New Creation Realities

New Creation Realities
By: Sheryl Sullivan

2 Corinthians 5:17 TPT “Now if anyone is enfolded into Christ, he has become an entirely new person.  All that is related to the old order has vanished.  Behold, everything is fresh and new.”

We have become a brand-new creation in Christ!   “New” in the context of time gets old. Ex. New shoes, new car.  “New” in the kingdom never gets old.  If you’ve been serving the Lord your entire life, you’re just as new as the day you got born again.  Sometimes we feel old, dry and dead because we’ve reduced Jesus to a set of beliefs—He is a relationship, and we continue to grow and discover more of who He is and in the knowledge of what Jesus has done for us.

Paul Ellis said in the Gospel in Ten Words “When the Holy Spirit came into your life the change in you was like night and day.  It’s like you were given a heart transplant.  Your old heart, which was captive to desires of the flesh and enslaved to sin, was replaced with a new heart with new desires and appetites.”

The new you is prosperous, bold, overflowing with life, hope and peace!

Many of us don’t really realize what happened to us when we accepted Jesus, or even what Jesus really did for us on the cross.  I’m going to talk about some of the things that happened to us when we said “yes” to Jesus.

1. We died with him! A supernatural transaction took place. We no longer have to struggle with the old man.

Romans 6:3,4,5 NLT “Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism.  And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was.” 44 times in Romans 5,6,7 & 8 it says you’re dead!  We died with Him and we now have a new nature; we no longer have a sin nature.

Galatians 2:20 NLT “My old self has been crucified with Christ.  It is      no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless.  For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.”

“Your participation in Christ’s death was up close and intimate.  It was so vividly personal, that you actually shared a burial with Him.  You went into the tomb with Christ.  Feel it.  Smell the dirt in there.  Get this revelation into you. Realize how final it was.”  John Crowder

We don’t need to die daily; we died with Christ! We need to stop owning fearful, anxious thoughts that belonged to the past.  Believe that the old sinful man and his ways is dead.

Romans 6:11 NLT “So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.”
Consider yourselves dead to sin! 

Watchman Nee said “The self you loathe is there on the cross in Christ.”

In “The Gospel in Ten Words” Paul Ellis said “The gospel is not a reform program for bad people; it is the liberating declaration of new life for those who have died.  The new cannot come until the old has gone and on the cross the old went.  Every man-made religion preaches self-denial and dying to self.  The gospel simply declares: “You died.”

2. He gave me His Righteousness – Righteousness means right standing with God.  It is a gift to receive, not a goal to be achieved.  How do we receive it?  Through faith.

2 Corinthians 5:21 TPT “For God made the only one who did not      know sin to become sin for us, so that we who did not know   righteousness might become the righteousness of God through our union with him.”

Jesus didn’t just carry our sin; he became sin and the Father’s wrath was poured out on the very thing that was working to destroy you.  He became what was killing us, so we could become righteous.   Righteousness is not a process, there is nothing you can do to receive it except to receive it by faith.

Righteous people do righteous deeds, but righteous deeds do not make people righteous. It is based on faith, not deeds. 

Romans 5:17 TPT “Death once held us in its grip, and by the blunder of one man, death reigned as king over humanity. But now, how much more are we held in the grip of grace and continue reigning as kings in life, enjoying our regal freedom through the gift of perfect righteousness in the one and only Jesus, the Messiah.” 

-Rob Rufus story from his book “It’s your time to shine” In the 70’s Rob was a devout Hare Krishna & God encountered him in the Hindu Temple, supernaturally.  After he became a Christian he was on a quest for truth; he didn’t want to be conned again.  One day while praying he asked God, “What is the secret to your power?  Is fasting the secret?”  God said “fasting is good, but fasting is not the secret to my power.”  Rob said, is praying the secret to your power?  God answered “praying is good but it is not the secret to my power.”  Rob asked, “well what is the secret to your power?”  God said “My gospel is the power of God unto salvation, for in my gospel a righteousness from Me is revealed that is from first to last”  The Lord began to unpack the gospel to him little by little and he has been on an amazing journey for the last several years.

3. We are in union with Christ

We came into union with Christ on the cross; it was instant and effortless, nothing was left undone.   We are one with Him!
1 Corinthians 1:30 NLT “God has united you with Christ…”
John 14:20 TPT “So when that day comes, you will know that I am living in the Father and that you are one with me, for I will be living in you.”
Colossians 2:11 TPT “Through our union with him we have experienced circumcision of heart.  All of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ, the anointed one, has accomplished for us.”
1 Corinthians 6:17 NLT “But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.”

Romans 6:5 KJV “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.”
In the ‘Gospel in Ten Words’, Paul Ellis talks about this verse.
“planted together” is sumphutos  in the Greek.  This word appears nowhere else in the Bible, and is just about the strongest word for union you could possibly think of.  It means “born together with” or “of joint origin”. The closest English word is connate which means individual parts that are united to form a single whole.   Wow!  We are one with Him!
Paul Ellis said “Connate union means that our lives cannot be understood in isolation from Jesus.  Apart from him we can do nothing.  We can’t bear fruit, we can’t grow, and we can’t live.”
Puritan minister Thomas Watson said, “Now as the soul is more excellent than the body, and admits of far greater joy, so this spiritual union brings in more astonishing delights and ravishments than any other marriage relationship is capable of.  The joy that flows from the mystic union is unspeakable and full of Glory!”

There is nothing you can do to get closer to Jesus than you already are.  He is the vine, we are the branch.  We are connected to him.  We can grow in our relationship with Jesus, and we can grow in the revelation of what we have.  His love will come more alive in us because we are one with love.  God is love.  It’s not just something he does; it’s what he is.

John Crowder said in his book Mystical Union, “You are not falling in love with God.  You fell into Mr. Love.  You are united to Love. Love is a person.  Now, just as the sap flows effortlessly through the vine into the branch, so is there a continual infilling of Holy Spirit—a continual infilling of Love himself.  You grow in love, just as the branch grows.”

As we, the branch, drink in the sap of the vine, fruit happens!  We just have to rest in faith and abide in Him.  He infuses us with divine energy!  He partners with us and flows through us to touch a hurting a dying world.  We have all the power we will ever need. Renew your mind through these scriptures to come into agreement of what you have in Christ.

New Creation Realities, notes to print, PDF