The New Birth in Creation
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In that great and terrible day, there will be those white with shock when they find that they have depended upon a mental assent to Christianity instead of upon the miracle of the new birth!7
A. W. Tozer
The Purpose of God, from the beginning, has always been to perfect a group of people who will be like Christ.
the perfection process creating the right conditions for a relationship between God and his creation.
If we believe the New Testament we must surely believe that the new birth is a major miracle, as truly a miracle of God as was the first creation, for the new birth is actually the creating of another man in the heart where another man had been.6
A. W. Tozer
The bible says that:
Every incident recorded in the Old Testament is written “for our admonition”
or is written for our learning and protection against fault or oversight and misunderstanding.
11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
11 Now these things befell them by way of a figure [as an example and warning to us]; they were written to admonish and fit us for right action by good instruction, we in whose days the ages have reached their climax (their consummation and concluding period).
admonishment sets us on the right path for understanding and instruction.
Therefore, we find that the Book of Genesis contains several types of Christ, as our Savior to this world.
The old testament is types and shadows of things to come....
precursors that help us to understand plans and principles of God.
They helps us to understand future events
The word types is:
A divinely purposed illustration of some truth yet not seen or realized.
Jesus the Creator
Jesus the Creator
39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
The scriptures we read lead us to Christ…in understanding and relationship
Jesus said the Scriptures testified of Him.
We cannot read the first five words of Genesis without reading words that testify of Him. The first five words are, “In the beginning God created.”
When we look at the apostle John, he introduced Jesus as the Word made flesh in the first chapter of his Gospel
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Even more than that, John said, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made”
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
As we all know, Jesus is the God-man:
He is both divine and human.
As God, He spoke creation into existence.
24 Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, And he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; That stretcheth forth the heavens alone; That spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
In Isaiah, Jehovah claimed to have stretched “forth the heavens alone.”
10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Yet in John, it states that Jesus was in the world, “and the world was made by him,” but the world did not know Him.
This shows that Jesus of the New Testament is Jehovah of the Old Testament incarnate.
When the bible declares that God created all things but yet later states that Christ created all things, there is only one conclusion that can be made if we believe the bible to be the “inspired word of God” and inerrant…
that God and Jesus Christ must be one in the same (the same spirit that worketh all in all)
28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
That we may see the fulness of God with the understanding of both the spirit and the flesh.
In Christ dwells all the fulness of God bodily…or dwells all the completeness of God
Two Creative Words
Two Creative Words
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we see two acts of creation, which illustrate the first and second births mentioned in the New Testament.
It uses two words for creation. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”
The word create is translated from a root word meaning “to create out of nothing.
And then it says: “and God made the firmament”
The word made is translated from a root word meaning “to form out of a substance already created.
God’s first creative act gave Him the raw material to use:
and in His second creative act He fashioned this raw material into the earth, sky, seas, and everything in them.
For example, He divided the dry land from the waters and caused light to shine out of darkness.
First Act of Creation
First Act of Creation
We must note what condition the earth was in after God’s first creative act.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
We read “And the earth was without form, and void.” If God had stopped here, the world would have been of no use to Him and certainly not to humans,
In this condition no human could live upon the earth.
Some see this as a type of the new birth.
A person who has been born only once is spiritually UN-regenerated and is simply a mass of corruption.
He is alive in a sense, but he is of no use to God or anyone else until the Lord takes this UN-regenerated person, and recreates him and makes him into a person who will walk with God.
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
this describes the person who has not been born again: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
17 And the way of peace have they not known:
18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
This scripture vividly describes the sinful condition of a person who has been born, or created, only after the flesh.
After the first act of creation, “darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2).
An unregenerate person is in darkness, for Jesus is “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9).
Something else happened before God’s second creative act:
“And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). Similarly, the Spirit of God moves (or brings conviction upon) the unsaved soul.
Without this conviction, no one could be saved, for Jesus said, “No man can come to me, except the Father . . . draw him” (John 6:44).
Second Act of Creation
Second Act of Creation
2 Corinthians gives us the authority to view the Creation account as a type of the new birth
6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
God’s second act of creation was to divide the water from the land, the light from the darkness, and to bring perfect order out of chaos. God, who brought order out of chaos, can also calm a troubled lost soul.
Paul said that the same God who caused light to shine out of the darkness when He created the world, has caused the light of the glorious gospel to shine into our darkened hearts!
In this, Paul declared, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [or new creation]” (II Corinthians 5:17).
Like the potter who breaks a piece of clay, melts it, and shapes it into an entirely different vessel, so God makes us into a new creation through the new birth. (emphasis added)
We are His workmanship, or in other words, we are the ones God is working on and fashioning into a people who will be like Christ.
Paul said that we are created in Christ. Therefore, when we are placed into the body of Christ, we are placed there by an act of creation—
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
not the first act of creation, for in Adam (the first creation) all die, but in Christ (the beginning of this new creation) all shall be made alive
Christ was the beginning of this new order of creation:
14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
Christ was the first seed planted, which shall bring forth a harvest of recreated beings in the which…we are a part of.
When we preach the message of the new birth in light of the creation account as Paul did, a sinner cannot go away simply hoping to do better in order to earn salvation.
For they will see that, since they have not been born again, they are still in their sinful state, a shapeless mass, of no use to God or anyone else.
They will see their need of the new birth whereby God makes them into an entirely new person,
an instrument suitable “for the master’s use” (II Timothy 2:21).
21 If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
This message makes salvation more than trying to do better—it shows salvation to be an act of creation as mighty and miraculous as God creating the planets in the beginning
We are “created” a new creature in Christ after him who hath created us
10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
Our new birth is a reflection and a likeness of the creation of this world by God from the very beginning.
If regeneration is a work of new creation, sanctification is a work of new formation. If regeneration is a new birth, sanctification is a new growth.
J. I. Packer