St Paul tells us that in Christ we have these two kinds of life: the flesh and the spirit, the outward and the inward, the earthly and the heavenly, the old self and the new self, the animal-life and the Christ-life, the life of the first Adam and the life of the second Adam, the self-centered and the Christ-centered, the old and the new. The old life is what we derived from our parents, our childhood, the culture in which we were raised. None of us is self-invented. We inherited our personality, our characteristics, our instincts, our values. We are fallen creatures. We were molded on the potter's wheel of our early years. We may react against those days and try to break away to create our own personae but we carry with us the sins of our parents, just as they did their parents. As we age we can become more like them physically and emotionally.

Professor of English, Peter Conrad of Oxford University, in his memoir, Behind the Mountain, wrote,

Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom... I had to admit that I was no self-created foundling, but a haphazard amalgam of other flesh... When you leave home, it travels with you; the parents you think you can reject dictate from within your every action. You serve your sentence for the term of your natural life. (p.218)

I share the personalities of my parents for good or ill. There are traits and values that I inherited for which I am grateful. There are also prejudices, anxieties and obsessive-compulsions which I deplore and have to fight against. Not that I consider myself superior to them in any way. Chronological snobbery: believing yourself more advanced and intelligent than your predecessors is the worst kind of pride. We can take no credit for being born later than them. Who I am now is my own responsibility. I cannot blame my ancestors for my failings. Ezekiel prophesied against the people of Israel for blaming their forefathers for their problems.
"What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel:
'The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.'
As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son -- both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die." (Ezekiel 18:2-4)
Acquiring the old life is natural to us. We are all sinners from birth. Self-centeredness is our default drive. C.S. Lewis again, "What mattered most of all, was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism and lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred that the word 'interference'. But Christianity placed at the center what then seemed to me a transcendental interferer." (Surprised by Joy, p.163)

But this 'transcendental interferer' wants to deliver us from our old creation so that we might enjoy a new creation. That is the Gospel hope -- that we can leave the old behind and become a new kind of person. When we enter into Christ, and Christ enters into us, we acquire a new life. "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view", i.e. from their bodily appearance or material existence: race, wealth, learning, etc. "Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer." We no longer see him merely as a moral teacher, or good man, or a Jewish martyr or prophet. For when we enter by faith into Christ, we become a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come. We begin a new life. There is a new beginning. Jesus said that we are born again of the Spirit. "He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." (Titus 3:5)

The washing and renewal of the Spirit cleanses us but we still have the old body that will continually need to be washed and renewed. The old dirt returns and we must daily seek cleansing and clothe ourselves anew with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, mercy and love. Just as we would never dream of beginning each new day without washing, showering, bathing, brushing our teeth, and putting on clean clothes we can never be a new creation without purifying ourselves by putting on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator (Col.3:10).

Just as the old creation was formed through much struggle and suffering: "the pains of childbirth", so the new creation is being formed: "we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:22,23). The new creation is a struggle. We wage war against the old body of death. "We have the desire to do what is good but we cannot carry it out. For what we do is not the good we want to do; no, the evil we do not want to do -- this we keep on doing" (Romans 7:18-20). "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm. Therefore put on the whole armor of God" (Eph.6:12, 13). Clothe yourselves with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.

Just as we derived our old life from our family and social life, we derive our new life in Christ from our church family and fellowship. We are nurtured through worship, through learning from the Scriptures which make us wise for salvation, through participation in the sacrament of Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper and through encouraging one another, praying for one another, supporting one another. Just as our old life was propagated through birth so our new life is reproduced through our witness and service to others.

Eventually God will replace all the old with the new. "Behold, I will create a new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind." (Isaiah 65:17) We are in the process of this re-creation. If you want to be part of this new creation you will see every day as an opportunity to consciously choose to grow in Christ, to live in him, to be filled with his Spirit, to go deeper into his kingdom, to increase in faith, hope and love, to the measure of all the fullness of God.

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