ARE WE REJOICING IN

GOD’S NEW CREATION?

For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come to mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy (Isaiah 65:17-18).

For He is our peace who hath made us both one ... to make in Himself of twain ONE NEW MAN, so making peace (Eph. 2:14-15).

Clearly, God wants us to rejoice and be glad over that which He has created. The problem is most of us don’t. Instead we spend much time begging God to change our circumstances, heal our wounds, save our nation. Rarely do we stop to consider the real answer lies in what God has already created, what He has already done. Not in begging Him to do more while totally ignoring that which He says He has already created and wants us to rejoice over. Shortly, we will explore the special creation the Lord wants us to rejoice in right now, in 2024.

Meanwhile, returning to Isaiah 65, we find that God has yet to “create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy”. Like other Hebrew prophets was so confident God would be faithful to his word that some 2,700 years ago he quotes the Lord in the present tense as already creating a joyful Jerusalem. When in fact this has yet to take place.

The joy filled Hebrew capital will come into being during the “Day of Christ” which begins with the Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing (Titus 2:13). This is the new era of God’s dealings with mankind, an age created already in advance by Jesus Himself (Col. 1:16, Heb. 1:2 where ‘worlds’ means ages).

To explain: the Day of Christ is mentioned seven times in Paul’s epistles. It is the eon the Lord called “the regeneration” (Matt. 19:28). It is when Christ will rule over and bless the nations (Matt. 12:17-21) and Israel will be restored. It is when Elijah will be resurrected to come and “restore all things before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Mal. 4:5 and Matt. 17:11). It is the day when David will be resurrected to reign over a restored Israel (Jer. 23:5, 30:9, Ezek. 37:24).

One last point before we get to the creation God would have us joy over now. The “new heavens and a new earth” of Isaiah 65:17 are not be confused or equated with the “new heaven and a new earth” the Apostle John foresaw in Rev. 21:1. Probably, thousands of years separate these two recreations. Note the difference: The Day of Christ recreation of heaven and earth will have an earthly Jerusalem for its capital. That of Rev. 21:1-2 will have the holy city, the “new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven”. Note: the city’s origin is in heaven, not in earth.

But all that is future. Today we live in the “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:1-4). This is an unprophesied, previously unpredicted era which God sprang as a surprise on the world. The secret now revealed is that the Lord shows grace and nothing but grace to the undeserving.

Included in the package is a new creation the Lord would have us rejoice in right now. It is not a blessing we have to wait for, for God has already created it.

We learn about this new creation in Eph. 2:15 where the Apostle Paul; is inspired to write that “Gentiles”, i.e. non-Jewish people, who were once “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12), are now in Christ “made nigh” by his blood.

For He is our peace, who hath made both one and broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, to make in Himself of twain [two] ONE NEW MAN, so making peace (Eph. 2:14-15).

The “one new man” is a whole new creation by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is not the “old man” saved and rectified. It is not a believer who has somehow graduated from an Acts period experience into a new creature. It is, in short, a whole new creation. It is what God is creating in holiness now.

This new creation by the Lord God Almighty, the Lord Jesus Christ, may be invisible to us now but it can only be compared to God’s greatest physical act of creation when He “created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them” (Gen. 127).

The “one new man” is a new race of man beings formed of the very substance (not the image) of the “one true God”, the Lord Jesus Christ. As Eph. 5:30 declares “for we are members of His Body, of his flesh and of his bones”.

Part II of this study will explore further truth about this ONE NEW MAN and how chosen believers can find themselves within him.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com

Find more challenging Bible studies on the website Day of Christ Ministries.