What Really Is the New Man?

We have stressed that the Scripture makes it plain that the last Adam, the Progenitor of the new race, the Saviour who ended the old by taking it into His death, and began the new by His resurrection, did not rise by His own efforts or power. For our sakes He had become the first Man of the new nation, "the firstborn among many brethren"; and men cannot do things by their own efforts. 

Therefore when we speak of the new man, we mean a people who have an entirely and radically new conception both of the powers and function of the human personality, a people "renewed in the spirit of their minds." Whereas they previously thought in terms of self-sufficiency and self-effort, now they use the same language about themselves as the Saviour on earth about Himself, when He said, "The Son can do nothing of Himself," and Paul when he wrote of himself "who am nothing," and the disciples to whom Jesus said, "Apart from Me, ye can do nothing." They have had a divine revelation of the created helplessness and nothingness of the human self. 

But that alone is not enough. Even as, through faith, we have been joined to a dead and buried Christ, so far as our old selves are concerned; so have we also been joined to a risen Christ so far as our new selves are concerned, and so joined to Him that we are one: "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." And that means nothing less than the new man being Christ and I made one, and in that union He is the all, and I the nothing; He is the What Really Is the New Man? by Norman Grubb Vine, the living tree, I the branch, the appendage to the tree, which it vitalizes with its sap, and through which it produces its fruits. Therefore for all essential purposes the new man is Christ: "Christ who is our life," "Christ is all and in all." 

The perfect Scriptural presentation of this relationship, given in complete and masterly outline with almost the stroke of a pen, and yet weaving together all the intricate threads that make the pattern of the new life in Christ, is Gal. 2:20: Paul’s master analysis of his own condition as a new than in Christ. The first half of that verse will repay unceasing study, until the Spirit illuminates in personal understanding and experience the fundamental and subtle balance of truth in the three operative statements–"I am crucified with Christ": "nevertheless I live": "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 

The first is clear, in the light of what we have already been seeing of the death of Christ and of ourselves in Him. The "I" which has been crucified with Christ is, of course, the old egocentric self with which we came into the world. 

The second–"nevertheless I live"– is the new Paul, our new selves, risen from the dead in Christ, the same self as before so far as our organs and faculties are concerned, but "renewed in the spirit of our minds," "created in righteousness and true holiness," the dead and risen self to which Paul refers when he says, "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God…yield yourselves unto God as alive from the dead." This renewed "I" has a pure heart (Acts 15:8; 1 Pet. 1:22), a purified soul (1 Pet. 1:22), pure mind (2 Pet. 3:1), dedicated body (Rom. 6:13; 12:1) the temple of the Holy Ghost. 

But then Paul definitely qualifies this second statement by a third: "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Why does he do this? Because the real new I is Christ in me. That is the crux of the matter, and takes us right back to where we started. We saw that God Himself, He alone, is the All–the eternal life, light, love, wisdom, power, holiness. And He can only make creatures to contain Him. He cannot make other gods who are self-existent with all the attributes of the godhead, for then He would cease to be God alone. He can only create receivers, containers, and manifestors of Himself. And this is equally true of man, the summit of His creation, intelligent creatures with faculties like Himself with whom He can have fellowship and who can be His sons. They too can only be recipients and containers and manifestors of the One God. That alone is their highest privilege and the limit of their capacity. Therefore when the God of all grace redeems man from his false, deceived, imagined, impossible so-called life of self-centredness, He can only redeem him by ridding him of this false attitude and restoring him to the true and only function of his humanity, to be the recipient and container of the Living God. And this, in the glory of His grace, takes place in our faith-union with Christ in His death and resurrection. Through the mighty power of His cross the "old man," Satan-infected, dies; through the mighty power of His resurrection the new man, which is Christ in us, Christ the all, we the nothing, lives.

But, in the perfect balance of Paul’s statement, the dual consciousness in the new man must be carefully noted. It does not just say, "Christ lives in me"; but "I live" and "Christ lives in me." And it continues about "the life I now live in the flesh," but that it is lived "by the faith of the Son of God." There is a distinct division of consciousness between "I" as the new man, and "Christ in me." Jesus, as a Man, had that same consciousness in the Garden, when He prayed, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Now in the final resurrection of the body, when we shall be "like Him," when we shall all together have become one "perfect man," Head and body, when we shall be beyond the reach of temptation, as God Himself now is (James 1:13), we will no longer have this divided consciousness, for it is a product of the fall which replaced the single knowledge of good with the dual knowledge of good and evil. 

–The Deep Things of God