A new creation

All things New

And God spake unto Noah saying go forth of the ark ..and Noah went forth …out of the ark.
Gen.8:15-19

After a long year of judgement the waters on the earth abated and dry land appeared. Then eventually God commanded the ark’s inhabitants to leave and begin to live life on the earth once more.

Can you imagine their reaction on leaving the ark? They saw a different earth. Things were not the same, as one would expect after such a yearlong universal flood. Things were new, they could have easily said the old is past away, all things are become new! The old wickedness that God had witnessed had been destroyed. In type the old nature had been put away.

Raised in newness of life

If being in the ark for the year was typifying being baptised into Christ’s death, so coming out of the ark afterwards typifies being raised into newness of life.

Knowing ye not that as many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised unto His death. Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into [the ] death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this that our old man is crucified with Him that the body of sin might be destroyed [= made inoperable] that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed [=justified] from sin.
Rom.6:3-7

If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature (= creation) old things are passed away behold all things become new
II Cor.5:17

The picture of the flood is very powerful, it illustrates salvation in a quite remarkable way. On new birth we are baptised into Christ (Noah and family baptised in the ark by the judgement waters around).

We are cut off from the old man, which was judged at the cross ( Noah and all were cut off from the old world which was under Divine judgement).

We are then brought into the resurrection life of Jesus, a newness of life ( Noah and all came into a new life on the cleansed earth). That we should no longer serve sin.

The result is that we are new creations in Christ Jesus. The old life in Adam has been dealt with. Spiritually we have been cut off from Adam’s line and heredity. We now have a new heredity, that of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have His spiritual seed in us.

We are now partakers of the Divine nature, II Pet.1:3-4. By this we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

This new life that we have suits us for living in the kingdom of His dear Son. In fact we cannot enter or even see the kingdom of God unless we are born again, or from above, Jn.3:3-8. This makes complete sense. If we want to live with God then we must have a life that is suitable and consistent for fellowship with God.

This is seen in Eden, whilst Adam and Eve were without sin they fellowshipped with God. The moment they fell they instinctively knew they couldn’t be in God’s presence. The redemptive work of Christ undid all that and much more beside.

As Isaac Watts has it:

Blessings abound wherever He reigns;
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains;
The weary find eternal rest;

And all the sons of want are blessed.
Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more:
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost

A new Heart

This is not a novel teaching of the New Testament. Rather it is the understanding of the great prophecies concerning the New Covenant in the OT.  One example is Ezekiel’s prophecy of the new heart.

A new heart also will I give you And a new spirit will I put within you And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh And I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes. And ye shall keep My judgements and do them
Ezk.36:26-27

See also Jer.31:31-34

God knew of man’s wickedness, and that it was the heart that had to be dealt with. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, quoted in Hebrews, it says that it wasn’t the Old Covenant that was at fault. But rather the nation of Israel, they didn’t have the power to keep the Law. The reason? The wicked stony heart of human beings. The result of that original sin from Adam. That’s why Jesus had to come and pay the price for our sins, and make it possible for us to have a new heart.

By Christ’s death at Calvary He paid the penalty for our sin, defeated Satan and by his baptism into death brought about the death of the old man. By new birth we are identified in a spiritual baptism with Christ’s death and then with His resurrection. Consequently, we become dead to sin and alive unto God, and receive a new heart. We then can live as God wants us to live in newness of life as a new creation.