LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Two Men
It is an amazing and seldom emphasized fact that not only Adam, the old man, was created, as the head of a race that later fell, but also a new man was created when the Lord Jesus rose. There are two creations, two races, two beginnings.
When Adam sinned he immediately became the old man, and dragged all his descendants with him. It is a race that has no remedy; therefore, God's solution for her is not improvement but replacement.
Now, how did the second one come about? Not by an act of simple creation with the hands, as when God fashioned Adam. This time the entire divine being had to be involved, since Christ had to die and rise again. Dying to remove the defective, and resurrect to introduce the perfect.
In Ephesians there are three mentions of this second creation. In 2:15 we are shown how she arose: "Abolishing enmities in his flesh, the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, to create in himself, of the two, one single and new man, making peace". This "new man" was created in Christ – "in himself" – from the death of the previous one, which was a deplorable and bellicose mixture of Jewish religious and Gentile barbarians.
What emerges in the resurrection is not a man patched up from the best old man, but a new, perfect, heavenly creation. This "new man" is Christ and the church. Christ as the head and the church as the body. In fact, Christ and the church is entirely Christ. Because a man cannot be something that has a head of one nature and his body of another. So tells us 1 Cor. 12:12: "For just as the body is one, and has many members, but all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ". Just as the human body has many members, so also Christ has many members – each one of God's children.
A second mention of this new creation is in Ephesians 2:10, where he tells us that we are his workmanship (poiema, in Greek), that is, a wonderful thing, created in Christ Jesus.
And the third mention is in 4:24, where it says: "And put on the new man, created according to God in true righteousness and holiness". A voluntary act on the part of the believer is necessary by which he puts on this new man. Creation is one and final, but the acceptance and appropriation of this fact is continuous by the believer.
Colossians 3:9-10 complements in this same line: "Do not lie to one another, having put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new, which according to the image of the one who created it is renewed until the full knowledge". Here it is said that this new man must be renewed until all the old nature is left behind and Christ is all in all (v. 11). It is the creation and renewal of a new man. And the old man? He will be entombed forever.