Firbush Retreats Firbush retreats are organized and led by Robert T. Walker. Firbush retreats are designed to make the best theology accessible to as many people as possible and especially those not trained in theology and often not familiar with routine technical terms. They combine times of worship and prayer with reflection on a theme related to Torrance theology. For more information see https://tftorrance.org/firbush. ----------- October 29, 2017 Robert T. Walker, "New Creation by Incarnation, Word and Spirit" https://tftorrance.org/firbush/ Cf. https://tftorrance.org/node/1622 The audio recording for this presentation is available on the Firbush Retreat section of the website for the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship. The following AI transcript is too rough to rely upon, but perhaps useful for word searches and time-stamps. It is unretouched; if anyone wishes to listen to it and clean it up we will be happy to post an improved version (contact the webmasters). We invite speakers to send us slides for their talks, which we will post alongside the audios and transcripts. If any speaker wishes to have their talk removed from the website, just let us know and we'll take down both the audio and the transcript. ------------ 00:00-00:14 29 October 2017. The topic is New Creation by Incarnation, Word and Spirit. We read from 00:14-00:33 Psalm 33, John 3 and the end of 2 Corinthians 5. This topic is a re-run of my talk at Furbish 00:33-00:45 and I'm just going to focus on the absolute key concepts in it. It's actually the absolute 00:45-00:53 nutshell of the Gospel. It's not the message we hear in the Church today, but it's the 00:53-01:03 classical method of the early Fathers of the Reformation. 01:03-01:14 Luther and Calvin, of the Wesley's and of many, many other people, not least in our 01:14-01:26 own day Calabar and T.F. Torrance. New Creation by Word and Spirit. The first creation was 01:26-01:37 by Word and Spirit. God spoke and it came into being. A famous passage from Genesis 01:37-01:53 that God says, "Let there be light and there is light." So out of nothing, nothing at all, 01:53-02:01 light comes into being. In the Bible every aspect of creation is a bringing by God, by 02:01-02:08 His Word, into being out of nothing, something new. Obviously once it's begun to come into 02:08-02:15 being then it stays in being and it's real. But before it had a beginning it was not real. 02:15-02:25 But everything is brought into being by the Word of God. He simply says it and it happens. 02:25-02:35 There's a link between Word and Spirit, partly just because we cannot say words without air. 02:35-02:43 We have to breathe to speak. If we could not emit air through our lungs as we were saying 02:43-02:52 it then we couldn't speak. That's partly why in Psalm 33 it says, "By the word of the Lord 02:52-03:00 the heavens were made and all their host by the breath of his mouth." That's a very common 03:00-03:06 feature of the Psalmans. They say the same thing in the same verse in two different ways. 03:06-03:14 It's called parallelism, a feature of their poetry. It's included the meaning often of 03:14-03:26 words. For example, they say that God has revealed His righteousness. He has declared 03:26-03:32 His salvation so that then we can see that salvation and righteousness are equivalent 03:32-03:39 terms and can't be separated. So here, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made 03:39-03:48 and all their host by the breath of his mouth." Again, Word and Spirit. 03:48-03:53 Obviously in that particular context we're just thinking of the way that we happen to 03:53-04:02 be able to speak. We can only speak with breath and that doesn't apply to God. But there's 04:02-04:09 still a deep link between Word and Spirit in God. Irenaeus, one of the early and best 04:09-04:16 church fathers, spoke of the Word and Spirit as the two hands of God. Everything God does, 04:16-04:22 everything God does, He does through His Word and His Spirit. So the first creation was 04:22-04:28 through Word and Spirit, bringing into being of something entirely new that wasn't there 04:28-04:40 before to be alongside God and with God as His covenant partner with its own reality 04:40-04:49 and own creaturely freedom. The second creation is similar but different. 04:49-04:55 It's not a new creation in the sense of an entirely separate creation. It's not a new 04:55-05:04 creation out of nothing beginning. It's the recreation of the first creation. God in His 05:04-05:15 love has gone wrong and has gone fundamentally wrong in the very heart of His being. The 05:15-05:26 heart of creation is man, the mind and heart of man. Man was brought into being as the 05:26-05:32 crown of creation to be the very centre of creation. Somehow the good of the whole of 05:32-05:40 creation is bound up with what we are as human beings. When we go wrong, particularly in 05:40-05:46 our minds, particularly in our failure to understand God and when we are deceived as 05:46-05:54 to His nature, then we go fundamentally wrong in our being and everything begins to go wrong. 05:54-06:02 But God has brought us into being out of nothing, made us to have reality, to love us and we've 06:02-06:10 gone fundamentally wrong. So how is God to save us? He does not just want to wipe us 06:10-06:19 out and start again. In His love He will not just zap us and make us what we ought to be. 06:19-06:28 He wants to take what we are and somehow find a way of getting through to us and actually 06:28-06:40 restoring us so that it's not just a totally forced act of a puppet. It's something real 06:40-06:48 on our side. Only He can do it because the path that we have set us on goes inevitably 06:48-06:58 down into death. So how is He to do it? How can He get somehow inside the heart of man 06:58-07:06 and win man from the inside? Of course that's why He has chosen to do it by incarnation. 07:06-07:14 He Himself has become part of the creation. He Himself has become one of the things that 07:14-07:23 He has made. He has become a human being and in becoming a human being He has taken everything 07:23-07:32 that this creature that He had made has become on Himself. So He takes on Himself not just 07:32-07:42 all the creatures' goodness or remnants of goodness but all the inherent deceit and self-certainness 07:42-07:55 and brokenness and the way in which this creature is enmeshed in a vast evil system of thinking 07:55-08:02 which is based on nothingness, on life and nothingness, but appears to have the power 08:02-08:16 of truth. So He becomes man and in becoming man He shares our human life to the full. 08:16-08:22 He goes through all the processes of human birth right from the very beginning except 08:22-08:33 as no husband. This is an act purely of God and yet He does it in such a way that the 08:33-08:41 man Jesus is just as fully, really and individually human being as any of the rest of us are. 08:41-08:53 It is the work of God in which the humanity of Christ is utterly real. In this humanity 08:53-09:01 He grows up taking on to Himself all through His life more and more the sins and the suffering 09:01-09:07 of man so that when He heals diseases for example and casts out evil spirits, Matthew 09:07-09:16 comments quoting Isaiah 53 about the suffering servant, this was to be fulfilled the prophet 09:16-09:24 that He has taken on Himself our infirmities. That means that the way Matthew understands 09:24-09:31 it when Jesus in His healing miracles is not just healing people, this is the Creator come 09:31-09:40 to renew the creation, come to undo the processes of decay and sin and of physical evil which 09:40-09:47 are ultimately all part of sin. So that in healing people He is also doing battle with 09:47-09:55 the powers of evil and in healing them He is taking their sin on Himself, not just healing 09:55-10:03 them physically but taking their sin on Himself. That was the process that He began at baptism 10:03-10:10 because He the sinless one had no need of being baptised but He willingly put Himself 10:10-10:17 alongside us to take on Himself all that we are. That whole process continues throughout 10:17-10:28 our life until on the cross in some way that we can never possibly fathom or begin to comprehend 10:28-10:42 but somehow as Paul says He became sin for us. He who knew no sin became sin. 2 Corinthians 10:42-10:51 5.21 "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become 10:51-11:04 the righteousness of God." At the cross Jesus takes on Himself all the piled up guilt, sorrow, 11:04-11:13 anguish, destruction, corruption, decay of the world, of humanity, of the universe on 11:13-11:23 Himself. And in taking on Himself He does not bend or buckle. He breaks it by the power 11:23-11:30 of His holiness and by His holding on to God in prayer as God holds on to Him so that in 11:30-11:41 the midst of hell itself Christ holds on to God as God holds on to Him. And so the power 11:41-11:49 of sin is broken and He rises from the dead. That means that in rising from the dead He 11:49-11:57 is the beginning of the new creation. He is literally in a sense the big bang of the new 11:57-12:12 creation. He is the new man, the first born from the dead, the first fruits of the dead, 12:12-12:20 first fruits of the harvest. So His risen human life is the life of the new creation 12:20-12:29 and that is the life that He is living now in heaven. In Romans 5 Paul says that if we 12:29-12:37 have been reconciled to God by the death of a son how much more will we be saved by His 12:37-12:46 life. How much more now that we are already reconciled shall we be saved by His life, 12:46-12:51 i.e. by His risen life in heaven. Most of the time we put all emphasis on the death 12:51-12:59 of Christ which is absolutely right because at the death He died for our sins but it is 12:59-13:05 no good if He has died and doesn't rise. It is only if Christ rose physically in the body 13:05-13:13 that our sins have really been forgiven. We have made new, the new creation has begun 13:13-13:20 and if it is not physical it is not real. Death is physical and it has to be physical 13:20-13:24 resurrection. It is physical death and it has to be physical resurrection. So the risen 13:24-13:31 life of Christ is our new life now. The risen life of Christ in heaven is now our new life. 13:31-13:41 End of story. He is the new life. He in Himself is our new life and there is no life outside 13:41-13:52 of Him. As John sees, new life we have to be born again, we have to be renewed and of 13:52-14:03 course that is why Christ was born. His birth from above was our new birth and when He died 14:03-14:09 we died and He rose we rose because He has done it all for us. He has taken on our humanity 14:09-14:15 and therefore what has happened in Christ is what has happened to us. That is the truth 14:15-14:29 about us. So the Christian life is living out what we are in ourselves. What we are 14:29-14:36 in ourselves is still the old man, the old woman, the old creation but in Christ we are 14:36-14:44 not that anymore, we are the new creation. So we have to live out the life that we are 14:44-15:01 now, we have to live out the truth. In 2 Corinthians 5 Paul says for example 5.14 "We are convinced 15:01-15:07 that one has died for all, therefore all have died." This one man represents everybody, 15:07-15:16 he stands in their place as a substitute representative. He has died, therefore all have died. He died 15:16-15:24 for all that those who live will no longer live for themselves but for him who for their 15:24-15:32 sake died and rose. So we are now all made new and we all have to live as the life of 15:32-15:42 the new living for others and for God. Therefore because that is so we cannot look at anybody 15:42-15:49 else now in the same light. We have to look at them as they are in Christ. We can no longer 15:49-16:00 see them simply as beggars or outside the pale or kinkly lost but they are all Christs, all 16:00-16:06 belong to God. From the point of view of Christ, no one from a human point of view, even though 16:06-16:10 we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, they saw him simply as an ordinary 16:10-16:18 man but through the resurrection, the ascension, the coming of the Spirit, full understanding 16:18-16:28 they have seen exactly what Christ is. So they see that he is this new head of the second 16:28-16:37 Adam and so he goes on. So we see everybody in a new light now because of Christ. One 16:37-16:42 has died for all, therefore all have died. All have risen to Christ. So we look at everybody 16:42-16:51 in that way. That means if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation. The old has passed 16:51-16:58 away, all this is from God who through Christ has reconciled us past tense. In the Greek 16:58-17:06 there is a specific past tense that means it is done and dusted and fixed. We have been 17:06-17:16 reconciled. We have been given a message to take out to the world of reconciliation. Then 17:16-17:25 he goes on, "So we are ambassadors, beseech you, be reconciled." That is an imperative, 17:25-17:33 that is something we have to do. He has already said you have been reconciled and now says 17:33-17:43 be reconciled. So how do those two things work together? It is becoming what we are. 17:43-17:49 We have to live in the light of what Christ has made us. We have been reconciled, have 17:49-17:56 been reconciled, therefore we have to be reconciled, live out the life of reconciliation. So that 17:56-18:10 means there is the reality of the life of Christ, the new life, that we are saved already, 18:10-18:17 everybody, in Christ. The key thing is in Christ, not in ourselves. Nothing is in ourselves, 18:17-18:24 it is in Christ. But this is for us and this is the truth about us. So we have to live 18:24-18:36 it out. It has to happen in us and it has to become a reality in us. We have to be reconciled. 18:36-18:46 When we come to faith, this is something that we do. It is our action, it is a genuine action, 18:46-18:54 and we do it with the whole of ourselves. We may do it half-heartedly at first, but 18:54-19:00 we will sooner or later come to do it with the whole of ourselves. That is a real human 19:00-19:10 action. But the paradox is this, that it is not something that we could do. We could not 19:10-19:15 possibly bring ourselves to faith or understanding. We cannot make ourselves believe something 19:15-19:25 that we do not know is true. It is only because we have somehow seen the truth, that we recognize 19:25-19:42 it and act in its light. But our action is a new reality alongside the reality of Christ. 19:42-19:48 What is the relation between the reality of the life of Christ and the reality of our 19:48-19:58 human life, our human Christian life? It has been done already. We cannot add anything 19:58-20:13 to it. We have already been baptized in Christ's baptism, died in His death, risen with Him, 20:13-20:18 ascended with Him, etc. We are seated with Christ already in heaven. Paul says all that. 20:18-20:25 But it all has to happen in us because Christ has done it for us. He has not done it for 20:25-20:30 Himself. So unless it all happens in us, the whole mission of Christ has not reached its 20:30-20:40 purpose. The same reality has to be in us. And yet it is not a reality that we can bring 20:40-20:51 about. It is only created in us by Christ. And yet it is our real action. 20:51-21:03 How can we best understand this relation between the two realities? Because they are both realities. 21:03-21:11 In virtually every theology one or the other of the reality becomes no longer a real reality. 21:11-21:21 Because either you say, "God has done this," and if you say yes, then you will be saved. 21:21-21:27 Because all the emphasis goes on us. And if we say yes, we are saved. And it is our yes 21:27-21:38 that makes it reality. Or God has done it. He has not done it for everybody. He has done 21:38-21:45 it for some people and not for others. But if you are one of the people He has done it 21:45-21:52 for, they will not become true for you. And if you haven't, then that's bad luck. It's 21:52-21:59 just God has not pre-tested you for salvation. They put all the emphasis on the finished 21:59-22:07 work of Christ. He has done everything yes, but it is fixed. God has done it. What you 22:07-22:16 say at the end of the day doesn't really matter. But how do we recognize and do justice to 22:16-22:21 both sides of the picture? Because both sides are really important in the New Testament. 22:21-22:27 Both sides are important. It's a real act of God that we are all saved, every single 22:27-22:35 human being in Christ. But we are all called to come to faith and believe. Because otherwise 22:35-22:42 we cannot participate and enjoy for ourselves what has happened. So how can we understand 22:42-22:51 that at one and the same time it's the life of Christ but we are doing it? It's the life 22:51-22:58 of Christ in us. Galatians 2.20, "I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I 22:58-23:14 live. But the life I live I live by the faith of Christ, the Son of God, who loved me and 23:14-23:23 died for me." The Christian life is that we've been put to death with Christ. It's not us 23:23-23:29 that live but Christ who lives in us. So we don't live by our faith in Christ but by His 23:29-23:42 faith, by the strength of His faith. Our faith is real and yet it's the same faith that Christ 23:42-23:55 has had. Somehow the spirit of Christ has put His faith into us. We're not clones, we're 23:55-24:07 not copies. It's our real action and yet properly understood what we do in our response is simply 24:07-24:12 what Christ has already done for us. It's only because He's done it for us that we could 24:12-24:24 have a catch chance in hell of doing it ourselves. Somehow we come to understand that what has 24:24-24:33 happened in Him is ours. When we see that we don't have to do anything, we just have 24:33-24:42 to see it with heart and mind. When we see it, we are new people and we are beginning 24:42-24:56 to be made new creatures. Theologically it's the same reality. What Christ worked out in 24:56-25:07 Himself is now in us. The Spirit takes the prayer of Christ, Abba Father, and puts it 25:07-25:14 in our lips. Paul in Romans 8 and Galatians says, "Because you are sons, God has sent 25:14-25:22 the spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba Father.'" The Spirit through whom Christ 25:22-25:31 cried, "Abba Father," now puts the same prayer into our lips and we cry, "Abba Father." What 25:31-25:38 Christ has worked out is what we are working out. We are working out as a genuine action. 25:38-25:45 We have to work hard as Christians, we have to study and pray, etc. We'll have to. It's 25:45-25:54 a different kind of "have to," but it's our action, it's our freedom and our joy, but 25:54-26:03 it's because it's been done already. How can we possibly understand the two realities? 26:03-26:10 Partly it's the mystery of grace. It's the mystery that God in His grace brings into 26:10-26:21 being something alongside Him a new reality with His own reality to love Him and for Him 26:21-26:29 to love. It's a very active God bringing into being that reality and giving His own reality. 26:29-26:36 Giving that creature its own reality means that the creation of all of us at once totally 26:36-26:48 depend on God and yet we have our own independence and freedom. We can choose to go against God. 26:48-26:55 That's the miracle of grace that God has made us, not as puppets, but made us to be real 26:55-27:07 before Him. We can use that reality, we can fail to see that the only way to live is in 27:07-27:15 total dependence on Him but living in the freedom of all our powers. We can fail to 27:15-27:21 see that and we can try to establish ourselves as a totally independent reality and become 27:21-27:29 like God, which is precisely the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden. That's the road to 27:29-27:35 disaster and that's the road to thinking that God is evil, that God does not want the good 27:35-27:46 for us. But the miracle of grace is that God brings into being a new creature alongside 27:46-27:59 Him with His or her own reality and respects it. It's a relation of dependence and yet 27:59-28:10 independence. Another way to think about it possibly is the miracle of human love. We 28:10-28:19 cannot make another person love us. If another person loves us, that's a miracle. We love 28:19-28:32 them and they love us. As long as it's free, then the miracle continues. We try to master 28:32-28:40 the other or contain them or make them what we think they ought to be, then the miracle 28:40-28:46 is lost. The miracle is the freedom that the other loves us and that we love them. But 28:46-28:57 we cannot possibly say what joins them. We cannot possibly say what joins God and us 28:57-29:04 because it's across a gap. We want to be out of nothing. We cannot cross nothing to get 29:04-29:11 to God. We can recognize reality of God and recognize our reality, but we cannot say how 29:11-29:19 they're connected. It's a non-logical relation. If we try to make it a logical relation, then 29:19-29:39 we destroy it. The best analogy is that Christ was fully God and yet fully man, both real 29:39-29:52 and in the same person. There was no human act. Mary did nothing. She was told she was 29:52-30:00 going to have a child and she said "Amen." There was something done in her, but what 30:00-30:08 was done in her was the creation of God becoming man, real, full man, God and man in one person. 30:08-30:17 We can't possibly say how is both, but the person of Christ is the key model at the end 30:17-30:26 of the day for all real Christian dogmatic thinking, systematic theology. Apart from 30:26-30:38 that, creation itself is a very useful analogy because in creation we find ourselves in being 30:38-30:45 with our own reality. We know how good and fantastic and brilliant the world is and yet 30:45-30:55 the world depends wholly on God for His day-to-day sustenance of us. And yet there are two realities. 30:55-31:02 Everything that happens through God and yet there's a creaturely rationality of nothing 31:02-31:16 quite creaturely causes and both are real. But we cannot logicalise the relation. That's 31:16-31:26 the miracle of new creation by incarnation, word and spirit. Obviously a lot there to 31:26-31:38 discuss. Let us pray. Pray O Lord the light of your eternal word and spirit on our minds 31:38-31:46 and hearts that we may be given new eyes, new minds and hearts to see and understand 31:46-31:59 more and more of the miracle of our new creation in Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.