The word new in regard to things temporal is relative; in connection with things spiritual, absolute. That is to say, things temporal deteriorate, decay, perish. They become old. The process starts immediately. But in divine things new is always new. What a thought! How comforting! Let countless aeons of aeons—ages of ages—roll by, and that which is divinely new is still new, absolutely new. No mark of time shall be on them, for time shall cease to be. “And He that sat upon the throne said, BEHOLD, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW.”
There are THREE NEW THINGS we would briefly consider, viz.:
1. A new being.
2. A new body.
3. A new world.
God begins with what is vital and essential. He gives the believer a new spiritual being. All else is involved in this. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
This gives the believer new life, new desires, new aspirations, new delights, new pursuits, new relationships, new prospects. How blessed! We are thus brought morally into accord with God, and God’s things, and God’s world. In the Holy Spirit given we have a capacity for what is beyond the keenest natural intellect. “There is a path which no fowl knows, and which the vulture’s eye has not seen: the lion’s whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it” (Job 28:7-8). The keenest vision or the greatest strength is alike powerless here. It belongs to another range of things altogether, and into these things we enter by the Spirit given to us of God.
The believer having this new spiritual being is still in his body of humiliation, still linked up with a groaning creation which is passing away. He is
“Here in the body pent.”
This is an anomalous state of things, as if a king were clad in rags. How needful then to accustom ourselves to consider the brevity of time, and fix our eyes upon eternity, upon the new and abiding things which are not seen.
A new spiritual being involves A NEW SPIRITUAL BODY. This the believer will get when the Lord comes. It is part of the salvation that is nearer than when we believed.
If the believer has passed away, how touching is the description of what will take place at the resurrection. How surpassingly glorious is the prospect! His body
IS SOWN — WILL BE RAISED
in corruption — in incorruption
in dishonour — in glory
in weakness — in power
a natural body — a spiritual body
“We have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). “The dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:52).
The living saints shall be caught up at the rapture. Nor are we left in any doubt as to their condition. “We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2); and this includes all saints, whether those who have passed away or those who are alive at the rapture.
What a prospect! a body of glory like Christ’s.
Nor is this all. A new spiritual being clothed in a new spiritual body has as its destiny A NEW SPIRITUAL WORLD.
Eye has not seen that glorious abode, but ear has heard the report brought by the Spirit from the Father and the Son, and faith delights to anticipate the glories of that “world of bliss “which awaits every child of God.
This earth has been the theatre of the greatest possible sin at the cross. The darkness did not comprehend the light. Man hated incarnate good. The Son of God was crucified. Then the world is full of sadness! Cemeteries, asylums, prisons, hospitals meet our gaze on every hand. The material earth is often scarred by convulsions of nature, dealing death to thousands; but all this will be swept away, “every trace of sin’s sad story” blotted out.
God’s dealings with men in grace and government, judgment and mercy, will come to an end and be replaced by the fulfilment of that magnificent promise from Him who sits upon the throne, “Behold, I make all things NEW” (Rev. 21:5).
The seer is enraptured as he saw a new heaven and a new earth; “for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea” (v. 1). The eternal state will be the fulfilment of this. There righteousness shall dwell in a universe of supreme bliss. God, complacent in His love, will have His tabernacle with men, and dwell among them. The contemplation of it even now brings unutterable and unspeakable calmness and joy to the spirit.
In that new world things will be fixed, not in eternal monotony, but in perennial freshness and supreme delight. Everything new, eternally new, never to grow old in the smallest sense of the word—God shall be all in all, supremely blessed, every purpose fulfilled, His heart satisfied! “And He that sat upon the throne said, BEHOLD, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW.”
And you and I, beloved Christian reader, will be there, supremely blessed and happy. May such a prospect have its effect upon us now, and give us to be exercised about going on with what is new.