The Old Creation and the New

There is a tension between the Adamic Creation and the New Creation. Paul affirms that there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free Male nor Female in Christ. Yet we know that there is not an erasure of ethic heritage, or employment situation, or gender when one comes to Christ. What is in view? It is an example of the already-not-yet tension in participatory eschatology. In Christ—that is the key. Paul elsewhere makes the profound statement that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. It’s not of the crucified Lord that I refer, but in the risen and living Lord that there is participation in his life. The former grants us entrance into the later. In Christ there is a new creation that is not subject to the old order—ethnicity, gender or social class. Yet, I still live in the old order that has ethnicity, gender and social class. By virtue of this union with Christ, the vertical relationship is classless, raceless and genderless. However horizontal relationships are by nature class, race and gender dependant. Yet the participatory eschatological existence impinges upon this clear distinction.

Let me explain. I think of it in simplistic terms, though this is an incomplete and defective way to approach the issue, at least it tends toward clarity. I find it helpful to think of my Adamic Existence—old-creation order—separately form my new-birth existence—new-creation order. For a time the two orders co-exist setting up the tension Christians live in daily. The old is dying and the new is seeping through a semi-permeable membrane, as it were, into the old order. Therefore I have a dying body that is being “quickened” or “vivified” by the Holy Spirit’s presence in my life. Is this not the very nature of what divine healing is—The supernatural in-breaking of the kingdom of God into the domain of Satan? Moreover, the fruit of the vertical spiritual relationship is borne out in horizontal relationships. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, and others are not just reserved for the person bearing the fruit. The fruit is tasted by all who come in contact with the fruit-bearer. So it is seen that the old creation is dying away and the new creation existence is renewing the mind, opening the eyes of the heart and quickening the mortal body.

Ultimately, of course, there is participation with his resurrection glory when mortal bodies will be shed to don spiritual bodies. At that point the old creation is over and the new is all there is. But until then, we only hold the earnest of our inheritance in our embrace longing for The Day, when Christ shall appear.