The Daily Word of Righteousness

The New Creation and the Resurrection, #5

Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. (Revelation 3:4 NIV)

The New Testament writings have much to say about the necessity for being found worthy of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 10:37; Ephesians 4:1; Colossians 1:10; I Thessalonians 2:12; II Thessalonians 1:5,11.)

The sons of the resurrection cannot die. They are the members of an eternal race. They are equal to the angels in glory, no longer being bound by the prison of flesh and blood. They are the sons of God.

We have here two distinct races: the sons of the present age, and then the sons of the resurrection, of the future age. The Christian salvation is not the saving of the sons of the present age. The Christian salvation is the transforming of the sons of the present age into the sons of the resurrection. This is accomplished by the grafting of Divine Life on the stock of mankind. All who are to be saved must experience this transformation eventually. This is what it means to be saved.

The bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was not the resurrection of a son of Adam, it was the resurrection of "the firstborn from the dead."

And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:18)

Do you see that before His death on the cross the Lord Jesus was a descendant of Adam through Mary, but after His resurrection He was the beginning of a new race, a race of people who do not marry, who cannot die, who are equal to the angels? They are the sons of the resurrection.

The sons of the resurrection are not living souls, they are life-giving spirits.

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening [life-giving] spirit. (I Corinthians 15:45)

Adam, and all of his children, are living souls. The new race that God is creating does not consist of living souls. The new people are not of the first creation. They are a new creation, a new race, a new kind of creature.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [a new creation]: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, . . . (II Corinthians 5:17,18)

"All things are become new." "All things are of God."

The difference between the old race and the new race is the difference between the man of the earth and the Lord from Heaven. It is not that the old man is saved and fixed up, it is the abolishing of the old that the new may be brought forth.

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (I Corinthians 15:47-49)

God is making a new creation, a new race of persons, a new humanity.

To be continued.