What is the New Nature?
After centuries of covenant-making and covenant-breaking, it was declared through the pen of the prophet that God would solve this problem by giving man a new spirit.
Indeed, it would be this spirit that would make all the difference!
The Lord said, “I will put My spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27). “I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses” (Ezekiel 36:29 NKJV).
Inexplicably, pulpits and publishers have provided next to nothing about the new nature.
Consequently, we don’t know its components, how it was created, how it is received, how it is released, how its release can be sustained, and how it can transform all those functions of the soul—our mind, will, and emotions—that have been adversely affected by an alien force, what Scripture calls the flesh.
This divine deliverance that can radically change daily life, should be a treasured truth to the church of the first born. It isn’t.
In fact, many Christians will go to their graves having seldom experienced their new nature. This is tragic.
The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart, so God made full provision for that. Indeed, no other deliverance would be needed today had believers experienced this provision—a deliverance from the inside out.
It can be very unsettling to hear someone tell us we need to understand our real identity, and then when they tell us what it is, it becomes clear they don’t know, either.
A.B. Simpson said, “Christianity is a religion of the spirit.” Our true identity, singularly and totally, is in our spirit—that is, our born-again spirit, which is the same as the spirit of Jesus (I Corinthians 6:17) and has the same life of Jesus (Colossians 3:4).
This is our new nature, a nature no one in the Old Testament had and no one prior to the book of Acts had.
This new nature changed everything! In the words of Scripture, once we became a new creation, possessing a new nature, “old things passed away and all things became new” (II Corinthians 5:17).
So what passed away? And what became new? Christians need to know that!
Especially important to know is that God’s deliverance centers on the spirit. Not to see this, and not to focus on this, is to lead people you were attempting to help, astray.
Trying to do damage-control of the soul with Bible principles will inevitably come up short—way short! Without an understanding of the new nature, people end up trying to repair what God decided to replace (Ezekiel 36:26).
This distinction between soul and spirit is critical. Indeed, it represents a major difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Truth to soul teaching didn't work. Truth to spirit teaching will work (I Corinthians 2:14, 15; Romans 8:2; I John 2:20).
The soul consists of our mind, our emotions, and our will; while the spirit refers to our born-again spirit into which the new nature now resides.
Any spiritual growth that bypasses the new nature, or simply assumes the new nature will automatically function once we are Christians, is bound to fail. And has failed—miserably!
The lesson to be learned here? God will not set aside what he has so marvelously created in the new nature to help us grow in some other way.
Of all the biblical teachings describing the life of a believer, none is more important—and none is less understood—than the doctrine of the new nature.
What the Bible says about the new nature is so elevating in vision, so widespread in application, and so profound in impact, one can hardly stack enough superlatives to describe its importance.
Validating this importance, Professor Paul Tillich declared, “Christianity is the message of the New Creation, the New Being ....”
On the other end of the theological spectrum, Professor John Murray, the Reformed theologian, spoke of the new nature and our union with Christ as “being the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.”
Strongly agreeing, Dr. A.J. Gordon, the Baptist pastor and hymn writer, declared that the new nature is one of the most profound proclamations of divine revelation. The new nature is “the key to the whole system of doctrinal mysteries.”
F.J. Huegel—professor, missionary, and author of many deeper life books—also affirmed the paramount value of the new nature by calling it “a central sun in the galaxy of the church’s doctrine.”
The new nature has an optimum importance that is difficult to overestimate. According to William Law, “Everything in the gospel is for the sake of the new creature, this new man in Christ Jesus, and nothing is regarded without it.”
The famous Bible expositor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones from London, offered exuberant, even effusive praise. “There is nothing, perhaps, in the whole range and realm of doctrine which, if properly grasped and understood, gives greater assurance, greater comfort and greater hope than this doctrine of our union with Christ.” The New Nature!
Stressing the importance of this doctrine, A.W. Tozer once asked this most intriguing question: “What is the supreme benefaction, the gift and treasure above all others which even God can give?”
In response, Tozer replied, “Not the pearly gates, not the golden streets, not Heaven, not even the forgiveness of sins, although these are God’s gifts, too. Not a dozen, or two dozen, or a thousand [other] ... gifts God lays before his happy people.”
God’s supreme and final gift, Tozer says, is this: “He makes us the repository of the nature and person of the Lord Jesus.” His nature became our nature!
This is an amazing truth, the implications of which are enormous in their very practical import.
R.A. Torrey said of the new nature: that it is “… one of the grandest, one of the most glorious, one of the divinest, one of the most beneficent things on earth.”
Exhibiting the Lord’s life isn’t limited to only a few Christians, on a few continents, during but a few centuries. Jesus made this very point in the most awesome way.
In Matthew chapter 11, verse 11, he said, “Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women” (this I think includes most of us) “there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist.”
According to Jesus, when evaluating all the spiritual giants of history—Moses, David, Elijah, and Jeremiah—John the Baptist stands the tallest. In fact, he (except for Jesus himself) was (up until the time of these words) the most spiritual person who had ever lived!
But consider next what Jesus said in the last part of this verse: “... but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
Do you understand what Jesus is saying?
Jesus is saying that that druggie who got saved five minutes ago, he who has a criminal record longer than your arm, has, right now, an even higher status before God than John the Baptist did.
Seriously? This seems too hard to believe. How could this be true?
It’s true because that druggie has within him what John the Baptist never had, a brand-new nature, the life of our Lord within him.
A.B. Simpson declared, “The feeblest saint is a new order of being, in the eyes of the angels as marvelous as when Adam stepped out upon the theater of Eden ....” Even more marvelous, since innocence has now been overcome!
Ephesians 4:24 declares that our new nature was created in true righteousness and holiness. Notice, past tense. It's done. There's no gradualism here. No step-by-step staircase climb.
Colossians 3:4 says that Christ is our life. He’s not just number one in our life. No, all that constitutes the inner life of Jesus is in us right now. He is our life!
In John 17, Jesus prayed, “I in them and you in me.” Can you fathom this?
Martyn Lloyd-Jones declared, “That is one of the most staggering statements in the whole of the Bible.”
Believers are recipients of a new nature, its essence being the very life of God. And although our individuality is certainly and permanently retained, our nature, nevertheless, is exactly like his.
In his book, The Christ Life, A.B. Simpson wrote that we are “not merely called and legally declared the sons of God, but [we are] actually the sons of God by receiving the life and nature of God ….”
This isn't positional truth. It's actual truth. It isn't truth reserved for Heaven. It is present tense truth—signed, sealed, and delivered!
Similarly, G.D. Watson wrote: “Every part of Jesus’ life—the various traits of his life, the various instincts of that life, the various longings of that life—is implanted in the life that is born again, that is regenerated by the Holy Ghost.”
One closing thought: As important as it is to know that you have one nature and not two, and as important as it is to have a better idea of what that new nature is, doesn't mean that the new nature will now, on that basis, manifest. There's a need to learn more.
My book, Pursuing a Divine Life, a Study of the New Nature, was endorsed by Professor Davis C. Needham, author of the Christian classic, Birthright, with these words: “A major contribution, a remarkable book, a great job of research. You have provided God’s people with an excellent tool for coming to grips with the marvelous truth of regeneration—the new nature.”
There are almost 800 citations in this book. The 12 quotes in this blog are among them.
