2 Corinthians 5: 14-21

1 Corinthians 3: 1

2 Corinthians 12: 2 (“I know a man in Christ”)

Ephesians 2: 10

Galatians 6: 15, 16

MJW  It is obvious that I want to speak about new creation.  I want to approach the first scripture without rushing into it, because the sequence of the teaching is rather important if we are to get the impact of what the apostle brings in as to new creation.  I say that because he obviously feels that the judgement that he comes to in verse 14 requires that the love of Christ should be operational with us in constraining us.  It rather suggests that the Corinthians might be hesitant inapproaching this, because the verses that follow seem quite radical and yet are essential to Christianity.  He says, “For the love of the Christ constrains us, having judged this: that one died for all, then all have died”.  I wonder whether we view ourselves that way before God, that all have died.  Death is upon everybody as the judgement of God because of sin and I think that is the view of this scripture that as far as what we are according to flesh, if Christ died then it proved that all have died.  I want to start off from that standpoint because unless we view ourselves in that way, as God views us, as having the judgement of death upon us, we will not get the impact of the blessedness of what is essential for God in new creation. 

           I expect we all feel rather measured by verse 15.  It is in view “that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them, and has been raised”.  The matter is emphasised by the apostle showing the love that lay behind the constraint.  The effect in us is to be “that we henceforth know no one according to flesh”.

MJP  I am really rejoicing; this is not the first time we have had this scripture read in Spaldwick, and the local brethren will know that many years ago we had meetings with Mr Fred Trussler and he told us that, “the love of the Christ constrains us” is an irresistible drawing power and you cannot fight against it.  Would that not be wonderful if we all felt like that today?

MJW  It is essential for what it is to bring us to.  

MJP  Without that love operating in us there will not be a spring.  That is what we need; we need a spring.  We need to get into this life, that is what God wants us to enter into, life - “I am come that they might have life, and might have it abundantly”, John 10: 10.

MJW  It does give us a spring, and to think of the Lord’s sympathetic view of us, that He knows that will cut deep because we do tend to live to ourselves, but He would have us constrained by His love so that we should live to Him.  If we have not started, let us start now.  

DCW  So is the one line a necessary pre-requisite to the opening up of something else?

MJW  That is exactly what I had in mind.  

DCW  I was noting that is says, “a new creation”, not just ‘new creation’.  Does that make it individual?

MJW  It seems like it, “if any one be in Christ”, but the new creation itself is not specified because it is very wide.  It will extend to heavens and earth eventually, so it is not just limited to a person; there will be the whole sphere in which new creation will be evident.  Say more as to one thing being closed up, because I do not think in ministry and in our exercises we think enough as to the death of Christ as ending one order completely.  How glad we are when we are older; it may be a bit of a strain when we are younger to think that all that we are naturally and according to Adam has been removed in the death of Christ, but you get to a point where you are glad it is all gone. 

DCW  What you are seeking to bring out is that there is no intermediary state, otherwise we are not in the gain of anything.  

NJH  Did Christ die to bring in new creation?

MJW  I thought that was the purpose, and I think that it is very encouraging to think of it.

NJH  That is what lay in the love of God, in the love of Christ, because we often just link the new creation over against the old, but the new creation was in the eternal thoughts of God.  

MJW  It was a necessity for God, part of His purpose and what He intended to bring in for Himself, as well as for our richest blessing.  I think that is very helpful.  

RDP  Is the “all have died” comprehensive, but “they who live”, is perhaps a little more selective?

MJW  How do I view you if I do not know you according to flesh any more? 

RDP  The “all” is not just those who have an interest in Christ, it is all, the whole thing has gone.  When Christ died it showed all that was in that one order.

MJW  Do you not think that is a wonderful thing?  We are very natural in our thinking, and because we live perhaps more in nature and our business than we should, we do not sufficiently realise how wonderful it is for God, and for us, that all that belonged to that order, which was nothing but a hindrance, and certainly was hateful to God (and hence the cross) has been ended judicially for God, and He has what is new before Him.  It says, “we henceforth know no one according to flesh; but if even we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer”.

JMcK  I am extremely tested by it.  The most encouraging feature about this passage is that new creation is of divine origin; “all things” are of God, so that what we find that is positive, we take no credit for because it is God that has done it.  

MJW  What impressed me was that a new creation was a complete product.  It is not like babes in Christ, and a man in Christ, which show that there is growth, but what God has done is complete.  A creation is a creation.  It is like the beginning of Genesis, and it is complete and perfect.  So I might think I need to improve myself, I must do better, but actually if I view myself according to this as in new creation that is perfect in itself.  I may be a “babe in Christ”, but what the Spirit of God is getting at in view of God’s pleasure is that I should mature, should become a man in Christ. 

JMcK What God does, what comes from Him, what has its origin in Him, must be perfect.  

BDW  In verse 17 we have “a new creation”, the Authorised Version says, “a new creature”.  What is the distinction there?

MJW  Mr Stoney says that a butterfly is a new creature.  It was a caterpillar, it has now become a butterfly; it is a new creature, but it is not a new creation, vol 4 p12.  I think this is something entirely new, something from God, perfect in itself, so that I do not have to worry about correcting it.  

BDW  Would creation be a more expansive thought?

MJW  Very much so because I think this is very wide.  It is a general statement here, “there is a new creation”, because in fact there will be a new heavens and a new earth.  The extension of this idea is very wide, but it begins with the believer, or the believer is in it.  

          Is it a comfort to you to know that all that belonged to me and to Adam’s order, which God dealt with at the cross, has gone for Him?  If I am a delivered person it is also gone for me.  Does that encourage you?

BDW  Absolutely, and our failures are left behind; it is all in Christ.  That is the thought that is being brought out in these scriptures, “in Christ”.  There has to be perfection there. 

MJW  The apostle is speaking about the new covenant.  He would establish us in the knowledge of God’s disposition towards us, which is a very wonderful thing, and then he speaks about reconciliation.  On the one hand, what God is towards us in His disposition, on the other hand reconciliation is more what the saints are for Him with all the distance gone - the distance removed in the death of Christ, and what the saints are now for Him.  And they are for His pleasure; that must involve new creation.  It is an essential part of reconciliation. 

RDP-r  It says, “the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new”.  Could you say more about the fact that it is accomplished in that way?  

MJW  Is that how you live?

RDP-r    No, frankly.  But I think it is encouraging for us to see that that is how it is viewed from God’s side, but I think what you are bringing in is to have it viewed like that from our side. 

MJW  Exactly.  What liberty it would bring us into.  It is a new world altogether, “a morning without clouds” (2 Sam 23: 4), altogether of God.  It brings us into touch with eternity where everything is new, “all things are of the God … ”.

RDP-r    We often think of the limitation that these things might bring upon us, but do you think we should get the sense that this is something which is infinitely better than anything that has gone before?  

MJW  That is what I hoped that we would feel when reading through this section.  Here is something beautiful, wonderful, which is of God and which will abide.

RHB  The reference you have touched on already as to “Christ according to flesh” was not obnoxious to God, and yet it had to come to an end.  

MJW  He is in a new condition.  It is not that Jesus is any different; He is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come” (Heb 13: 7), but there is a different condition.   It is not a different Christ.

RHB  I wondered whether the focus in the passage is on the state of flesh and the state of new creation, and that He is not in that condition.  He said to the woman in resurrection, “Touch me not”; she was about to embrace Him as she had known Him, but He was to be known differently, John 20: 17.  I suppose as far as we are concerned it is not only the gross features that sin has wrought in the flesh, but it is that condition of things, even with things which we might admire.  

MJW  His condition is a wonderful subject for consideration.  I think what you say is helpful, because the whole order has gone in the death of Christ, and even the condition in which He was has been closed up in view of the glory of redemption.  

RHB  Is it in your mind that this involves a committal on our part, “the love of the Christ constrains us”, and then a judgement is made?  It is a spiritual deduction from the contemplation of the fact that He died for all.  What is the significance of that before God?  And then a committal to it on our part; the love of the Christ is the leverage in the soul to be committed to that. 

MJW  It would be a great thing for God and for us if we did commit ourselves to this.  We may have to say that we have not been sufficiently in this.  The question is whether today we can say that from henceforth we will, with the love of the Christ as the constraining power, set our minds on this because what is in view is this wonderful order that is entirely of God and will yield for His pleasure.  As we have said, it was in His purpose to bring in.   

RDP  There is no flaw in new creation.  Was the first creation marred in that sin came in?  Man spends his time trying to make things perfect, and to overcome the effects of sin.  Christ took part in the flesh and blood condition “sin apart”, Heb 4 15.  I suppose what God saw in Christ was perfection in that condition.  

MJW  The prophet went to the potter’s house and saw the vessel marred.  Even man in innocence did not really fully answer to God’s thought.  With Christ everything was perfect, but He is no longer known in that condition of flesh.  

HTF  Does it bring out the cost to God, the fact that He did not have Christ any more according to flesh because there was no flaw in Him?

MJW   “For the redemption of their soul is costly, and must be given up for ever”, Ps 49: 8.  Christ in that condition is no longer; that order of things has been given up for ever by God.  

RHB  This passage is very exercising because we would not only be reconciled to God if we were in the good of it, but we would be reconciled to one another.  There would be no difficulty amongst us in personal relationships and the like if we knew no one according to flesh.  

MJW  How does it work out?  You are three dimensional, you are as I have always known you, but I am not to know you according to flesh.  It rather suggests that there are features in you, which are of Christ and to which I would attach myself.

RHB  Do we start by being aware of this in our own souls, that through having heard the gospel and having received the Saviour, having received the gift of the Holy Spirit we become aware of the stirrings of something that we did not get from our parents, we did not get from nature?  We got our physical appearance, our tastes and character naturally from our parents, but you become aware of something in the soul that did not come along that line.  I wondered whether it is important to locate that, without being introspective in our own souls.  Then, as locating the work of God in our own souls we develop an eye for it in one another.

MJW  I hope all the youngsters and children were listening to what you said as to whether they have these stirrings.  Mr Raven says, ‘New creation has taken place before we have much apprehension of it’, vol 7 p165.  As young persons commit themselves to the Lord Jesus and embrace Him in faith and receive the Holy Spirit, the stirrings should be stronger.  How do you know whether you are in Christ or not?

AM  I think what you have been saying proves a great assurance, the fact that our tastes and our desires change.  I was thinking, “all things have become new”, it is as if the person goes through but there is what is totally new.  

MJW  The identity goes through.

RW  The hymn relating to new creation says:

     “All things new,” our eyes look upward

            (Hymn 37)

MJW  It has been suggested today that you should look horizontally as well and see new creation.  

RW  We cannot do without either. 

MJW  Exactly.  The person is in Christ when they reach out in faith to the Saviour and they receive the Holy Spirit.  That is the beginning, the new thing. You become conscious, maybe slowly, of new tastes, new desires, and a judgement of things that you have done - there are the stirrings of something new.  These are being worked out by the Holy Spirit to form you practically after another Man.  This is why “in Christ” is state, and not just standing.  We need to keep in our view that what God has done is entirely new and fresh.  It is a complete thing.  The new creation is a creation, something that God has done and it is perfect in itself.  It is standing in the sense that I have related myself to the Head, and that God views me in relation to that, but “in Christ” is state because the features of another Man are coming to light in me.  What the Spirit will do is shed abroad in our hearts the love of God, Rom 5: 5.  That great formative principle of the love of God links with the new covenant.  Paul was ministering here to establish the saints in the disposition of God towards them which is unchangeable.  The new covenant was worked out between Christ and God and established for ever.  The love of God is towards the saints and reconciliation involves that all that brought in the distance has been removed in the death of Christ, and what remains are the saints for God’s pleasure in new creation.  

AM  New creation and the work of God is a substantial thing.  It is not just something that we can regard as an element of the truth; it is something substantial in the soul of the believer.

MJW  It is you.  The person is in it.

NJH  Divine love is the controlling influence of this whole new order.  It must be linked with the divine nature in the person that is taken up, and that person’s relationship with other believers.  Divine love must be the controlling influence.  

MJW  The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts and the believer is going to be formed in that divine nature.  They have then the ability to love the saints, love God, love Christ, love all that is of God.  What a wonderful principle love is. 

NJH  That is John’s first epistle, “If any one say, I love God and hate his brother, he is a liar, chap 4: 20.  Divine love is the great influencing power of this new relationship, this new state, in which we stand. 

MJW  The proof that you love God is that you love your brother, 1 John 4: 21.  That is very testing.  Are we not responsible to display the features of Christ, because it is Christ that is in view?  “In Christ” involves that everything takes its character from Him; He is the Head.  If I live to Him I should become like Him. 

KM  Is it interesting that, in the illustration that you mentioned earlier as to the chrysalis and the butterfly, it is necessary for that chrysalis to embrace the sunshine in order to develop into a beautiful butterfly.  I wondered whether we need to keep ourselves in the sunshine of the love of God, and the love of Christ, to keep our eye upon Him.  Is that the way in which we appreciate divine love and become formed by it, become like Christ ourselves?

MJW  That is right, but what we said was that this was not exactly like the caterpillar and the butterfly, it is a new creation.  Keeping in the sunshine is nonetheless true because that is the great formative principle of what is new because God is love; everything He does must be love.  Mr Raven even said that the lake of fire was a necessity of His love, vol 18 p118.  The idea of the caterpillar and the butterfly was that that was a new creature and not a new creation.

KM  I think that is right, and I think it is right to use illustrations of nature because nature teaches us.

MJW  If you saw a butterfly trying to get out of its chrysalis you might say I would like to help it, but actually in the effort of breaking open the chrysalis it strengthens the butterfly so that it will come out ready, formed and strong enough.  Is that not true spiritually too?  I may find the flesh very strong, we do when we are young, but as we grow in this order of new creation, from a babe upwards, and we mature, we then have strength to throw off, by the Spirit, all that belongs to the old.  

KM  I think it is very fair, and I think we need to be helped to throw off the travails and trappings of the flesh and all that belongs to it in order that we might be more here in this scene to shine.  Moses’s face shone having been in the presence of God.  You can tell a person who has been in that because of their countenance.  It is a person who looks up with confidence, and also his face shines. 

DJW  Is it significant that it begins with, “the love of the Christ”, not the love of the Lord Jesus?  In Ephesians 3 it is, “the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”, v 19.

MJW  That is the love which is going to flood the universe, “the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge; that ye may be filled even to all the fulness of God”.  What a love that is. 

DJW  There are phases where we learn the love of Christ.  We learn it in what He has done for me, we learn it in what He has done in removing what is objectionable to God, but the love of the Christ is what it is in its essential essence in its quality and perfection.  It is the bond between His body and His bride; it is the highest level you could possibly have of the love.  

MJW  Is it the highest level of love?

DJW  It has been said that the expression is astronomical, and if you think of the sun there is nothing that surpasses it in its warmth and strength.

RWF  Are we to understand increasingly that new creation is a very expansive thought.  If we think of the old creation and its variety and abundance we wonder at it; how much more new creation.  It is something we should set ourselves to explore and enjoy.  

MJW  It is exhilarating to do it, as we explore.  The Lord Jesus is not a creation and the new man is a creation.  What is in Him is infinite, and there will be great width in new creation.  It is a very expansive thought and that is because it is of God like the old creation.  

          In connection with that, it is not just the objectionable features in the flesh that have gone in the death of Christ, but that whole order, because we find our natural way of thinking is a hindrance, and we can view things in a natural way.  I find that quite a test as to whether the mind has been renewed, and we can throw off that which is not wrong in itself, but which can be a hindrance to what we have spoken of as this wonderful expansive scene of new creation.  

RDP  This begins with a judgement, “having judged this”, it does not say that they who live no longer live to themselves but, “they who live should no longer live to themselves”.  We mentioned the Holy Spirit; younger people here may think, how does this work?  It involves judgement.  It involves that the sun has shone on you to such an extent that your whole thinking process has changed, you are thinking in a different way.  We are creatures of the earth, we are marked by gravity, if we try and jump off we come down to it again, that is what we are.  There is dimension in the Holy Spirit that is greater than that.  The matter of judgement is important.  All these basic epistles involve judgement and the mind; it involves the way that we set ourselves.  It is the love of God that warms us into that environment. 

MJW  We are so affected by the love of God, and may we be!  This can be a prayer from all of us, that we may appreciate the love of God in a greater way because it will get something from us in return which will help us to make this judgement.  A lot of basic things involve the mind, “reckon yourselves dead to sin”, Rom 6: 11.  It is a question of the mind, a question of me setting my mind and committal in this direction, but under the influence of the love of God.  I think that is beautiful.

RDP  I thought that: the chrysalis is in the sunshine, and then the butterfly emerges - perhaps we should stay in the sunshine more spiritually and maybe the warming influence of that would help us in our thinking away from what is limited to earth and what belongs to it.  

MJW  It produces a generous state in the believer, the love of God.  All ill feeling is removed.  There is an expression people use in the world, “the person is all heart”.  In a certain sense that is right.  The divine nature would produce a holy and righteous love in you, but you have to make a judgement.  It is not that it is a warm, soft, cuddly thing without any edges to it. 

RHB  You have gone over the teaching but the first verse referred to is intensely practical, “having judged this: … that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them”.  That is a massive change.  To be delivered from self as an object in my life, what I want, what will suit me and my tastes, and instead to live to Him to devote one’s life to Christ.  I feel limited in being able to speak of it, but the man who wrote these words knew what he was speaking about.  He lists in other epistles the things that he could boast of according to flesh and they are impressive; they would have distinguished him as a man, but people would have said, 'What a waste that Paul, who had all those advantages, instead pursued a course that for him resulted ultimately in the loss of his liberty'. 

NJH  It only took Saul of Tarsus three days to cover most of that ground.  Our brother referred to the writer of the epistle, who is a delineation of what can be arrived at spiritually in a soul where this ground was covered in three days.  

MJW  What you are saying is that we should not say that perhaps it will take forty years.  It is something that, if we gave full rein to the Spirit and to the love of God, we might get the gain of sooner.  It is said to be eleven days' journey.

NJH  That is Deuteronomy 1: 2, but Saul of Tarsus was shorter than that.  It shows what is possible in the mind of God.  We have to arrive at what God has effected and what God’s thoughts are for us.  We are slow to get to His side.

MJW  I am sure that is the problem.  Do you not think that under the influence of the Son we shall all get there quicker?

JCG  God has confidence in His own creation; it says, “God as it were beseeching by us”.  He is looking for the state to be expressed.  Like Peter’s confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16: 16); that was his state, it was coming into expression in him.  There is a difficulty often that we do not express what is true of God in us; we tend to revert to other side issues.

MJW  Have you not felt in your own history, you have perhaps been under the ministry of a spiritual man and you think, 'I would like to be like that'?  Paul would have given you that feeling.  He was so much like His Master, “a man in Christ”.  You would say, 'I would like to be like that'.  “We entreat for Christ”: think of the power that would have.  

RWF  Does the second paragraph of the next chapter give us an example of a man who is in the gain of new creation, “Our mouth is opened to you, Corinthians, our heart is expanded”, 2 Cor 6: 11?  The ground had been cleared after the first epistle, and then he says, “let your heart also expand itself”.  It was very attractive because it was a presentation in Paul himself, not merely an exhortation or a line of doctrine.  

MJW  “Our heart is expanded.  Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your affections; but for an answering recompense … let your heart also expand itself”.  I am sure the Corinthians would want to give Paul this recompense, and I think it did operate in them under the love of the apostle and the love of Christ; their hearts did expand.  

          I hope everyone has the point that new creation is a complete thing and the beauty of it is that all that belonged to Adam and his order, whether it was obnoxious to God or whether it was just because it belonged to that order, has been taken out of the way.  All the distance has been removed in the death of Christ and what remains is this new order, “all things are of the God”.  I do want to emphasise that.  If we think of ourselves, we are not to think of ourselves as that little bit of work of God in me, but to think of ourselves in new creation.  I may be a babe, I may be advancing from that, but it is not a question of improving the old.  Let us get rid of that idea.  If I love the Lord Jesus, and I have the Holy Spirit, God would view me in Christ, after another order of man altogether, and those features, if we go on rightly, will be formed in me and that is real and it is perfect in itself.  

          I read the scripture in Ephesians which gives the whole picture, “For we are his workmanship” - is that not lovely? 

JMcK  As to the man in John 9, the Lord says, “that the works of God should be manifested in him”, v 3.  How do you put that alongside what you have just said that new creation is in itself perfect and complete?

MJW  Do you not think it was with that man?  Was he not part of the divine workmanship already?

JMcK  I thought that he was a demonstration of what we have been speaking about, “the works of God should be manifested in him”.  We need to realise that God’s work is not simply historic, but it continues.  Even in the natural creation it needs to be maintained, and God does that. 

MJW  Christ upholds “all things by the word of his power”, Heb 1 3.  What maintains this order then; is it the Holy Spirit?  I think what you say is helpful.  It says, “we are his workmanship”; that is concrete.  That is real.  It would have been in Ephesus, “we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus”.  What a wonderful thing to think of the saints as created.  They have been created for good works, so that the works of God are manifested in the believer.  We are His workmanship.  The work goes on in a practical sense, that they have been created for good works.  They cannot say, 'I thought of doing this and that'.  God would say, 'I thought of it before you did, and I prepared that you should walk in these ways'.  It is the expression of what has first been established and then maintained.

JMcK  It is a fine moment in the history of the believer when he discovers that what is of God in his soul corresponds with God’s purpose.

MJW  That is wonderful.  I think that is another very important line.  The two things have met; the work of God in him, and what God intended from him, have been realised and will continually be realised.

RJF  Do you think the progression from the babe to the man is not because the work is changed but the apprehension within that person of the work has grown?

MJW  I read in ministry that you do not connect growth with new creation (FER vol 14 p250), but in another sense it must be so in our apprehension because a babe grows from a babe to a man.  

RHB  I always thought that the work of new creation begins in new birth as John speaks of it, before the person may be aware of it, but then John goes on to speak of those who are “born of God”; that is that they are recognisable as the work of God has come into expression in them.  I suppose in a sense the reference in Corinthians to them being babes and not being able to speak to them was a reproach to them because they had had great advantages and help, and yet they were carnal, they found their interest and taste in what was fleshly rather than what was spiritual.  Had it been in what was spiritual there would have been what belongs to the full grown man.  

MJW  The ideas are a little different, new birth and new creation.  New creation is a thing that has come out, through God’s power, come into being.  It is not exactly through birth.  Adam was a man, he was not a baby, he was a man, new creation is something that is entirely fresh and I would have thought it was a slightly different line from new birth.  

RHB  One is typical of John’s ministry, which speaks of the family, whereas new creation is Paul’s presentation of it; so we need to keep with the presentation that you have chosen.  

MJW  Is there growth in new creation, is there development?

NJH  Born of God involves a moral being that you receive from God and I think that side involves growth; you get born again in 1 Peter 1: 23, but new creation itself is always perfect in itself.  I think I would keep the idea of growth apart from that.  Whatever measure they may be, I think it is perfect itself before God. 

MJW  It is very difficult to say much more.

NJH  I would not like to separate, but one is very much a moral thought and the other is a spiritual thought.  

RJF  I was not trying to suggest that there was growth in new creation, but more that we grow through our apprehension of what God has done.

MJW  There must be something like that that happens because how does a babe in Christ become a man in Christ?

RJF  We speak about the physical creation and the sun is what illuminates that and provides its energy.  In new creation it is the love of God expressed in Christ that does that.  We cannot take that all in at once, we could never do that, but our view of it will expand through experience.  

MJW  It will depend very much on our apprehension and our going in for it.  

RHB  Does this passage in Ephesians bring out that it is for God?  Our blessing is involved in it, but “we are his workmanship having been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has before prepared”, and it is in the context of God displaying the surpassing riches of His grace.  The passage in Corinthians raises the question of our committal to it, but does this passage bring out the divine pleasure in what is formed in the hearts of God’s people?

MJW  It links with what we said earlier that the death of Christ involved that this order of things should be brought in for God and for His eternal pleasure.  How wonderful that is. 

NJH  It must be with Christ and in Christ.  

MJW  In Colossians and Ephesians quickening is brought in, which means made alive in His life.  

NJH  Naturally we would not accept death, but we are quickened as with the Christ and then we are raised up together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.  You are on solid ground then linking it with Christ.  

MJW  You must have Him in view all the time.  He comes onto view immediately with reconciliation.  As soon as He came into the world God had another Man before Him and He has never ceased to have that Man before Him, and we should not either. 

          The final scripture in Galatians it is a new rule.  We cannot say there is no regulation or law in Christianity: “by this rule”, the rule of new creation.  I would like to be in the gain of it.  I think that Paul lived in this sphere all the time; the view he had of the saints, every view he had was according to the law of new creation.  Then he brings in this touch as to the “Israel of God”, he had been speaking to people who were perhaps legal and trying to get their righteousness from the law, he had to help them as to that, but he brings in this touch that there is such a thing as the “Israel of God”, that is, Israel according to God’s real desires.  Why should it be brought in in Galatians?

JMcK  I was thinking that there is a distinction between the simple action of divine power and the action of divine affection that results in family.  

MJW  It is John’s line and Paul’s line.  

JMcK  New creation is the simple action of divine power.  God acts from His own side and is supreme in it, but as to family we are born, and we develop in an area where divine love is.  

DJW  Going back to new creation, how does the expression “workmanship” come into it?

MJW  “The work of thy fingers”, there is great detail, Ps 8: 3.

DJW  Workmanship seems to convey the idea of skill.  It says in Genesis 2 (we referred earlier as to the man being complete) when He makes the woman, He formed the woman, divine workmanship, skill.  

MJW  Adam must have thought of that when he saw Eve with her beauty as she was as brought to him, His workmanship.  I think viewing things just in a natural sense the creation of man and woman is a wonderful thing, but if you view it in the new, how much greater, especially looking at it in the assembly, “we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works”.  

          I hope the young people will remember the salient points that I have made about the death of Christ, and all that belonged to the old being removed, both what was contrary and also what we might think of as acceptable, all gone and something new that is perfect in itself and entirely of God remains.  As you are a believer, and you have the Holy Spirit, you are in it.  

RDP-r    What do you mean by the “Israel of God”?

MJW  It is an interesting reference, because he was writing to people who had returned to the law for their righteousness, and yet he would assure them that it does not mean that Israel is not going to come in for blessing.  There is such a thing as the “Israel of God”, and it would involve again new creation, the new order of things that the “Israel of God” would find their place in.  I think it is an exceedingly skilful touch by the apostle, as though he was reinstating Israel spiritually as formed by God for His pleasure and it will join in that wonderful chorus.  

RDP-r    I wondered whether it would link with everything that was under the control and rule of Christ?  I was thinking of Israel as God’s chosen people and Christ as God’s exalted Man, all under His control. 

MJW  Yes, very good. 

Spaldwick

14th June 2008