In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Out of nothing, God created everything! In the midst of this miraculous scene of mind-boggling proportions, we read of the presence of God's life-creating, life-giving, life-sustaining Spirit. Like a mother eagle brooding over her precious young ones, the Holy Spirit of God moved over the surface of God's unformed and unfilled creation, carefully and wisely bringing space, matter, time, and life into existence.
God's creation was good. Indeed, God Himself proclaimed it to be very good! (Gen. 1:31). However, our first parents, through their sin, caused this creation to be cursed (Gen. 3:17), plunging it into a state of corruption and decay (Rom. 8:20-22). This state of affairs demanded that God perform some new act in order to redeem and restore this world. A "new creation" was needed. And that is exactly what began in the birth of Christ!
Just as the Spirit of God moved over the surface of God's first creation, wisely bringing order and life into existence, in the same way the Spirit brooded over the blessed virgin and miraculously fashioned and formed life in her womb. In a way without precedent -- in a way that could only be described as miraculous -- the Holy Spirit brought new life into a cursed creation in the Person of Christ.
This new creation by the Spirit was the beginning of God's new creation in Christ! Jesus Christ is now the "new man," the "second" or the "last Adam" (Rom. 5: 12-21; 1 Cor. 15:20-22, 45-49). He is fully God (John 1:1-3, 14), but also fully man in every sense of the word (Heb. 2:14, 17; 5:8). As God, He is fully capable of delivering His people, for only the Lord can save: "I, even I, am the Lord; and there is no savior besides Me" (Isa. 43:11). As man, He is fully capable of representing His people as their divinely appointed substitute on the cross, in order to bear the full weight of their sins. Only a man can die, and only death would satisfy God's justice, for "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23).
That which has begun in Jesus carries on in His people. Through faith, we are God's "workmanship" (Eph. 2:10), His "new creation" (2 Cor.5:17). We who were "dead in sins and trespasses" have been "made alive in Christ" through the miracle of God's grace (Eph. 2:1, 5). Because of Jesus, we have been "born of the Spirit" (John 3:5) and we await the fast-approaching day when we "shall be like Him" when He completely transforms our body into "conformity with His glorious body" (1 John 3:2; Phil. 3:21). Indeed, we await the "restoration of all things" (Acts 3:21), the "new birth" (Matt. 19:28) of the cosmos, the "new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13). This is our hope and our inheritance -- brought about in Christ and through God's Holy Spirit.
God's solution to all of mankind's problems and God's answer to every prayer is found in the One named Jesus, the second Adam who reverses and restores all that the first Adam lost through sin. Jesus was born for just this purpose -- to save His people from this sins.
Prayer: Thank you, God of life and light, for sending your Son, Jesus, to restore that which was ruined and to give life to that which was dead. Only Your mighty hand could perform such things. I rest my soul completely in your care. Fashion me into your likeness. Amen.“Behold,
the former things have come to pass, Now I declare new things;
Before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.” (Isaiah 42:9)
© Richard J. Vincent, January 9, 2000
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