“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17
The Resurrection and the New Creation
Christ Risen from the Dead Is the Creator of the First Creation and the Second Creation
When Christ rose from the dead, He rose with His very body, but in His new state which no longer has death reigning over it—as a complete model for the new creation. He is not of the new creation, but the new creation is from Him. For He is its Creator in Himself for our sake, so that He may grant it to us through the new birth by the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of baptism. For just as Adam granted us his mortal creation through procreation by carnal birth, so did Christ grant the fellowship of life as a new creation that does not meet death.
The new creation begins from Him, and it took its first beginning in Him; but He was before it and before every creation, for He is His Word, the Creator, with the Father since the beginning. So the new creation was established and renewed by Him, for we are members in Him.
The new humanity was created in Christ and by Christ, and was immersed in the resurrection from the dead. It was found visible and perceptible to many, even though it was hidden in Christ Jesus, as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the worlds, and will remain hidden from the world—not to be seen except by the eye of God, and by every eye that sees by the eye of God. For this is the mystery of Christ, which in other generations mankind did not know, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and His children by the Spirit (Ephesians 3).
The body is joined by faith in the resurrection from the dead and by baptism to Christ. However, this new creation, with all its gifts, remains side by side with the old creation, the body of sin. Nevertheless, the new creation is reckoned alone as the Truth, the Light, and the Life. As for the old, it is merely an entity that disintegrates and vanishes with time—as if it is an entity that walks behind us in the world through time, like the shadow of a truth higher than it beyond measure. That truth walks before us, but it is in our depths, and it is precisely the Risen Christ, the Kingdom of God within you.
“And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” — Matthew 28:20
The state of this new humanity says with Paul:
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” — Galatians 2:20
Characteristics of the New Creation and Characteristics of the Old Creation
This old creation within us is passing away, according to its earthly origin, in its striving to break God’s laws, side by side with the new creation—which is not under law but under His grace, and for Him, and it lives and praises.
The first feeds on pride and is conceived by lust; it is itself under the bondage of time and proceeds with it towards annihilation. As for the other, it is nourished by love which changes from glory to glory, and is renewed every day, challenging time and walking steadfastly towards immortality, for the Spirit nourishes it, and it learns from Him in everything to become with Him always.
The new creation is the image that declares God’s surpassing love and His revealed mercy. Indeed, if God created the first creation from nothing as proof of His power over everything, He created the second creation from the depths of sin and death as an act of surpassing love and mercy.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” — John 3:16
The first creation we inherited through the flesh, and with it sin and its law condemning to death.
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” — Psalm 51:5
And we are embryos of death inherent in its depths.
The second creation we inherited by grace through baptism, when we died with Him unto death and rose with Him also; and in us is the power of resurrection. The root of the defiant serpent, Cain, exists in the very core of the old creation, whose deeds do not justify.
The old creation is what we represent best when we proceed to commit sin by our own free will. But the life-giving truth that is in us—He is the very Christ resurrected at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us always—so we obtain through Him complete reconciliation with God.
Through our old deeds and stray actions, our will is always quickly disturbed, and we find solace before the Majestic God in times of repentance and remorse in our depths by grace. We purify it with prayer and love; our peace with God is renewed, and we boast in Him, not in ourselves but in the truth residing with us. With God, in whom is all sufficiency, we are placed in a state of reconciliation and peace. And from day to day we put off the old to wear the new, which is renewed in us in the image of our Creator, freed from sin, the righteousness of Christ ruling over us.
Proof of the Existence of the True New Man in Us
Indeed, the doubt that sometimes assails us regarding the truth of the existence of a new man in us, or a new birth, or a new creation working in us, first refers to our having made it easy for the old man to be active more than is due, especially regarding the nature of the old man—for it is imperceptible and unspoken. It suffices in our words and deeds, and we work for the future.
Simply and in true faith, God’s work in us, so that we may have this new creation, is not a work of our own that we can feel, or a nature similar to ours that we can perceive or understand, but rather God’s new work in us, and very new, which has nothing in common with the old. Christ Himself is an example before all eyes: everyone who lives in Christ—that is, in sonship and election, in a state of reconciliation and presence before Him without blame—is so because of Christ. This is the newness granted to us freely.
The new creation is not revealed or clearly declared except by the Spirit of Christ speaking in us and bearing witness to our consciences, through our daily fellowship in death with Christ by the Spirit in conduct, until we appear by the nature of the new life.
“Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.” — Romans 6:4–5
And the new creation, if it comes from an inner power and through attachment to the Word to live with Christ, then Christ reveals its inner workings more and more. The new creation we cannot create ourselves for ourselves, for it is from above, whereas we are from the earth. And we cannot grow it with our self-power, or preach it with our actions, or prove it with our words, because this new creation is truth, and truth grows only by the Word of God and by the secret of His exceeding graces. For God alone is the one who reveals it, declares it, and confirms its existence for us and for people as a work of His own, for we are His work, and the living Christ in us will remain forever, despite the fact that we will be fully transformed into it in the end, and in it will be declared:
“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” — Colossians 3:3–4
The new creation is the part in us that speaks truth, which is from God, and which has perfectly testified to the truth for God. Therefore it is higher than all our abilities, because all our abilities are beneath the truth.
“I said in my haste, ‘All men are liars.’” — Psalm 116:11
After the fall, God did not desire that man should be a stranger to divine existence or alienated from eternal truth. He returned and made us partakers in His true being when He incarnated and united the human nature with the divinity in the depths, rose from the dead, breathed into us of the spirit of His resurrection, and made His being, rest, and dwelling within us. Thus the new creation in us takes its full existence in God with an unchanging progress: from darkness to light, from a life of loving the flesh to a life according to the Spirit. But the strength of this newness remains forever with all our new gifts, hidden and concealed in Christ personally, who distinguishes our new creation and brings it into existence from nothingness.
And thus, to the extent that we reveal the crucified and resurrected Christ through knowledge via the Word and through experience via the mystery, we reveal ourselves. All of this, as it introduces us to the truth of Christ, introduces us to our existence and to the truth that is within us. For Christ, as an experience of companionship and life, is initially a wonderful taste of the reconciliation that occurred between us and God, in the movements of the good priest and the burden of repentance. In the end our glory and the crown of our life truly become our own, for our whole new being is from Him.
“For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.” — Ephesians 5:30
And even if not everyone can bear witness to Him, all who belong to Christ are the mouth of Christ with all He possesses, and their inheritance and portion remain theirs.
And Why Do We Sin While the New Creation Is Within Us?
But the question that perplexes hearts and sometimes casts despair upon our thoughts is: Why do we still sin? Or how, after all this, and at the heart of the new creation, do we sin? And what is the result of sin here?
Here the answer is noteworthy, for the sin presented to the new man and facing this new creation risen from the dead does not emanate from our being anymore as a nature, but as a struggle against our new nature. For man, no matter how inspired he is and even if he is at the peak of his new life, he is still subject to rage, anger, grudges, lying, and lust. All this is not considered a fruit of the new nature, but rather it is the result of the ongoing conflict between the old and the new, constantly evolving for God’s sake:
“For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” — Galatians 5:17
Here it is required of man himself to undertake the task of condemning himself so that he does not fall under God’s judgment. He condemns himself, judges his own self, reproaches, chastises, and punishes, as if it were upon his own actions.
Here, man, in the depth of humiliation, stands judging his conscience and issues a judgment upon himself without mercy. No, rather he is in the protection of reconciliation, forgiveness, and the simplicity of Christ, who intercedes for him, defends him, and atones for him. Man’s judgment of himself is in itself a standing proof of the existence of the voice of truth and the law of holiness and righteousness dwelling in the depths of his creation, where it besieges sin in the good conscience, places it in the position of severe blame, and separates it as an act inconsistent with the new nature. This in itself is a prelude to accepting the innocence of Christ, which is based on a similar judgment for the same sin, for which Christ already paid in full from His blood, which He offered by an eternal Spirit.
If there were no judgment and blame from the conscience for acts of sin and transgression, it would be clear proof of the absence of the secret of confession and its holiness, the existence of repentance for sin, and no work to preserve the new creation—meaning that a person like this has not understood its importance.
Our Existence in Christ, and Christ’s Existence in Us, Creates Within Us the Feeling of the New Creation
We do not rely on current human experience, and we do not grow in the knowledge of Christ Himself; this existence completely differs from our personal physical existence—it is another existence. And our entrance into this spiritual reality in our lives creates within us and within the family a feeling of another existence for the new creation, an existence higher than our own, which is established and enduring within it.
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” — Romans 8:14
Not everyone is able to enter into this deep experience at first, nor are all hearts quickly ready to recognize the presence of Christ within them. For the discovery of His presence and work is rather the depth of specialization in relationships with Christ; Christ may be present and alive, but not yet revealed. As for those who have realized the presence of Christ within them, these are the ones appointed to lead the ranks, and their eyes and ears have been opened for testimony and to reassure those who have received Christ but have not yet realized Him by feeling.
So it is enough for us to live in the humility of Christ’s mystery if we cannot live openly in the revelation of His glory, until the time comes when we see Him face to face and heart to heart. But this does not mean that knowing Christ, feeling Him, and reaching the proof of His presence with us is a difficult or arduous matter, or as if it were a special high gift; for Christ is humble, and the key to entering Him and knowing Him comes from this very characteristic. For every true humility, every true submission, and every sincere obedience to the Holy Spirit is sufficient to lead us to Him to live with Him. As for this change in its entirety, it is a transformation from a life according to the flesh to a life according to the Spirit, meaning we must be ready for a fundamental change in the use of all our senses from the level of dust, flesh, and blood to the level of the Spirit.
We must be ready from the outset to live in the Other—that is, in Christ—and no longer live in ourselves. Christ must be the object of our knowledge that consumes our attention in life, until the transformation and transition from a life revolving around ourselves to a life centered in the true source of its existence, that is, Christ. This is the life of the heart. We completely get rid of the misleading self-leadership and its strong ties to the body and earthly desires, and to people, flesh, blood, and the world. Then extreme caution must be exercised against operations of counterfeiting—that is, counterfeiting religious and spiritual practices to convince man to be content—for thus Satan succeeds in blocking the way forward and the necessary and inevitable change.
All these preparations are not difficult for the humble ones who long for life with Christ, His service, and witnessing for Him, especially if we take into account that Christ is already present within us and that discovering Christ’s presence and His fullness is no more than discovering an existing truth at the core of our lives and existence, from which we are merely lost. We should also know that the presence of Christ in us and our obtaining the new fullness—which is our other existence, our eternal life, our new creation, and our heavenly inheritance—all of this is the work of Christ and not our work. For His work is glorified in Christ Jesus for good works which He has prepared beforehand for us to walk in. Christ has indeed completed all the requirements for our new creation in His person, in Himself and by Himself, with all wisdom and insight, and with all toil until His blood was shed, so that He may gather us all in Himself without any hindrance or difficulty from our side. It is enough for us to believe so we find Him, and it is enough for us to entreat Him so He opens our eyes, and it is enough for us to love Him so we see Him within us and see ourselves in Him. Therefore, we should realize the following matters:
Important Truths About Our New Creation in Christ
Indeed, every difficulty standing before us that prevents us from uniting with Christ and accepting our existence in Him and receiving our new creation from Him for a new life, is an illusory difficulty based on the self’s clinging to its old existence, attached to sin. This means that the self evades voluntary death so as not to accept Christ as an alternative existence for itself. Therefore, it clings to sin, considering it an opportunity and a sufficient reason to distance man from Christ, and a sufficient reason—according to the old logic—to deprive man of the other life. And thus, it avoids voluntary death to remain itself instead of Christ.
And here it is necessary for us to pay attention to these truths:
A. Indeed, the death of Christ lifted the sentence of death from us. Therefore, the mere presence of Christ in us through baptism and communion is a process of justification, redemption, and reconciliation, whereby sin loses its authority. The deadly law of sin, active and manifest in the members, has become a continuous self-reproach and rebuke, working to facilitate the transition from a life according to the flesh to a life according to the Spirit. Its effect is lifted by repentance and remorse, along with appropriate discipline according to the Church’s guidance, but sin never rises to the death penalty.
B. For the body of sin, in which the curse and death were concentrated, and which is now represented by the human self inclined towards it, has indeed been crucified with Christ and died, and the sentence of death and the curse were fulfilled in it on the cross.
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” — Romans 6:6
Meaning the curse no longer resides in it.
C. For the new man in spirit, it is no longer correct to say that it is merely upon man receiving the new creation with Christ in us that the old man becomes nothing but a dead body relative to the new spiritual entity, because the law of the curse of death has ceased to have an effective impact in it. Moreover, the body has also become dead—meaning it has actually completed the punishment of death and has become without value in terms of Satan’s threat. For sin, even if it still works in it, does not possess the power to condemn it to eternal death. He who died with Christ has been acquitted of sin, and he lives instead. The new man is in Christ and by Christ. And the grave is the end of this body; it is his baptism, the last act which is completed, by which everything in him is worked upon, causing the loss of the last of what remained in him of faults and permanent sins from the cross. He takes the whole body completely, in order that he may be in the image of Christ’s body.
So we now no longer await any sentence of death after He bestowed upon us a second life by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and we received our new creation by Christ and in Christ by faith in baptism and the Eucharist. The sentence of death has been completed in us as a full penalty for all sins—retroactively and in the future—because Christ died for all, and then all died in Him, a new resurrection that does not die anymore. And it is impossible, after we have executed the sentence of death with Christ on the cross, that it be repeated upon us a second time in any circumstances or any kind of penalty, because the death that Christ died He died for sin once:
“Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has dominion over Him.” — Romans 6:9
D. But this does not mean that because humanity is reborn a second time by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, every person has completed their salvation automatically without being united with Christ who died and rose. Rather, its meaning is that He has taken all the justifications, means, and facts and prepared them for every person by rebirth. For if this salvation, whose price has been paid dearly, were not to become our share, we would not benefit from it but would fall short of it. For Christ bore the sins of every person in the whole world in His body on the cross, and paid the price of redemption for every person with His blood. But no one will benefit from this who does not take Christ for himself and to himself, to derive from Him the judgment of innocence and the right to life and immortality. If we take Christ through the means of available grace—freely in our souls for ourselves—and He becomes our life, then only here do we benefit from the sentence of death which He bore for us; and in us, with Christ eternally, the power of resurrection from the dead which He accomplished for us and in us raises us with Him.
And if I eat His body, the resurrected one from the dead, this means that my sins, which He bore in His body and died in it—thereby raising me from it and establishing a new humanity for me—all my sins become non-existent and not accounted to me forever. And if I drink His blood, this means that His pure, holy blood, which He presented to the Father as a sacrifice, redemption, and reconciliation, is for the washing, sanctification, purification, redemption, and reconciliation of humanity with the Father.
“But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” — 1 Corinthians 6:11
This means that the presence of Christ in us—through His word, His Spirit, His body, and His blood—is the continuous guarantee for the completion of our new creation and our salvation. However, without Christ, and without His body and His blood, the works of Christ themselves become without any value, and they remain outside of us, not working in us. Therefore, we should never forget that without Christ, we remain rejected. However, our acceptance of Christ does not mean merely a verbal or intellectual faith, but rather it means accepting a new life in Christ with a new conduct and another presence by the Holy Spirit—other than our self-existence—because it includes accepting a real death and a real resurrection from our selves and the world. All these matters are not difficult or far from man; rather, they are granted to him freely through faith. If he accepts them, it is immediately; and if he finds them difficult or does not believe them, then they remain far from him and he remains deprived.
Indeed, the resurrection of Christ from the dead with a new life in the body He took from us is declared with the witness of the Holy Spirit, so that we may know that it is our resurrection and our life for all of us, and so that it becomes for us a positive, visible act working in our lives now—to be lived out every day and every moment, being all realization and certainty. For the life of Christ by faith, hope, and salvation is granted to us so that we may obtain our resurrection with Christ in the Spirit now; rather, it is a gift and a secret act, suitable for each one of us, granting faith at the time of “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
So if the power of Christ is a life in the core of our spiritual being that we seek to increase by the Word and the sacraments, then what about our acceptance of death also as an act, its work and effect regarding our daily lives from the perspective of the body of sin? Meaning that we consider ourselves every day alive from among the dead with Christ by faith, and with a living hope we live every day the fullness of the joy of resurrection with the feeling of those who are justified by the blood of Christ. Indeed, the power of the resurrection that flows in us is the cause of the joy of fellowship in the gratuitous resurrection of Christ, testifying to the power of death, or the mortification concerning sin, where sin can no longer separate us from Christ, nor ever deprive us of the blood of Christ, nor can it hide from us our full stature. For we will no longer commit a sin unto death; rather, if we sin, we will sin for discipline, rebuke, instruction, and warning—a sin capable of repentance and forgiveness, because we live with Christ.
And the good favor that Christ gained with the Father—after the obedience unto death, the reality of the cross, and His resurrection with the Father, and His sitting at the right hand of majesty in the heavens—is in reality and in essence a favor for us. Rather, we received it in the person of Christ to remain eternal. The Father gave it to us in what Christ came; a voice from heaven declared through it that the Father finds Himself in Christ. Christ alerted our minds that this response which came to Him from heaven is for us: “Not for My sake was this voice, but for your sake.” Therefore, we are standing firm and steadfast with Christ, so we are in a state of reconciliation and permanent peace with God, and in a state of abiding grace. We now have peace with God through Jesus Christ, by whom also access has now become ours to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope.
“And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” — 1 John 2:1
Therefore, if I am an existing advocate calling before a Father who interceded for the dead—the divine Judge—Christ as an intercessor means no one can complain against us. And Christ’s intercession is not arbitrary, but rather He paid the price of our sins Himself, and paid it for us because He saw that we were oppressed. By the resurrection of Christ from the dead, it carries in its meaning a complete, unconditional forgiveness and reconciliation. Through His only beloved Son, our judgment was made, we were made good, and our weakness was covered. So the gift is guaranteed by the guarantee of the incarnation of the Son of God in our body, and by the permanence of the resurrection of His Son in our body now in heaven, and firmly established by proof of the person of Jesus Christ as intercessor for us.
God is the one who took the initiative Himself, descending to us. He is the one who spoke and promised and became incarnate and completed all that is necessary for our salvation, renewal, justification, and sanctification, and granted all that from His side—without first stipulating or setting a single condition for us, while we were dead in sins and trespasses. He did not ask us for any request whatsoever. So the gift is beyond assurance, beyond sufficiency, beyond generosity, beyond kindness, beyond mercy.
A complete work God accomplished for us in the person of His only beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be for us a living reality and an object of faith and perspective, and a living hope that we live despite all our weakness and sin and wretchedness and humiliation in the present. For the new man is not the hope of humanity that it seeks behind the mirage and yearns for in its dark present, as some people think. Rather, it is its living hope that it lives with utmost trust and certainty, achieving its existence and being through faith and struggle and conduct in the heart of the present, where weakness and fear and death and sin are swallowed up into triumph and victory in the person of the conquering Jesus Christ, who completed all that openly and publicly, to be our permanent portion, if we hold fast to Him steadfastly until the end.
So we are conquerors and victorious in the person of Jesus Christ, despite our inability and shortcomings and our weakness, which Christ carries for us by His amazing love and self-denial and emptying of Himself, through which He still continues to carry all pains. Everyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame. Christ has guaranteed our salvation, our life, and our resurrection, if we hold fast to Him and keep His commandments and walk in His light. He is the guarantor of that by His own life and His own resurrection.
“Because I live, you will live also.” — John 14:19
Moreover, the guarantee of our salvation and eternal life is also related to the dignity of God the Father Himself, Who gave His Son so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, and the Son, for His part, obeyed even unto the cross, and tasted death by the grace of God for every one of us. So how, after that, can God break His promise or be unable to give us, along with Him, everything necessary for our salvation? Indeed, all the assurances and guarantees which God the Father gave us for our new birth and our new creation for a new life—which He completed for us in His Son with all wisdom and insight, so that they remain living and firm before our eyes, and whose price Christ paid with the sacrifice of Himself on the cross and by tasting death for every one, with all obedience and submission to the Father and all humility and abasement before humanity, even to scandal and shame, without any hesitation or complaint—all this, from God’s side, is accomplished. It is for us to turn to ourselves and ask: How do we respond to this from our side?
Indeed, were it not for the state of misery and distress we are in, and were it not for our being under rejection and punishment, and death ruling over us as part of our cursed inheritance from Adam; and were it not that in all of this, we are almost oppressed and beguiled by an evil authority working in our nature with a power that exceeds our will—it would be impossible to mention all this bitterness and all these tribulations and concessions in Himself. But He made us a new creation for Him, and in His revealed sufferings on the cross and His rising from the dead He stands as a permanent, eternal witness to the superiority of His mercy over the injustice that was woven for us, and to the superiority of His grace over the weakness of our nature which we inherited without our will, and to the superiority of His condescension over our brokenness, our humiliation, and our wretchedness which we endure without hope in ourselves.
So then, the injustice that we suffer from an irresistible enemy, and from our weakness and our sin which we inherited in this body of dust—all this is perceived by God with a scrutinizing, balanced, and deep gaze. It is answered with compassion that exceeds description and countered with great sacrifice that exceeds reason, and with abundant mercy and overflowing grace by His own inherent power, present with us at all times, to guarantee that the balance of power is never disturbed in favor of our life’s enemy, and that our new Creator
“...loved me and gave Himself for me.” — Galatians 2:20
Just as the raging fire swallows a drop of water in an instant, so God swallows our sins by His Holy Spirit and the act of His Son’s blood, with a zeal more intense than the raging fire. And just as the shining sun confronts darkness, dispelling it and transforming it into pure light and a clear vision, so God sent us His Son to dispel our sorrow and our doubts, and our anxieties and our fears, so that we may trust in these pure and vivid, clear truths that embrace the life of the human being He created in His image. That is, all that is within us of sin, helplessness, despair, darkness, and weakness that exceeds our will—all of this God met with mercy, love, kindness, power, and a sacrifice beyond description.
Therefore, though our heart is sometimes filled with our sins, our perishing, our burdens, our helplessness, and our despair from the perspective of our intellectual faith—a companion to our misery and troubles—yet from God’s side, we have received a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in a new life, with peace and victory that surpasses understanding. Rather, we have been granted grace upon which we build all our hope, and in Him, we have peace, righteousness, holiness, and redemption as an eternal right for a new human being, secured by God, from which God cannot withdraw, nor can he fall again from His mercy, as Adam fell in ancient times.
But if we consider these two positions or these two states together—our position or our state with what it contains of weakness, sin, a feeling of injustice, and despair from our side, which is our feeling of our old man; and God’s stance towards us with the guarantee of His Son Jesus Christ for us, who is the source of the qualifications of the new man—oh, what immense mercy, love, kindness, compassion, self-sacrifice even to blood, and redemption offered freely—we say, if we put these two stances together, what should result from that?
A Declaration of Faith and Trust
1. The infinitude of God’s mercy above the severity of our weakness: faith in the Father’s love and promise above our sins, and trust that is commensurate with the ultimate act of God’s creative and renewing love for our being, and the ultimate effect of Christ’s blood in forgiveness, purification, and sanctification, above the multitude of our sins and the impurities of our thoughts and hearts, however great they may be.
2. A declaration of God’s life in the resurrection of the dead for us: meaning, faith, hope, and trust that are commensurate with the infinitude of the power of God’s life above the severity of the effects of death and the diseases of death that work within us.
So if we reach the certainty of complete faith, confident in the infinitude of God’s mercy and love in our new life, and His shedding of blood for our sanctification, and the intensity of His power that works in us for our continuous renewal—given our weakness, our sins, and our mortality—indeed, every aspect of our being is crippled—what should result from that? Obedience to Him, reverence for His dignity, and intense submission that should reach the degree of complete clinging—the clinging of a drowning person who has frantically grasped onto the hope of salvation, given God’s continuous concern in His work towards our severe weakness.
2. Submission to God’s will, a complete surrender without any fear, reservation, or shame, accompanied by continuous gratitude that gives God all the earnestness and dignity with which He has condescended toward us, a submission that guides us in our new life against our old will and desires, with a constant awareness that any inclination towards self-will on the path is a loss of God’s majesty and thus a weakening of the certainty of faith. This would diminish the power of God’s work in us, thus increasing our weakness once again, until we are compelled—without any right—to surrender once more to the hand of ourselves, and to the desires of our lusts and our vanity.
3. No consideration for any personal righteousness or merit, no matter how great our works may be in the form of piety and worship. Rather, our adherence to God’s work, which He performed for us in the person of His Son alone, remains a firm, tangible adherence, whether from within our consciences or through works that are often not steadfast. His revealed work became in Christ for us—especially in the Resurrection from the dead—a complete image and a model that does not disappear from us ever. And the firstborn of the Resurrection from the dead is the model that overcame for us sin and death and redemption; He is our head and the supreme head of the Church who will raise every body with all its members for the glory of the Father and His honor.
4. We must feel that God cast all His divine weight—with all His glory and honor, with all His love and His special care, and with His blessing and His continuous living protection and fellowship with Him. Indeed, this feeling ought to challenge every pessimistic view towards the reality of the old man who still groans under the weight of passions, desires, and weaknesses, and acts in the deception of vanity and the cunning of lust. Indeed, such a challenge always makes us cast all our trust and all our weakness upon grace, so that we may be aligned with God’s work, aligned with God’s counsel, aligned in the depths of our conscience with God’s portion—whatever our state may be. Indeed, such a challenge is very beneficial for diminishing the significance of sin, its power, and its vanity. Indeed, such a challenge quickly moves us from the feeling of the hated old man and his dark past, to the feeling of the beloved new human and his happy, bright future.
This joyful feeling, the composer of the Holy Psalmody was able to express it by saying: “He took that which is ours, and gave us that which is His. So let us praise Him and glorify Him and exalt Him.” (Theotokia of Friday).
And this, precisely, is the divine feeling that dictated to Saint Paul the Apostle his words to the Corinthians:
“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” — 2 Corinthians 5:21
And the saying of the prophet Hosea long ago:
“I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved.” — Romans 9:25 / Hosea 2:23
So if man is able—with the certainty of faith and his strong trust in God—to offer obedience and submission to God, clinging to the work of God which He completed for us in the person of Jesus Christ; if he is able to face the weakness of the old man with the challenge of God’s own determination for our salvation and sanctification, which God resolved upon and determined with all the weight of His glory and majesty—yes, if man is able to do that—then he has certainly received power for action, power for struggle, power for conflict, relentlessly against the old man.
So what is this work, struggle, and constant conflict against the old man, and what is its strength?
The most important work necessary for our salvation and obligatory for us as children of God—and at the same time the first work that concerns God Himself, and He has promised to provide all necessary assistance for it—is our attainment of spiritual freedom. For it is impossible for us to become His children while we are slaves to sin and the desires of vanity. Here it is necessary for us to fight and strive and wrestle, not as slaves seeking freedom, but as children who have become free and received their deed of freedom by the guarantee of Christ’s death and resurrection, so they fight, defend, and wrestle to possess what is theirs—what is their inherent right, namely the freedom of sons—which has become an essential part of their new nature that they received through the Holy Spirit of God.
And as children of God, when we work and strive, we struggle before God the Father, in His name and for His name. Therefore, it will not escape our minds that we are aided in our struggle against sin and against the desires of vanity by the Spirit of the Father, to whom we yield with all obedience, submission, and surrender. For we know that all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Therefore, because of the guarantee of God’s glory and His honor for our sonship which we have truly received eternally in the person of Jesus Christ, we must trust that we are certainly victorious in all our struggles if our struggle is truly for the Father, and in His name and for His name.
“The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” — Exodus 14:14
The help of God the Father to us, which He offers us in our continuous struggle and conflict with the old man, is a means for our progress.
“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” — Romans 8:26
If the Spirit of God is the Helper and Supporter in our struggle and conflict against sin and the desires of pride, then this requires that our weapons are not carnal, as Paul the Apostle says:
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 10:3–5
Here Paul the Apostle indicates that although we live in the old flesh, yet God has given us spiritual weapons which are the gifts of the new man. This reminds our mind that the subjugation of the body to the mind is for it to be a tool for performing deeds done by the Spirit, meaning with the fervor of the Spirit and the zeal of the Spirit.
“For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” — Romans 8:13
Fasting must be a spiritual and powerful work. If it is offered by the body only, then it is a bodily work that cannot lead to fighting sin. But if it is offered by the living and indwelling Spirit, with crushing and fervent prayer and zeal, and with supplication for salvation and confrontation, fasting becomes an effective and truly capable work to demolish sin entrenched in the body, where the Spirit is the power of the fast, and fasting becomes an effective tool in demolishing sin’s strongholds. Let the reader notice the word “power,” for our deeds we may see them with activity and zeal, but they cannot rise to the level of the powerful weapon that overcomes sin.
And this boredom that leads to great danger in the performance of spiritual works—even though they are divine works in themselves—in a routine manner makes us perform them in a bodily way, like confession, prayer, communion, prostration, and even reading the Gospel. Despite these works having been prepared for us by God as powerful means of grace and spiritual weapons, effective in fighting all kinds of sins and deviations of the old self, yet because we do not raise them to the level of fervor befitting the spiritual work done in the name of the Father and for the glory of the Father, nor do we raise them to the level of the well-known spiritual weapon against sin, because of this their work weakens and the effort exerted in them is wasted without clear fruit. The call here is to raise spiritual work to the level of a spiritual weapon with all seriousness, fervor, and sincerity, drawing from God the ability to use, persevere, and be effective.
When Do We Attain Freedom, the Freedom of Sons? And How Do We Feel and Instill It?
Or in other words, does our spiritual war with our old self have an end point that we reach, so that we have arrived at the freedom of sons? Or is there a time when we finally overcome sin?
Saint John the Apostle clarifies this with all frankness:
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” — 1 John 1:8
It is as if the Apostle wants us to learn an important truth concerning the newness in the new self, which is that our struggle with the body of sin or the old self is inevitable and will have no end, and that at any moment we consider ourselves to have overcome sin—far be it—this means we are not right and that we deceive ourselves with this misleading feeling.
Then the Apostle returns and gives us the guarantee of the New Covenant against sin, which abolishes its existence:
“My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” — 1 John 2:1–2
But Saint John the Apostle returns and makes an exception for a kind of sin that he called a sin leading to death. It is not for the children of God to fall into it. So if sin is a type not leading to death, how do we obtain the freedom of sons and how do we feel it?
Here I would like to present several truths that lead to the complete answer to this question.
First
We must realize that God has called us to be free, and that we are His sons—and this has become a right of ours and an essential part of our new nature. This sonship is a right and a truth sealed by faith in the Son of God, and by renouncing Satan and all his works, and by the imprint of baptism and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with the Chrism and the Holy Communion in the body and blood of the Son of God. So then we are sons of God and children by the Holy Spirit. If after that we sin, it means that our filial freedom or our spiritual freedom is partially hindered, but not entirely abolished.
Secondly
That every time we act in obedience to the Father through prayer, repentance, or love, or self-denial for the service of others, or struggle against self-lust and its arrogance, or through fasting and humility, or communion with confession, contrition, and thanksgiving—in all this we practice true obedience, because we do the work of God and fulfill His commandments. So, in all these works, we practice the work of sons in the spirit of truly being children of God, and we taste a state of true freedom, spiritual freedom, even if partially.
Thirdly
That the practice of true freedom and the performance of the acts of God in the spirit of sons and their obedience truly place us within the circle of the Kingdom of God, and He who called us to this entry is the Father Himself, who poured the Spirit of the Son into our hearts out of love and honor for Christ His Son, to facilitate our movement from the darkness of slavery to the light of God’s children,
“...giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” — Colossians 1:12–13
Fourthly
Our entry into the circle of God’s Kingdom and Light will inevitably reveal more and more the heinousness of sin and the surrounding darkness that confronted us before and confronts us every day, and this increases our feeling of inadequacy and the certain deprivation of the freedom of sons. Here is a stark confrontation between the stance of the new man, who stands in the obedience of love and performing an unceasing work, while the stance of the old man is to flee from His light and expose every work of the devil, whatever it may be, which has become an abomination to the new man. Here we are in a state of hiding from the face of God, not an expulsion from the paradise of God’s mercy.
“Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.” — John 12:35
Fifthly
Here, Christ, the Head of our new creation, justifies us to support the position of the new man with the Father against the movement of disobedience of the old man, who is always inclined toward sin and hiding. He consecrates this new position which frees the person from its standing before God the Father, continuously and always bringing it out from darkness to light, and completes the deficiency of its practice by His eternal power in a state of peace and justification. Christ is to us, by denying His self, a state of completing total obedience to the Father, and a guarantor of a state of redemption and an eternal reconciliation, if we cling to Him with faith and hope and the trust of love, and if we live by His commandments as sons.
Thus we arrive at this truth: That we are always sinners, and always in need of sincere repentance and confession of sins, so that we may obtain forgiveness for them by the blood shed for us. Every time we sin, we lose our vision of the Father, because sin is darkness; and we lose our sense of freedom as sons, because sin is bondage; and we lose our courage to appear before His face, because sin is enmity. Every time we confess our sins, for which Christ atones with His blood, our eyes are opened again and we see that we are entering the sphere of the Kingdom.
If we practice the acts of sonship—such as selfless love, selfless service, self-denial, and the glorification of the Father—and we qualify for participation in the Body and Blood, we return to a state of freedom, the freedom of sons, and truly experience it, but it remains an incomplete state of freedom for complete growth due to the continuous sense of sin, as if it were sweet food mixed with bitterness. If we continue the striving of the acts of sonship, and keep the commandments of Jesus, whose essence is love, Christ will come forth for us to complete every inadequacy and every shortcoming in our work as His sons, and consequently He will complete every deficiency in our sense of freedom as sons, and before the Father in the reckoning, finally blameless in love.
Therefore, O world of faith and love, according to the commandment, we taste the freedom of His children, and the Messiah perfects our freedom absolutely, so we walk in Him, in the light, and remain in Him, and stand before the face of God the Father blameless in Christ.