What does it mean to say that “if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation?”

The saving work of Christ is a mystery that can never be fully explained or understood by the human finite mind. It is something that theologians have tried to simplify and explain for centuries. The sheer thought that the God of the universe would make a way to redeem, let along want to redeem, a rebellious human race that has turned their backs on their creator over and over again is beyond comprehension. And not only initiate the redemption, but continue the process by which human beings become “new creations” in Christ just adds to the mystery. But herein lays the incomprehensible love and grace of this great God. So, to answer this question we must formulate our answers based upon two concepts: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit and The Doctrine of Salvation and the Christian Life.
So, we begin our journey by looking at the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity through which God works to initiate the process of salvation, to continue the process of salvation, and to complete the process of salvation after death in the lives of people. As Gordon D. Kaufman expresses, “God’s Spirit is to be understood as his actual presence to his creatures in every situation, whether they consciously feel it or not. Thus, God is immanently at work in men’s lives, even before they are conscious of him or begin to respond with faith,...” So, the process of man becoming a “new creation in Christ” is one that is fueled and driven by God through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s presence is seen from the beginning of time in the Old Testament through the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament and his manifestation in the Book of Acts. Even so, he is present in this day and time doing the work of God through the people of God by empowering, purifying, revealing, and unifying. He is involved in the process of salvation through conversion (starting salvation), through sanctification (continuing salvation), through equipping, through intercession, and through assurance (class notes). We see him in every aspect from beginning to end.
Which leads us to our second concept in exploring our question of becoming “new creations in Christ:” The Doctrine of Salvation and the Christian Life. Salvation is the effect of the Holy Spirit’s application of the work of Christ to the life of the believer (class notes). So, one can clearly see that the Doctrine of Salvation and the Christian Life is directly tied to the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit for without the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of men there would be no realization of the need for God.
Speaking of the Doctrine of Salvation and the Christian Life, herein lays the process by which one becomes a “new creation in Christ.” This is seen through “The Order of Salvation” or the “ordo salutis.” Throughout the centuries there has been much debate between Reformed and Arminian theologians about how the process of salvation is initiated, carried out, and completed. We see Reformed theology expressed through John Calvin’s TULIP stressing the sovereignty of God, and we see Arminian theology which stresses the human freedom of choice. Kaufman’s explanation of salvation is that “salvation in the Christian view is nothing else than living as free though finite creatures under God; or, to say the same thing in other words, it is loving God and fellows; or, in yet another image, it is living in the kingdom of God.” When looking at salvation and the Christian life, whether taking a Reformed view or an Arminian view, one has to admit that the whole process is all initiated by God. “The Atonement wrought by Jesus Christ is the focus of revelation, the inner truth of the Gospel addressed to our sin-burdened and sin-poisoned race. In all the glory of His mediatorial character and in all the fullness of His mediatorial work Christ is the center and core of Christian doctrine.” The focus then of salvation and the Christian life should be that of Christ and the process of becoming “new creations in Christ” that is laid out in the Scripture. That “God does not love us because Christ died for us, but that Christ died for us because God loves us, and his sacrifice is an expression of this love” is a clear and focused statement of what becoming “new creations in Christ” is all about.
So, what does it mean to say that “if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation?” It means that we have experienced regeneration through the process of salvation that was initiated by God through the Holy Spirit and is continued throughout our lives until the day Christ returns or until our death. It means that we have experienced a new birth in our lives through Christ or been “born again” as Christ explained to Nicodemus. It means that we are no longer slaves to the sin of this world, but our old life of sin has been buried and we have been made new through the power of Jesus Christ. It can be summed up best by saying that “salvation is not merely a cure for sin but the redemption of the entire sinner. The work of salvation that God has begun in all true believers will be fulfilled in the resurrection of our bodies and the completion of God’s redemptive plan-a plan that includes past, present, and future.”

Enjoy the Journey,
Brett