new creation is happening in Paul. The light at the beginning of all things is shining in Paul’s heart. The face of Jesus, the presence of Jesus, something so bright it blinded Paul at his conversion and overwhelmed Peter, James, and John at the transfiguration shined in the heart of Paul. And while he’s rotting in prison, he is able to see clearly the light of Jesus’ face, the knowledge of the glory of God.

He continues. God is forming the Corinthians through the weak things, through the teaching of Paul the pathetic prisoner who is actually pointing to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When the super apostles say “I believed, and so I spoke,” Paul says “we also believe, and so we also speak.” But when Paul speaks, he speaks less about worldly metrics and the plans of the organization, and more about God’s power to bring lowly and even dead things to new life, to live in the presence and power of Jesus. And so Paul ends his lead-up to our passage with this bit of hope: that the things he is going through in prison, being taunted by his rivals, the shame, the captivity, are preparing him for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as he looks not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the the things that are unseen are eternal.

Paul’s looking through his shackles and dirty garments and unwashed face beyond to eternal things. To the goal: Christ, and the home he’s preparing for him, and making sure that many come along with him. And this is an example for us. In the worst of conditions we can look to Christ and what he accomplished at his death and resurrection and see him, remember him, use our sanctified imaginations to access promised, real things from scripture like Christ calling us and strengthening us from the new heavens and the new earth.

In our passage we see that even if our earthly home is destroyed, we have an untouchable heavenly home that cannot be destroyed. While we are rotting in prison or whatever we are facing, we know that right now and more fully in the future, we can be engulfed by our heavenly home as it swallows up the challenges and limitations of our mortality. The future floods in to our present, and our final home with Christ can come and cover our shame, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He says God is preparing this to happen and is guaranteeing it by the Holy Spirit.

The faith that rises up in you that tells you that this is not the end, that the future home God has built for you is waiting for you, that’s from the Holy Spirit. Hope in future grace is proof that the Holy Spirit is with you, helping you. And when we can’t hope, we can’t feel it, Jesus tells us to ask, and God will give us the Holy Spirit. And when he does that our hope returns and grows and carries us. 

Paul describes it this way: We are always of good courage. 

We’re here in the body, dealing with the challenges of this world, while we would rather be with the Lord in the place he’s preparing for us. But whether we’re there or we’re here, we make it our aim to please him.

And that’s because we love him, but also because judgment is coming. We’re going to have to give an account for the things that we’ve done and the things we have left undone, toward God and toward our neighbors. Knowing that we’ll face that moment, Paul puts his energy into persuading others to turn from their sin and to turn toward Christ who died and was raised for their sake.

He says the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

All have died. Your life is over. My life is over. And yet we live. But we don’t continue to live our old life. That died. We live for the one who died for us and raised us up. It’s very difficult to see this without living through some kind of hardship. Some kind of loss. As the epistle to the Romans tells us. Suffering produces endurance, endurance character, and character hope. It can be hard to feel like we’ve died. And so our suffering gives us categories for our life being over. So that when the Lord lifts up our head, it’s in the power of new resurrected life. And we can live for him. It doesn’t feel good to go through rough times, but we can have hope. And our hope helps us to be of good courage.

This brings us finally to our destination verse. Paul says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.

This is new creation in a different sense. You are a new thing, different from what you were. Since you are in Christ at his death and in him on the eighth day of creation on his resurrection, you are a new creation sitting here at New Creation, headed toward the new creation. 

So be of good courage. And rest in the goodness of God already at work in you, upholding you and bringing you the peace of new creation, here and now, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God.