A New Creation (Part Four)- 2 Corinthians 5:17

As we continue in our study of the believer as a new creation in Christ, we will recall that, in our last post, we examined the meaning of what is meant by the concept of “new”, that the believer in Christ is a creature never before seen, one in whom the Spirit of God is not merely present with, but whom the Spirit of God is present in. We will now examine another aspect of the believer as a new creation in Christ, this time through an examination of the concept of “creation”. The Greek word creation here is ktisis, the noun form of the verb ktizo. It should be noted here that this verb, just like the Hebrew bara, is only used in Scripture with God as its subject, which means this type of creating is something which only God does. The root of this Greek word means “to found”, and refers more to the foundation of a city or nation as opposed to the creation of a tree or rock. It can be defined as the “basic intellectual and volitional act by which something comes into being or existence”. In biblical times, a city or nation was founded by the supreme ruler, who took a disorganized and chaotic group of people and organized them into a functional city. This same Greek word is used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) in Genesis 1:1, in which we find God creating matter in a chaotic form and speaking it into order. We see God, as the Supreme Ruler, establishing or founding a “city” (order) in which human beings could live and thrive. This same word is used here to refer to believers as a new creation in Christ, so we find that what God does in the believer is in many ways similar to what He did in creation in Genesis one. In Genesis one, the Word spoke chaos into order over a period of time, and we find here that the Word (in the presence of the Holy Spirit in us)speaks order out of chaos in the lives of individual believers. The inner chaos which once characterized all believers is spoken into order over a period of time, the Spirit of God speaking the Word of God into our hearts and minds, and through it conforming us into the image of the Son of God. As God becomes more and more the supreme ruler in each of our lives, our hearts and minds become less and less chaotic and our behavior becomes increasingly more founded upon the Word of God and ordered by the Spirit of God. This bringing order out of chaos extends to all aspects of our beings, to our mind, will and emotions, and involves our thinking become more shaped by the truth of Scripture, our emotions being stabilized by the presence of the Spirit in our lives and our wills lining up more and more with God’s will just as seen in the Son of God. It is the desire of God to continue to speak the chaos of our lives into order, and it is as we hear and harken to His voice that order will replace the chaos in which we used to live and conform us, moment by moment and day by day, into the image of Christ.