How To Become A New Creation

I. Introduction

A. Titus 3:3—A picture of man in his natural condition without God: educated and sophisticated, perhaps, but still foolish and enslaved by sin.

B. Titus 3:4—Historically, the kindness and love of God was revealed in Jesus

Christ, making it possible for us to know God and thus to be different from what we were before. God is love and until we know Him personally, there is a depth of love we cannot conceive.

II. Salvation

A. Titus 3:5—Paul explains how God saves us. “Salvation” is the Bible’s word for

God’s all-inclusive provision for man through Jesus Christ, comprehending:

1. Forgiveness of sins

2. Gift of eternal life

3. Physical healing

4. Power to live a different life

5. Every provision financially and materially for all time

6. Assurance of eternity in the presence of Almighty God

B. God’s salvation is complete, perfect and entire and never needs to be amended or improved. There must be a moment in our experience where we enter into salvation in Jesus Christ, thus passing from:

1. Death to life

2. Condemnation to forgiveness

3. Darkness to light

C. Noah’s Ark is an example of God’s total provision for mankind, illustrating the three tenses in which the verb “to save” is used:

1. Perfect tense:

a. By grace we have been saved (Eph. 2:8). It has been settled forever.

b. By grace God provided the ark and everything that was needed for Noah and his family for all the time they would be in it.

2. Simple past tense:

a. God saved us (Tit. 3:5). Through a specific event that happens at a given time and place, we have the experience of “entering in” to God’s provision in Jesus Christ.

b. Noah and his family had to “enter in” to the ark to receive God’s provision in it.

3. Continuous present tense:

a. Unto us who are being saved the “preaching of the cross is the power of

God” (1 Cor. 1:8). This describes a continuous, ongoing experience.

b. The ark was continually saving Noah and his family all the time they were in it.

D. We must understand that we can do nothing to earn salvation.

1. The more we try to improve ourselves, the worse we will get.

2. Grace cannot be earned and no works of righteousness will avail to bring us salvation.

3. There will never come a time that we will not need God’s mercy.

E. If we desire the Holy Spirit to change us, there are eight facts we need to acknowledge:

1. No one can understand intellectually how the Holy Spirit works.

2. We do not command the Holy Spirit, we submit to Him.

3. We need to be “washed” for we are unclean—morally, mentally and

Spiritually—and no man can change that condition.

4. We need to be “regenerated” (born again) by receiving God’s Word into our heart by faith, where it is quickened by the Holy Spirit and a new (spiritual) birth takes place within us.

5. Everything about us becomes renewed (2 Cor. 5:16–18). A new life and a new personality are brought into being in us.

6. Through the Holy Spirit, every “born again” child of God is offered the privilege and the opportunity to know Jesus more perfectly, more intimately and more accurately than any of the apostles knew Him during his earthly ministry.

7. When we come to know Jesus in this way, we encounter the eternal Christ, who was, and is, and is to come, who has neither beginning of days nor end of life, the divine unchanging Son of God.

8. The moment Christ is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, we are a “new creation.”

III. How To Enter In To The Fullness Of The New Creation (i.e. Salvation)

A. God has never changed His program. It is still the same.

1. Repent

2. Be baptized

3. Receive the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:38). The cut-off point between the past and the “new life” is the water.

B. Two Old Testament patterns:

1. In the ark, eight souls were separated from their old life by the water.

2. Coming out of Egypt, the Israelites were “immersed” in the cloud and passed through the sea and were thus separated from the old life.

C. Likewise in the New Testament, when we pass through the water (baptism) we are separated from our old life and enter into a new one.

D. First we must:

1. Confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord

2. Believe in our hearts God raised Him from the dead (see Rom 10:9)

E. Titus 3:6—Then the Holy Spirit will be shed abundantly on us through Jesus

Christ

adapted from  — Derek Prince Ministries–International