A New Song as a New Creature

A New Song as a New Creature.

“Let the upright sing for joy to the Lord; it is fitting for the pure to praise Him. Praise the Lord with melodies on the lyre; make music for Him on the ten-stringed harp. Sing a new song of praise to Him; play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy.” (Ps. 33:1-3).

“Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord! Sing to the Lord, praise His name. Each day proclaims the good news that He saves. Publish His glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things He does. Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! (Ps. 96:1-4).

“Sing a new song to the Lord, for He has done wonderful deeds. His right hand has won a mighty victory. His holy arm has shown His saving power! The Lord has announced His victory and has revealed His righteousness to every nation! He has remembered His promise to love and be faithful to Israel. The ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” (Ps. 98:1-3).

“I will sing a new song to you, O God! I will sing your praises with a ten-stringed harp.” (Ps. 144:9).

“Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song! Sing His praises in the assembly of the faithful. O Israel, rejoice in your Maker. O people of Jerusalem, exult in your King. Praise His name with dancing, accompanied by tambourine and harp. For the Lord delights in His people; He crowns the humble with victory. Let the faithful rejoice that He honors them. Let them sing for joy as they lie on their beds.” (Ps. 149:1-5).  

“Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing His praises from the ends of the earth! Let the whole world glorify the Lord; let it sing His praise! (Isaiah 42:10, 12).

“I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what He has done and be amazed.” (Ps. 40:1-3).

The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir – Sing a New Song (Live) – YouTube

The Final Frontier. When it comes to singing a new song to the eternal and almighty Lord, there will always be fresh material for a new composition. Every believer is on the endless quest to discover as much about the character and goodness of God as He is willing to reveal. There is always more to the Lord than we can understand or appreciate, so there is always something new to discover about Him and more to sing about. There will always be new ways to express our praises to God.

“Therefore if any person is within Christ, the Messiah, he is a new (Greek, “kainos”) creature altogether, a new creation; the old previous moral and spiritual condition has passed away. Behold, all things have become new, the fresh and new has come! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ, who is enfolded into Him and dwells inside Him, has become an entirely new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun.” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

“kainos” = (Greek), fresh; unused; new; unprecedented; novel; innovative; unique.

Christ-followers are new creatures, new persons? And all things have become new? What does “all” include in this re-creation, this new person?

A New Spiritual DNA. Before Christ, we had the spiritual DNA of the old Adam. But with Christ, we have the spiritual DNA of the new Adam. We have been re-created, born all over again and given the chromosomal makeup that we have inherited from Jesus Christ. We have been birthed into God’s family. God has shared His nature with us. We have become children of the Lord, sons and daughters of the Almighty God. We now share family characteristics, and holiness has become a family tradition. The Father has imparted His spiritual genetic framework to us, placing us in His heavenly gene pool. We now partake in His divine nature by being born again through the Spirit in union with our brother Jesus. New spiritual genes, new spiritual DNA, new creature.

A New Spiritual Communion. “We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. For truly the fellowship, the shared companionship that we have is with the Father and the Son.” (1 John 1:3). The Trinity’s profound love for each other has resulted in their sharing that love, their including humanity in their interaction. We have been called to participate in their life-giving intimacy, in their divine fellowship. We have been offered, through Jesus, the amazing privilege of sharing in their relationship. In Christ, we can now open our eyes to see the truth of our life inside the Trinity. Christ has succeeded in uniting the holy Trinity with fallen humanity, and the result is mankind’s inclusion in the life of the triune God. Inside the circle, we can now experience the very same love that the Father shows the Son (John 17:26). We can now confirm that the Father will love us just as much as He loves the Son (John 17:23). As Baxter Kruger says, “We don’t make Jesus a part of our world. He has made us a part of His.” We now can know our true identity, living in the circle of the Trinity, our true selves hidden within the joy and love of their intimacy. James Houston once wrote that “God is infinitely relational and intimately personal.” The wonderful mystery is that it is God’s nature to be relational and personal with the human race. When we are baptized in the Name of the Trinity, we are restored into God’s own bosom, received into the triune life of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Their relationship is now our relationship. Their reality is now our shared reality. We thus have a joyful place within their circle. When we are baptized in the Name of the Trinity, our eyes have been opened to our permanent destiny within their life. We thus celebrate our adoption into God’s trinitarian family.

A New Childhood. “People conceived into life by the Father don’t make a habitual practice of sin. How could they? God’s seed is deep within them, making them who they are. His principle of life is at work in them. It’s not in the nature of the God-begotten to deliberately and knowingly practice sin. After all, they are children of the Father! They have His nature permanently within them! Whoever has been born of God will refuse to keep sinning, because they have been fathered by God Himself, and contain His nature. Here is how God’s children can be clearly distinguished from the Devil’s children: Anyone who does not demonstrate righteousness does not belong to God, nor does the one who refuses to love fellow believers.” (1 John 3:9-10).  God’s seed (Greek, “sperma”) is introduced into a believer by the Father through the Holy Spirit. This involves a miraculous infusion of God’s nature. For a believer, there is received a new heredity as a child of God. Through His spiritual “sperm”, His seed, God “Father’s-forth” a new child in Christ.

A New Heart. “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my teachings.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Our newness in Christ isn’t a matter of merely fixing up our old heart; it is a heart transplant, giving us a brand-new heart. We aren’t merely turning over a new leaf on the old tree; we are being grafted onto a whole new tree. We aren’t just having our old house restored; we are building a whole new house. We aren’t just getting a fresh new idea in our mind-set; we are receiving a whole new mind, the mind of Christ. We aren’t merely having a do-over of the old created self; we are discovering a re-creation of a new self. We aren’t merely polishing our old image; we are living into a whole new image, the image of Jesus.

Creation Old and New. Maybe our newness looks something like this… In the beginning, the Spirit hovered over the chaos and darkness, and then finally breathed life into His creatures, allowing them to live into their newly created beings. And in the new beginning, the same Holy Spirit hovers over the darkness of sin, and seeks to breathe new life into humanity once again, producing people born from above, creating a whole new creature. Only the breath of the Spirit is capable of creating those who can be progressively renewed from one degree of glory to another, providing a new hope and destination of eternal glory with the triune God. Our newness is utterly dependent on the Spirit’s creation-power.

The Spirit doesn’t merely reform or revive the old creature, He transforms it, He transfigured it, literally renews it, making it new again.

• It’s not like patching up an old coat, it’s wearing a whole different coat.
• It’s not like an incorrigible person who is reformed into changing his behavior or is rehabilitated into civilized society. Instead, the incorrigible person receives an entirely new conscience.
• It’s not like an unmotivated student who is reeducated into being a good student at a different school. Instead, the unmotivated student receives a new vision for what he can do with his life.
• In this case, it’s not like being adopted into a new family, it’s being born from above and given a new spiritual bloodline, complete with a new eternal family and an incorruptible inheritance. Think of it: Being born again means we live into the spiritual gene pool of the Godhead, given a heavenly DNA and the vast potential of brand-new hereditary traits!
• It’s not like a broken vine branch being grafted back onto the same vine. Instead, the broken branch is grafted onto a totally different vine, generating new fruit, a red grape branch grafted onto a green grape vine, producing green grapes, not red.
• It’s not just an epiphany with the old mind, it’s a transfiguration into a new mind.

“Oh, but I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.” (Bob Dylan, My Back Pages). Becoming a new creature is not a resuscitation, it’s a resurrection. It’s not merely resuscitating an old spirit just to breathe the same old air. We’re talking about a resurrection into a new spirit, breathing fresh air from the exhale of the Holy Spirit into our new lives, gradually transforming each of us into a life of newness, from one level of brightness to the next. And the more the Spirit changes us, the newer we become. We are new creatures, and getting newer all the time.

Renew – (Greek, “ananeousthai”), which means to be in the process of moving upward to a new reality; to move upwards to newness; to go to a higher stage, taking new strides; to come to new levels of spiritual understanding; the process of making our minds new with the mind of Christ; the renewal of the mind is akin to a resurrection of the mind; to renew the mind is essentially to take an old mind and recreate it into a new one.

Bible Study: The following Scripture passages are intended to inspire and stimulate further thinking and discussion on the fact of being a new creature in Christ. Please read slowly, savoring each biblical excerpt. Most verses are taken from the Amplified Version (AMP).

1. “Behold, I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5).
2. “All of us, as with unveiled faces, because we continued to behold and to reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into His very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
3. “Do not be conformed to this world – this age, fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs. But be transformed, changed by the entire renewal of your mind – by its new ideals and its new attitudes – so that you may prove for yourselves what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2).
4. “Offer and yield yourself to God as though you have been raised to perpetual life.” (Romans 6:13).
5. “Therefore we do not become discouraged – utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear. Though our outer self is decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being progressively renewed day after day. For this slight distress of the passing hour is ever more and more abundantly preparing, producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory – beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!” (2 Corinthians 4:16-17).
6. “He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but because of His own pity and mercy, by the cleansing bath of the new birth and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:5).
7. “Therefore you are no longer outsiders – exiles, migrants and aliens, excluded from the rights of citizens; but you now share citizenship with the saints – God’s own people, consecrated and set apart for Himself; and you belong to God’s own household.” (Ephesians 2:19).
8. “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits… who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” (Psalm 103:2,5– NIV).
9. “Strip yourselves of your former nature – put off and discard your old unrenewed self – which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion; and be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind – having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude; and put on the new nature, the regenerate self, created in God’s image, Godlike in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24).
10. “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew the right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Grant me the joy of your saving help again, and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.” (Psalm 51:10-12– BCP).
11. “Do not lie to one another, for you have stripped off the old unregenerate self with its evil practices and have clothed yourselves with the new spiritual self, which is ever in the process of being renewed and remolded into fuller and more perfect knowledge upon knowledge, according to the image, the likeness of Him who created it. In this new creation all distinctions vanish; there is no room for and there can be neither Greek nor Jew, nor difference between nations whether alien barbarians or Scythians, who are the most savage of all, nor slave or free man; but Christ is all in all – everything and everywhere, to all men, without distinction of person.”.. Clothe yourselves, therefore, with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, as God’s own picked representatives, His own chosen ones, who are purified and holy and well-beloved by God Himself.” (Colossians 3:9-11 – AMP, NRSV).
12. “Your mercy and lovingkindness, O Lord, extend to the skies, and your faithfulness to the clouds; For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” (Psalm 36:9).
13. “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never, no never, be thirsty any more. But the water that I will give him shall become a spring of water welling up, flowing and bubbling, continually within him into eternal life.” (John 4:14).
14. “If the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then He who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will restore to life your own short-lived, perishable bodies through His Spirit living in you.” (Romans 8:11).
15. “Praised, honored, and blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah! By His boundless mercy we have been born again to an ever living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; Born anew into an inheritance which is beyond the reach of change and decay, unsullied and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, who are being guarded, garrisoned, by God’s power through your faith till you fully inherit that final salvation that is ready to be revealed for you in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:3-5).
16. “That is why we do not lose courage. Though our outer self is progressively wasting away and heading for decay, our inner self is being progressively renewed daily. So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.”(2 Corinthians 4:16, AMP and MSG).

Mac Powell – New Creation (Live From Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO, 2023)