We Are New Creations in Christ

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Loved ones, this present world is a world underwater, it's a world underwater. This present fallen world that governs us by its so-called pretended ability to supply us with security, to supply us with a sense of esteem and a sense of importance, this present fallen world was destroyed by God in a flood before you and I were born. And it was destroyed then in a flood to express what God had done in his son Jesus, in his death, he crucified this world. He destroyed it -- and in his death on Calvary, he destroyed you and all that you have been for eternity. He destroyed you absolutely and completely so that this fallen world is a world underwater and you are an old self that is underwater, neither of it really exists any longer in God's eternity. And he is saying to you, that's reality. Not the things that come through your senses, through your eyes and through your ears, not the things that come through your taste and through your sense of smell. That is not reality. Reality is that your old self was crucified with Christ and when Christ died, this whole fallen world was crucified also, and you are free to live above it.

And God says to each one of us this morning, you can live differently from this day on. If you believe what I have told you in my word: that I have changed you, and I have changed this fallen world, and every time you see yourself failing in some way that's the fallen you that I crucified with my son. Forget that, it's dead and gone. And see that I have raised you up and made you sit with me in the heavenly places. And that you are a new creation, fix your spirit on that, fix your mind on that, fix your heart on that, that you are a new creation. Because I put you in my son, you are a new creation.

And if you say to me, "Really? Do you mean, that tomorrow if I lose my temper and that voice comes inside me and says, 'See? See with your eyes what you are. You are the same miserable bad-tempered old creature that you always were.' Do you mean, that at that moment if I reject that as a lie if I reject that as a description of what once was and what has been crucified with Christ, and I instead set my mind on what God has made me in his son, that I begin to be able to live in that place?" Yes, that's it. Yeah, that's it, that's exactly it.

You believe it first, and then you live it -- that's it, see? You don't first live it and then believe it -- that's walking by sight. You first believe it and then you live it. That's it loved ones, that's how you break the vicious circle of years of bad habits, of years of knowing yourself too well. That's where the adage -- you remember that originated I think with Seneca, one of the old classical writers, that's where that adage is not sufficient, "Know thyself." It's one step; but if you only know yourself, all you will know is a miserable heap of garbage that grows year by year by year. And gets more and more offensive to you -- then more you know how subtle it has become in its own selfishness. No, don't just know yourself; but know the new self that God has made you in his son Jesus.