The Believer A New Creature
A Sermon
(No. 881)
Delivered on Sunday Morning, July 18th, 1869, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature."—2 Corinthians 5:17.
HIS TEXT IS exceedingly full of matter, and
might require many treatises, and even
multitudes of folios, to bring forth all its
meaning. Holy Scripture is notably
sententious. Human teachers are given to verbiage;
we multiply words to express our meaning, but the
Lord is wondrously laconic; he writeth as it were in
shorthand, and gives us much in little. One single
grain of the precious gold of Scripture may be beaten
out into acres of human gold leaf, and spread far and
wide. A few books are precious as silver, fewer still
are golden; but God's Book hath a bank note in every
syllable, and the worth of its sentences it were not
possible for mortal intellect to calculate.
We have two great truths here, which would serve us
for the subject of meditation for many a day: the
believer's position—he is "in Christ;" and the
believer's character—he is a "new creature." Upon
both of these we shall speak but briefly this morning,
but may God grant that we may find instruction
therein.
I. First, then, let us consider THE CHRISTIAN'S
POSITION—he is said to be "in Christ."
There are three stages of the human soul in
connection with Christ: the first is without Christ, this
is the state of nature; the next is in Christ, this is the
state of grace; the third is with Christ, that is the
state of glory.
Without Christ, this is where we all are born and
nurtured, and even though we hear the gospel, and
the Bible be in all our houses, and even though we
use a form of prayer, yet until we are born again, we
are without God, without Christ, and strangers from
the commonwealth of Israel. A man may stand at the
banqueting-table, and may be without food, unless
he puts out his hand to grasp that which is provided;
and a man may have Christ preached in his hearing
every Sabbath-day, and be without Christ, unless he
putteth forth the hand of faith to lay hold upon him.
It is a most unhappy condition to be without Christ. It
is inconvenient to be without gold, it is miserable to
be without health, it is deplorable to be without a
friend, it is wretched to be without reputation, but to
be without Christ is the worst lack in all the world. O
that God would make all of us sensible of it who are
now the subjects of it, and may we no longer tarry in
the position of being without Christ.
The next state is that indicated in the text, "in
Christ," of which I will say more by-and-by. "In Christ"
leadeth to the third state, which we can never reach
without this second one, namely, to be with Christ; to
be his companions in the rest which he has attained,
all his work and labour done; to be with him in the
glory which he has gained, made to see it and to
participate in it world without end. To be with Christ
is the angels' joy, it is the heaven of heaven, it is the
centre of bliss, the sun of paradise. Let us seek after
it, and in order that we may have it, let us labour
with all our heart and mind to be found in Christ now,
that we may be in Christ in the day of his appearing.
Turn we now to the expression itself, "in Christ." I
never heard of any persons being in any other man
but Christ; we may follow certain leaders, political or
religious, but we are never said to be included in
them. We may take for ourselves eminent examples
and high models of humanity, but no man is said in
that respect to be in another. But this is a grand old
scriptural phrase in which the disciple and the
follower of Christ becomes something more than an
imitator of his Lord, and is said to be in his Master.
We must interpret this scriptural phrase by scriptural
symbols. We were all of us in the first Adam. Adam
stood for us. Had Adam kept the command, we had
all of us been blessed. He took off the forbidden fruit
and fell, and all of us fell in him. Original sin falleth
upon us because of the transgression of our covenant
head and representative, Adam the first; but all
believers are in the same sense in Christ, Adam the
second, the only other representative Man before
God, the heavenly Man, the Lord from heaven. Now,
as in Adam we all fell, so all who are in Christ are in
Christ perfectly restored. The obedience of Christ is
the obedience of all his people; the atonement of
Christ is a propitiation for all his people's sins. In
Christ we lived on earth, in Christ we died, in Christ
we rose, and he "hath raised us up together, and
made us sit together in heavenly places" in himself.
As the apostle tells us that Levi was in the loins of
Abraham when Melchisedec met him, so were we in
the loins of Christ from before the foundation of the
world; faith apprehends that blessed truth, and thus
by faith we are experimentally in Christ Jesus.
Noah's Ark was a type of Christ. The animals that
were preserved from the deluge passed through the
door into the ark, the Lord shut them in, and high
above the foaming billows they floated in perfect
safety. We are in Christ in the same sense. He is the
ark of God provided against the day of judgment. We
by faith believe him to be capable of saving us; we
come and trust him, we risk our souls with him,
believing that there is no risk; we venture on him
confident that it is no venture; giving up every other
hope or shadow of a hope, we trust in what Jesus did,
is doing, and is in himself, and thus he becomes to us
our ark, and we are in him.
Another similitude may be taken from the old Jewish
law. By God's commands certain cities were provided
throughout all Canaan, that an Israelite who should
slay his fellow at unawares, might flee there from the
avenger of blood. The city of refuge no sooner
received the manslayer than he was perfectly free
from the avenger who pursued him. Once within the
suburbs or through the gate, and the manslayer
might breathe safely, the executioner would be kept
at bay. In the same sense we are in Christ Jesus. He
is God's eternal city of refuge, and we having
offended, having slain, as it were, the command of
God, flee for our lives and enter within the refuge
city, where vengeance cannot reach us, but where we
shall be safe world without end.
In the New Testament the Lord Jesus explains this
phrase of being in himself in another way. He
represents us as being in him as the branch is in the
vine. Now, the branch derives all its nourishment, its
sap, its vitality, its fruit-bearing power, from the stem
with which it is united. It would be of no use that the
branch should be placed close to the trunk, it would
be of no service even to strap it side by side with the
stem, it must be actually in it by a vital union. There
must be sap-streams flowing at the proper season
into it, life-floods gushing into it from the parent
stem; and even so there is a mysterious union
between Christ and his people, not to be explained
but to be enjoyed, not to be defined but to be
experienced, in which the very life of Christ flows into
us, and we by the virtue that cometh out of him into
us, become like unto him, and bring forth clusters of
good fruit unto his honour and unto God's glory. I
trust you know what this means, beloved, many of
you. May you live in the possession of it daily! May
you be one with Jesus, knit to him, united to him
never to be separated for ever. As the limb is in the
body, even so may you constantly be one with Jesus.
We may be in Christ also as the stone is in the
building. The stone is built into the wall and is a part
of it. In some of the old Roman walls you can scarcely
tell which is the firmer, the cement or the stone, for
their cement was so exceedingly strong, that it held
the stones together as though they were one mass of
rock; and such is the eternal love which binds the
saints to Christ. They become one rock, one palace
wall, one temple, to the praise and glory of the God
who built the fabric. Thus you see what it is to be in
Christ: it is to trust him for salvation as Noah trusted
the ark; it is to derive real life from him as the branch
does from the stem; it is to lean on him, and to be
united to him as the stone leans on the foundation
and becomes an integral part of the structure.
The phrase "in Christ Jesus," then, has a weight of
meaning in it. "How do we come to be there?" saith
one. To whom we answer: our union to Christ is
practically and experimentally wrought in us by faith
when a man giveth himself up to Christ to sink or
swim with Christ, when he leaneth his soul wholly on
the Beloved, when as for his good works he abhorreth
them, and as for his self-righteousness, he counteth
it dross and dung, when he clingeth to the sole hope
of the cross, then is such a man in Christ. He is
further in Christ when he loves Jesus, when the heart
having trusted and reposed in the cross, is moved
with deep and warm affection to the Crucified, so
that the soul clings to Christ, embracing him with
fervent love, and Christ becomes the bridegroom,
and the heart becomes his spouse, and they are
married to one another in a union which no divorce
can ever separate. When love and faith come
together, then is there a blessedly sweet
communion; these two graces become the double
channel through which the Holy Spirit's influence
flows forth daily, making the Christian to grow up
more fully unto Christ Jesus in all things. The riper
the Christian becomes, the nearer to the glory, the
closer to the perfection which is promised, the more
completely will he think and act, and live and move,
in Christ his Master, being one with Jesus in all
things. I shall not detain you longer over that one
matter, every true Christian is in Christ.
II. Now we survey THE BELIEVER'S CHARACTER, for it
is said that if any man be in Christ he is a "new
creature." This is a great utterance. We shall not
attempt to dive into it—this were work for a leviathan
divine—but merely like the swallow, we touch the
surface of it with our wing, and away.
What is meant by the Christian being a new
creature? Three thoughts seem to me to spring up
from the words, and the first is, the believer must
then have been the subject of a radical change. He is
said to be a new creature, which is of all things a
most sweeping change. There are many changes
which a man may undergo, but they may be far from
being radical enough to be worth calling a new
creation. Saul is among the prophets: hear how he
prophesies; if they speak with sacred rapture the
secrets of God, so doth he. Is not Saul converted—the
Scripture tells us that God gave him another heart!
Ay, another heart, but not a new heart. A man may
be changed from one sin to another, from reckless
profanity to mocking formality, from daring sin to
hypocritical pretension to virtue; but such a change
as is very far from being saving, and not at all like
the work which is called a new creation. Ahab went
and humbled himself after his murder of Naboth, and
God turned away His vengeance for awhile from him,
but that temporary humiliation of Ahab was no sign
of a renewal of his nature; it was like the changes of
the sea, which today is smooth, but which anon will
be as ravenous after wrecks as ever, being still
unchanged in its nature, still voracious and cruel,
fickle and unstable. Ahab may humble himself, but
he is Ahab still, and as Ahab will he go down into the
pit.
Conversion is sometimes described in Scripture as
healing; yet the idea of healing does not rise to the
radical character of the text. Naaman went down to
the Jordan full of leprosy, and he washed himself, and
came up, after the seventh immersion, with his flesh
clean like unto a little child; but it was the same flesh
and the same Naaman, and he was by no means a
new creature. The woman, bowed down with infirmity
those sad eighteen years, was marvellously changed
when she stood upright, as a daughter of Abraham,
loosed at last from her bondage; but she was the
same woman, and the description does not answer to
a new creature. No doubt there are great moral
changes wrought in many which are not saving. I
have seen a drunkard become sober; I have known
persons of debauched habits become regular; and
yet their changes have not amounted to regeneration
or the new birth. The same sin has been within them,
reigning still, though it has assumed a different garb,
and used another voice. Ah, ye may be washed from
outward leprosies, and ye may be made straight from
your visible infirmities, but this will not suffice you; if
you are in Christ you must have more than this; for
"if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old
things are passed away; behold, all things are
become new."
Nor will the most startling changes suffice unless
they are total and deep. The Ethiopian might change
his skin, the leopard might suddenly lose his spots—
these would be strange prodigies; but the leopard
would remain a leopard, and the Ethiop would still be
black at heart; the improvement would not amount
to new creation. So may a man give up every
outward lust and every crying sin which he was wont
to indulge, and yet, unless the change shall go far
deeper than the outward life, he is not saved—he is
not a new creature, and, therefore, he is not in Christ
Jesus. I venture to say, that even the metaphor of
resurrection, which is often applied to conversion,
does not go so far as the language of the text. The
young daughter of Jairus is placed upon her bed, and
she dies, and our Lord comes and saith to her,
"Talitha cumi," and she opens her eyes, she awakes,
she lives, she eats," still she is not a new creature;
her mother receives her as the selfsame child. Even
Lazarus, who has been dead and is supposed through
four days of burial to have begun to stink, when he is
called from the grave by the voice of Jesus, is the
subject of a remarkable miracle, but it scarcely
amounts to a new creation. He is the same Lazarus
restored, not a new creature, but the same creature
vivified from a transient sleep of death. Do you see,
then, how very searching the word is here, a "a new
creature," absolutely a new creation. It is a root and
branch change; not an alteration of the walls only,
but of the foundation; not a new figuring of the
visible tapestry, but a renewal of the fabric itself.
Regeneration is a change of the entire nature from
top to bottom in all senses and respects. Such is the
new birth, such is it to be in Christ and to be renewed
by the Holy Ghost.
The text saith that we are new creatures through
being in Christ. How comes that about? We have
known persons inveigh very earnestly against the
doctrine that men are saved by a simple faith in
Jesus Christ. That is the gospel, and nothing else is
the gospel, and those who do not preach that truth
know nothing of God's gospel at all; for it is the very
soul and essence of the gospel—the article, as Luther
used to say, by which a church stands or falls. We are
saved by a simple faith in Jesus, but these people
argue against this on the ground that there must be
a great moral change in man before he can be
reconciled to God and made meet to be with God for
ever. But, my brethren, if the text be true, that those
who are in Christ are new creatures, what greater
change than this can be desired? I know no language,
I believe there is none, that can express a greater or
more thorough and more radical renewal, than that
which is expressed in the term, "a new creature." It is
as though the former creature were annihilated and
put away, and a something altogether new were
formed from the breath of the eternal God, even as in
the day when the world sprang out of nothing, and
the morning stars sang together over a new-made
universe. Such is the fruit of being in Christ, to be a
new creature. And what, ye moralists, want ye more
than this? What, ye pretenders to perfection, what,
ye mystic spiritualists, who strive after a strange
holiness to which ye never attain, what, ye that bind
heavy burdens upon men's shoulders which ye do
not touch with your fingers yourselves, what want ye
more than this, for a man to be absolutely made a
new creature by being in Christ?
How is this done? We reply that the man who is in
the first Adam, being translated into the second
Adam, becomes legally a new creature. As in the first
Adam he is judged and condemned, his punishment
is laid upon his substitute; but as viewed in the
second representative Man, he is legally, and before
the bar of God's justice, a new creature. But this is
not all: he who believes in Christ, finding himself
completely pardoned as the result of his faith in the
precious blood of Jesus, loves Christ, and loves the
God who gave Christ to be his redemption, and that
love becomes a master passion. We have all heard of
the expulsive power of a new affection; this new
affection of love to God coming into the soul, expels
love to sin. It enters into the heart of man with such a
royal majesty about it that it puts down all his
predispositions towards evil, and his prejudices
against the Most High, and with a real and divine
power it reigns within the soul. I suppose the mode of
this great change is somewhat after this sort: The
man at first is ignorant of his God; he does not know
God to be so loving, so kind, so good as he is;
therefore the Holy Spirit shows the man Christ, lets
him see the love of God in the person of Christ, and
thus illuminates the understanding. Whereas the
sinner thought nothing of' God before, or his few
stray thoughts were all dark and terrible, now he
learns the infinite love of God in the person of Christ,
and his understanding gets clearer views of God than
it ever had before. Then, in turn, the understanding
acts upon the affections. Learning God to be thus
good and kind, the heart, which was hard towards
God, is softened, and the man loves the gracious
Father who gave Jesus to redeem him from his sins.
The affections being changed, the whole man is on
the way towards a great and radical renewal, for now
the emotions find another ruler. The passions, once
rabid as vultures at the sight of the carrion of sin,
now turn with loathing from iniquity, and are only
stirred by holy principle. The convert groweth
vehement against evil, as vehement as he once was
against the right. Now he longeth and pineth after
communion with God as once he longed and pined
after sin. The affections, like a rudder, have changed
the direction of the emotions, and meanwhile the
will, that stubbornest thing of all, that iron sinew, is
led in a blessed captivity, wearing silken fetters. The
heart wills to do what God wills, yea, it wills to be
perfect, for to will is present with us, though how to
perform all that we would we find not. See then,
beloved friends, how great is the change wrought in
us by our being in Christ! It is a thorough and entire
change, affecting all the parts, powers, and passions
of our manhood. Grace doth not reform us, but re-
creates us; it doth not pare away here and there an
evil excrescence, but it implants a holy and divine
principle which goes to instant war with all
indwelling sin, and continues to fight until corruption
is subdued, and holiness is enthroned.
I shall only pause to ask this one question—do my
hearers all know what such a change as this means?
Believe me, you must know it personally for
yourselves, or you can never enter heaven. Let no
man deceive you. That regeneration which is said to
be wrought in baptism, is a figment without the
shadow of foundation. The sprinkling of an infant
makes no change in that child whatever; it is, as I
believe, a vain ceremony, not commanded of God,
nor warranted in Scripture; and as the Church of
England practises it, it is altogether pernicious and
superstitious, and if there be any effect following it, it
must be an evil effect upon those who wickedly lie
unto Almighty God, by promising and vowing that
the unconscious shall keep God's commandments,
and walk in the same all the days of his life; which
they cannot do for the child, inasmuch as they
cannot even so do for themselves. Ye must have
another regeneration than this, the work not of
priestly fingers, with their hocus-pocus and
superstitious genuflexions, but the work of the
Eternal Spirit, who alone can regenerate the soul,
whose office alone it is that can give light to the
spiritually blinded eye, and sensation to the
spiritually dead heart. Be not misled by the priests of
this age. Ye profess to have cast off Rome, cast off
her Anglican children. Wear not the rags of her
superstition, nor bear her mark in your foreheads. Ye
must be born again in another sense than formality
can work in you. It must be an inward work, a
spiritual work, and only this can save your souls. If
any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature, that
is, he has experienced a radical change.
Secondly, another thought starts up from the
expression in the text. There is divine working here.
"A new creature." Creation is the work of God alone.
It must be so. If any doubt it, let us bid them make
the effort to create the smallest object. The potter
places his clay upon the wheel, and shapes it after
his own pleasure, he fashions the vase, but he is not
the creator of it. The clay was there beforehand, he
does but change its shape. Will any man who thinks
he can play the creator, produce a single grain of
dust? Call now, and see if there be any that will
answer thee—call unto nothingness, and bid a grain
of dust appear at thy bidding. It cannot be. Now,
inasmuch as Paul declares the Christian man to be a
new creature, it is proven that the Christian man is
the work of God, and the work of God alone, "Which
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God." The inner life of
the Christian is the sole work of the Most High,
neither can any pretend to put his finger thereto to
help the Creator. In creation, who helped God? who
poised the clouds for Him? who weighed the hills in
scales to aid His skill, or helped Him dig the channels
of the sea? Who aided in rolling the stars along? who
took a torch to light up the lamps of heaven? With
whom took the Almighty counsel, and who instructed
him? If there be any that can stand with God in the
making of the world, then may some pretend to
compare with Him in the conversion of souls, but
until that shall be, the new creation is God's sole
domain, and in it His attributes, and His attributes
alone, shine resplendent. "It is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth mercy." The sovereign will of God creates
men heirs of grace.
My brethren, it was more difficult, if such terms are
ever applicable to Omnipotence, it was more difficult
to create a Christian than to create a world. What was
there to begin with when God made the world? There
was nothing; but nothing could not stand in God's
way—it was at least passive. But, my brethren, in our
hearts, while there was nothing that could help God,
there was much that could and did oppose Him. Our
stubborn wills, our deep prejudices, our ingrained
love of iniquity, all these, great God, opposed thee,
and aimed at thwarting thy designs. There was
darkness in the first creation, but that darkness could
not obstruct the incoming of light. "Light be!" was
the eternal fiat, and light was. But, O great God, how
often has thy voice spoken to us and our darkness
has refused thy light! We loved darkness rather than
light, because our deeds were evil; and it was only
when thou didst put on the garments of thine
omnipotence, and come forth in the glory of thy
strength, that at the last our soul yielded to thy light,
and the abysmal darkness of our natural depravity
made way for thy celestial radiance. Yes, great God, it
was great to make a world, but greater to create a
new creature in Christ Jesus
