The new creation is based upon legal grounds. You have come into the Father’s family because you responded to His call. You could never have gotten in there by your own efforts.
You had to be born of the Holy Spirit. You had to be recreated through the agency of the Word; for He says, “It was his own will that we should be born by the Word of the truth” (James 1:18 ASV).
It is the Father’s will. It is through the Father’s Word. It is by the energy of the Holy Spirit that eternal life has been given to us, and we have become new creations.
Of His own will, He brought us forth.
It is not of man. It is not of the will of the flesh; it is of the will of our own Father. (See John 1:13.)
Romans 3:21–26 gives us the legal background of our redemption:
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
It is a redemption that gives us the righteousness of God on the ground of faith in Jesus Christ.
It is a redemption that gives us perfect justification freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Grace is the love of God in action, in manifestation.
It is love doing things for us.
It was love that caused the incarnation.
Love caused this incarnate One we call Jesus, to go on the cross and become sin with our sin; become absolutely identified with us, not only as a man (which He did in the incarnation and in His earth walk), but He became identified with our sin nature on the cross.
God laid upon Him our iniquity.
“For our sakes He made him to be sin who himself knew nothing of sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21 MOFF). That is a serious thing. The heart can hardly take it in. We were sinners, but He was made sin.
He was so identified with the devil that God said He was sin.
He actually went the limit for man. Being sin, He was judged as sin. He was condemned as sin. He was sent to the place of suffering where sin should go.
There, He suffered until the claims of justice against us were fully met. Then He was “justified in the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16), He was “made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18 ASV). He was actually made as righteous as He was before He was made sin.
He was made so righteous that He who had cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” after His resurrection entered into the presence of the Father with His own blood and sealed our redemption. (See Matthew 27:46.)
Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews 9:12)
He was so righteous that He could sit down in the Father’s presence as though He had never been sin. On the ground of His finished work, when you accept it, you are made a new creation.
You become the righteousness of God in Him.
You stand in the Father’s presence as though sin had never been. We have never been able to accept this even mentally, but it is coming slowly to the consciousness of the church as they listen to the Word.
Romans 3:26 (ASV) says, “For the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”
God actually becomes our righteousness the moment that we accept Christ as Savior and confess Him as our Lord.
Men don’t appreciate this, but the moment that a man becomes a new creation, he can stand in the presence of the Father as Jesus did in His earth walk.
He is only a babe, but he has a perfect righteousness and a perfect redemption. That redemption is God-wrought. That righteousness is God Himself.
God paid man’s penalty on legal grounds and met the demands of justice absolutely.
It is not a problem of pity. It is not a problem of a mother’s love that overlooks a son’s disobedience and rebellion, but it is the supreme court of the universe dealing with our rebellion and our sin, dealing with it so effectually that it can never become an issue again.
Another great fact is that the new creation is based upon absolutely legal grounds.
In Ephesians 2:1–3 (ASV), He has shown the condition of natural man:
And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
Natural man is spiritually dead. He is subject to the prince of the powers of the air. He is a child of disobedience. He is by nature a child of wrath.
Ephesians 2:12 says, without Christ, natural man was “devoid of hope and God within the world” (MOFF). He had no covenant claims on God. He was a stranger to the covenant of promise. He was hopeless, godless, spiritually dead, a child of the devil. That is the condition of lost man.
I know they do not like to have that told to them, but if they are not told, then they will never see the need of eternal life.
Ephesians 2:4–5 (MOFF) says, “Dead in trespasses as we were, God was so rich in mercy that for his great love to us he made us live together with Christ (it is by grace you have been saved).”
In the plan of redemption, God recreated us by faith.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)
By faith, God recreated us in the recreation of Christ when Jesus was made alive, after He had been made sin. In that recreation was our recreation.
All we have to do is accept it. The moment we accept it, it becomes a reality to us in the mind of the Father.
Now you can understand what it means when He says that He “hath raised us up together” with Christ (Ephesians 2:6).
When He was raised from the dead by God’s faith, we were raised together with Him.
The rest of the sixth verse says, “And made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
We are seated now by God’s faith at the right hand of the majesty on high. Do you see what mighty faith the Father had?
He believed that humanity would respond to the tug of His grace. Thank God, we have done it!
In this, He shows “the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:7–10).
By faith, He did all the work that is necessary for the recreation of the whole body of Christ.
By the Father’s faith, we were new creations in the resurrection of Jesus.
When He said that He made us to sit down with Him at the right hand of the majesty on high, do you realize what that meant? That back yonder, the Father’s faith saw us perfect conquerors, perfect victors, enthroned by the side of His own Son at His own right hand.
I tell you, that was faith!
I have faith in my Father’s faith, that this is made good in me. Now, you can understand 2 Corinthians 5:17–18:
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.” The moment you accept Christ, you are in the new creation. “Old things are passed away.” This is the experimental part of it. “Behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” This is the ministry of reconciliation for this world that was redeemed from the hand of the enemy, but does not know it.
The redemption is of no value to them as long as they are ignorant of it.
They cannot enter into those riches until we tell them.
Today God is not reckoning unto the world their trespasses. He has committed unto us the Word that is to reconcile them to the fact that they have been recreated in Christ Jesus in His substitutionary work.
All they have to do is accept Him as their Savior and confess Him as their Lord, and they enter into this new thing called the new creation.
We are ambassadors with this new marvelous message of grace.
We are saying to men, “Be reconciled to God—all you need to do is come to Him. He is waiting for you.”
Eternal life is yours. Fellowship with Him and relationship all await you. Hear what He says to achieve it.
“For our sakes He made him to be sin who himself knew nothing of sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21 MOFF). Doesn’t that break your heart? Doesn’t that cause your heart to respond to a love like that? He was made sin to the end that you might become the righteousness of God in Him.
This is masterful. You are led out of failure and weakness and sin and satanic relationship, into the new creation, where you have become partakers of the divine nature, actual sons of God.
God has made you righteous so you can stand in His presence just as though you had never been a sinner, just as though sin has never soiled you.
You stand there complete in Christ.
This belongs to you. This is your legal right, and you can receive it yourself. If you believe in the finished work of Christ in you, and you believe in all God has done for you, it is yours, but it is not yours experimentally until you accept Him as your Savior and confess Him as your Lord.
You believe in your own rights in Christ. Then you are a conqueror.
Romans 8:14 gives us an insight into sonship rights and privileges: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”
You have become a son. You have received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear. You have been delivered out of that. You have received the spirit of adoption. You are crying now, “Father, my dear Father.”
The Holy Spirit Himself is bearing witness with your spirit through the Word that you are a child of God.
If you are a child, then you are an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Jesus Christ.
You see, you are taking your place now. You are responding to His challenge.
Romans 8:31 is the climax of this mighty truth: “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
God is for us. He is our Father now. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things” (verse 32).
How shall He not give to us, as a Father, all that belongs to us as a son’s inheritance, a son’s rights in Christ?
Who shall lay anything to our charge now? We are God’s elect. It is God who has declared us righteous.
It is God who has made us righteous. It is God who declared He is our righteousness in Christ.
Now to climax it, Jesus is seated at the Father’s right hand as our great Intercessor, Advocate, and Lord in the highest seat of the universe, the head of the body, the new creation.
The new creation is seated there with Him. No one can bring a charge against us. No one can conquer us.
Then He gives us a category of all the things that Satan can do against a man:
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. (Romans 8:31–36)
Then he shouts this: “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (verse 37).
We stand complete in His completeness. We are victors in His own victory.
NOT WHAT WE SHOULD BE—
BUT WHAT WE ARE NOW IN CHRIST!
The modern Christian does not object to my telling what they need, or my telling what they should do or be, but they can’t understand me when I tell them what they are in Christ. They think I am bringing a new philosophy, a beautiful error, that will lead them astray.
I remember when I first saw this, I said, “If this were only true;” and then I said, “If I knew how to make it mine.”
I didn’t know that it was mine.
I didn’t know that “He had blessed me with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (see Ephesians 1:3), and when I read it, it didn’t register.
I remember 1 Corinthians 3:21 where He declares that all things are mine; whether the revelation was given to Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos, it was mine.
That everything that the Father wrought in Christ in His great substitution belongs to the individual believer.
It makes no difference whether the believer is educated or uneducated, whether he is rich or poor. The boundless grace unveiled in Christ, belongs to every one of us.
Philippians 4:13 is absolutely ours: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
That is mine.
I can do anything that is necessary to be done because of His ability that has been imparted to me.
Psalm 27:1 (ASV) says, “Jehovah is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? Jehovah is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
Note that carefully: “Jehovah is my light.” That is wisdom. That is ability.
He is my ability to use the knowledge of what belongs to me.
Now I am able to take advantage of what the Epistles tell me belongs to me.
He is not only my ability, but my salvation, my deliverance, my redemption.
I am as free from Satan’s dominion in the mind of the Father as Jesus was when He arose from the dead, because His resurrection has freed me.
I have become a partaker of His resurrection the moment I become a new creation. Colossians 3:1 says, “If ye then be risen with Christ.”
The ability of God that was exercised in the resurrection of Jesus belongs to the believer today.
Notice Ephesians 1:19–20. Let me give you a somewhat freer translation: “I want to show you the exceeding greatness of the ability of God on our behalf who believe. It is according to the working of the strength of His might which He wrought in the Christ when He raised Him from the dead and made Him sit at His right hand.”
We have never grasped the significance of this.
The Father has given to us the ability that He exercised in the resurrection of Jesus.
Then we who have received eternal life have in our possession today the resurrection power or ability of God.
I am convinced that, before the Master returns, there will be groups of men and women who will recognize this and take their place and begin to show to the world a type of supernatural ability that will startle a sense-knowledge ruled world.
It is no idle thing to have God in you.
One day it seemed as though He were questioning me. He said, “Have I been so diminished, have I become so small and so weak and ineffectual, that you can ignore Me?”
He said, “The God who raised Jesus from the dead is dwelling in you and He has lost none of His ability or power.”
When He enters your life to dwell there, He doesn’t lay aside His glory and majesty and might.
When God’s Son took upon Him the garment of flesh, He laid aside some of His glory.
But when the Holy Spirit comes into you, He comes full-fledged. He is the same mighty Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.
Romans 8:11 (ASV) says, “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies.”
I like that translation. It is vivid. It is true.
Then I want you to begin to reckon on Him. I want you to say in the morning, “That mighty One is in me. He can put me over today. I can face any emergency. I can do all things in Him because He is my strength.”
I can hear Him whisper, in Isaiah 41:10, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee [I am in thee]: be not dismayed; for I am thy [Father] God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee.” He is whispering, “I am today all that you need: your helper, your wisdom, your strength, your ability.”
You see, it is not what I should be. It is not what I can be.
It is what I am in Christ.
We are not trying to be righteous; we are.
We are not trying to be strong, for God is the strength of our life.
We are not trying to be wise, because Jesus has been made wisdom unto us.
We are what He says we are, so we can do what He says we can do.
GOD’S SUPERMAN
Jesus uttered some prophetic facts about believers.
Matthew 19:26 says, “With God all things are possible.”
Jesus is uttering a fact, and here is its complement: “And nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20).
Take this with Mark 11:24: “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
Or, take Mark 9:23: “All things are possible to him that believeth.”
The word “believeth” means “a believing one.” There were no “believing ones” in the time while Christ was preaching. They were Jews under law.
The “believing ones” came into being at Pentecost.
It meant a believer, a new creation man.
The new creation man is a partaker of God’s nature.
He is really an incarnation. He has received the nature and life of God.
Then he invites the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, who came on the day of Pentecost, to make His home in his body.
This man not only has God’s nature, but has God actually living in him.
If this doesn’t constitute a superman, then I don’t know what a superman is.
But I am going to carry you one step farther.
This man with God’s nature, and God dwelling in him, is given a legal right to the use of the name of Jesus with the power of attorney.
The question is: what is that name worth? What authority is there behind it?
In Matthew 28:18–20 (ASV), Jesus said, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
You see what we have now?
We have the power of attorney to use the name of Jesus, and all authority in heaven and on earth is invested in that name.
Go over it just once more.
The believer is a new creation. The old things of weakness and failure have passed away and behold: the old man has become a new man and all these things are of God. (See 2 Corinthians 5:17–18.)
This man is a partaker of the divine nature, eternal life.
“He that hath the Son hath the life” (1 John 5:12).
He has the Son—he has the life.
Now he has the Holy Spirit indwelling him. “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
This believer, this new creation, is a child of the Deity.
He stands before the world as a very branch of the vine.
He is taking Jesus’s place in the world.
And if this isn’t a superman, then I don’t know the meaning of the term.
The church has kept this “Samson” imprisoned by false teachings and by creeds and doctrines. They have not only held him a prisoner to their philosophies and dogmas, but they have actually put out his eyes.
But the Father is going to restore sight to him and break the bonds that hold him.
The bonds of false teaching are going to be broken, and this child of God, this superman, is going to come into his own.
He has two formidable enemies. The worst one is sense knowledge.
Entrenched in all our universities, colleges, and technical schools, backed up by the press and religious periodicals, the great mass of the ministry are the devotees of the achievements of the senses in the realm called science.
And this superman in Christ has been held in bondage by them. They are the jailers.
The Father is calling for His sons and daughters to come out of the foxholes of fear and doubt and meet their enemies in open combat.
Satan can no more conquer this body of Christ, when it knows its rights, than he could conquer Jesus on the day of the resurrection.
We are partakers, sharers in His resurrection.
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above” (Colossians 3:1).
You see, we were raised together with Him in the mind of justice.
We possess resurrection ability.
You doubt it? Read Acts 1:8 (MOFF): “You will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you.”
The word “power” comes from the Greek word dunamis.
Robert Young translates it as “ability”—“Ye shall receive ability when the Holy Spirit has recreated you.”
Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power [or ability] that worketh in us.”
If that doesn’t make supermen out of common men, then the English language cannot convey God’s thought.
The problem is this: How long are we going to be held in bondage by sense knowledge?
How long are we going to refuse to take our place as the sons of God?
How long are we going to be intimidated by the fears and doctrines of men, while the Word of God is ignored?
To them, it is a root out of dry ground. To most of the people, it has been a useless vine, something they could hang their doctrines and creeds upon.
It is coming to be to us what it really is in the mind of the Father.
Here is the Spirit’s challenge: that you who read this, take your rights in prayer!
Begin to act like sons of God.
You have all heaven behind you.
You have the very angelic forces to do your bidding.
God is your strength and ability.
All things are possible to you because you are daring to act on the Word of God.
You are daring to live as Jesus dared to live in His earth walk.
You are the righteousness of God—that makes you a master of Satan; that gives you access to the throne; that permits you to take your place as a victor, as a spirit-warrior, as a conqueror.
You can have the consciousness that you are taking Jesus’s place.
2 Corinthians 2:14 is becoming a reality in your own life: “Wherever I go, thank God, he makes my life a constant pageant of triumph in Christ, diffusing the perfume [or incense] of his knowledge everywhere by me” (MOFF). And you can shout, “Yes, I am Messiah’s incense wafted up to God in the sight of all!”
I am a master in His name, with His ability.
I can do what He planned the church should do, for I am what He says I am.
GOD’S REAL MAN
Spiritual things are as real as material things.
Spiritual forces are stronger than mental.
Spiritual forces govern disease.
Spiritual forces govern natural laws.
Satan caused the wind on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus caused it to be still.
The believer, in his contact with material, spiritual, and mental forces, is as Jesus was in His earth walk—he is a master.
The believer is a new creation, created by God Himself.
He has God’s nature, eternal life.
Jesus is made unto him wisdom.
God is his strength.
The Holy Spirit is his ability.
He has the love nature of God so that he does not and cannot act like common men.
Love makes him like Jesus.
He has the mind of Christ and the ability that Christ had in His earth walk.
This makes him a superman.
God gave to him a legal right to the use of Jesus’s name, which has all authority in heaven and on earth, and which has authority over all the laws of nature, over every demon and his work, over all spiritual forces as well as material.
That authority and that ability belongs to the believer.
The recreated man is supernatural.
He is a superman.
Then why live in the senses—seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling?!
All the knowledge natural man has came through these channels to his brain.
We have revelation knowledge.
What men of faith this truth will make!
What men of prayer will arise and take their place in Christ!
Here is the foundation on which to build a prayer life.