How Much Are You Worth — Major Ian Thomas

The New Creation in Christ

In the 2nd chapter of the 2nd epistle to the Corinthians in chapter 5, 2 Corinthians in chapter 5 and we shall commence initially with a statement contained in the 17th verse of that 5th chapter of the 2nd epistle to the Corinthians For if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.

Behold, all things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. You will understand at once from the first word with which that verse begins that we have commenced with the conclusion of an argument.

Therefore, if any man be in Christ. And the moment you see therefore you recognize the fact that there has been a spread of thought. An accumulating weight of evidence that brings one relentlessly to a certain conclusion.

As somebody has once said, if there is a therefore then you must ask what the therefore is therefore. Wherefore the therefore. I have deliberately chosen to introduce you to the conclusion of the argument that we may work backwards essentially.

And to discover the implications of the argument. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. And that statement is qualified by the little word if. If any man be in Christ, he is. A categorical statement of fact, a new creation.

All things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. If a man is in Christ, that is a fact. It isn't a hope. It isn't wishful thinking. It isn't even just in the realm of probability. It is a categorical statement of fact that if a man is in Christ, he is literally a new creation.

If he's in Christ. It is not true if he is not in Christ. It is not true of you tonight if you are not in Christ. But if you are in Christ, you have become a new creation. Now this is a verse that I'm quite certain is familiar to most of you.

But I believe that we need to examine in closer detail what is involved in being in Christ. An expression that is constantly used in the New Testament. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ.

But what if a man is not in Christ? We shall largely come to understand what it means to be in Christ only against the background of what is involved of not being in Christ. If a man is not in Christ, where is he?

In Adam: Humanity Under Sin and Death

How would you describe the man who is not in Christ? The answer is given to us very clearly in the first epistles of the Corinthians and in the 15th chapter. 1 Corinthians and chapter 15. In the 21st verse of that chapter,.

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Verse 22. For as in Adam, in Christ. So there in that one verse that diametrically opposed the one to the other are the two possibilities.

A man who is not in Christ is still in Adam. These are the only two possibilities. A man is either in Christ or he is still in Adam. And I'm going to ask your attention for the first few moments as we examine the characteristics of a man who is still in Adam.

First of all, we're told that in Adam all died. In the 5th chapter of the epistle of Paul to the Romans and the 12th verse, we're told that as by one man, sin came into the world. And death by sin. So death passed upon all men.

And there is absolutely no exception to this rule. In Adam all died. Till in Adam are all dead. And that throws us right back to the fall of man into sin. And what happened when Adam believed the devil's lie and died by faith in a lie.

And to understand what happened in Adam, he repudiated the basic principles of his own humanity. We need to understand something of the nature of his humanity. And although we shall not discuss that in great detail this evening, we recognize this first fundamental principle of man's humanity.

Humanity Created for God's Indwelling

That God created man to be inhabited by God for God. Creation is declared fairly and squarely for us in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. Let us make man in our own image. And in the likeness of God made he his.

And we all fully understand that when God made man in his own likeness, this was not a physical likeness. But that man was created in such a way that an invisible God could become visible in terms of his humanity.

Man in himself did not have what it takes to produce any adequate image of the nature of God. But that man was created in such a way that God in man, indwelling him by the divine life, would become the origin of his own image.

Electricity is itself the origin of the effect that we call light. We may say that these lamps produce light, but of course they don't. We could throw the mask to switch and they would hang uselessly from the ceiling and this room would be plunged into darkness.

It would be as dark inside as it is in the night outside. The electricity is the cause of its own effect. The lamp is the vehicle, the lamp is the medium through which the invisible electricity makes itself visible in terms of light.

And that's the simplest illustration that I know of God's purpose in man. For no man has seen God at any time. It was the purpose of God in creating man that he, the invisible God, should be the cause of his own effect in man, light, the glory of which we heard this morning.

What happened in Adam when he fell into sin was that he believed the devil's lie about the basic nature of his own humanity. For Satan came to man and said, You can be man in your own light and you do not need God to be man.

You can be God-like without God conscious, as though a lamp tried to be the cause of its own effect, and produce light without electricity. Could you imagine what would happen if it were possible for these lamps suddenly to repudiate the basic principle of their own function?

Could you imagine what could happen if I could somehow speak to those lamps and they could hear what I was saying and act on the impulse of it and say, Stupid lamp, whoever persuaded you that you needed electricity, you can be a lamp in your own right, you only need to throw your own big chest out and demonstrate your own self-sufficiency.

Supposing the lamp could hear me and believe me and act on the assumption that it was true and insist on being the origin of its own image, the cause of its own effect. What would happen to those lamps?

Plunged into darkness, they'd still be lamps. Now basically that's what happened when man fell into sin. He repudiated that attitude of dependence that released the divine light in terms of his humanity.

He ceased to be in the image of God his maker. He forfeited what it takes to be man. God created man to be godlike, and something happened. For the fall of man into sin, by virtue of which man forfeited what it takes to be godlike.

God. For it takes God to be a man. That's what's involved in what we call spiritual regeneration. The moment Christ comes to indwell, the Christian God is back in the man. The life of God in the soul.

That's why we're told in the fifth chapter of the epistle of Paul to the Romans, in verse six, that when we were yet without strength, in other words, without what it takes, in due time Christ died for the ungodlike.

And the moment you recognize the fact that Christ died for the ungodlike, when they didn't have what it takes to be godlike, you recognize at once the purpose of his dying for the ungodlike, who didn't have what it takes to be godlike.

Why did he do it? That the ungodlike, who don't have what it takes to be godlike, might have what it takes to be godlike. That by the exceeding great and precious promises, they might become again partakers of the divine nature.

Simply according to his divine power. They might have all that pertains to life and God's life. So we have to recognize from the very beginning that God's purpose in redemption is the restoration of man to his true humanity.

Not just to get guilty men from hell to heaven. God died to make man, man again. As God intended man to be. That's why a man in Christ is a new creation. But in Adam. The first thing we know about a man is this.

Spiritual Death and Alienation from God

He is spiritually destitute. Ephesians 4, 18. He is alienated from the life of God. He is severed from that divine nature, which in man must exclusively be the origin of the divine image. God himself.

A man in Adam is spiritually dead. Surviving physically. His spiritual destitution. Physically alive. Soulishly active. Spiritually dead. Capable of behavior. Because it does not need God for a man to behave any more than it needs God for a dog to behave.

The fact that you do or do not know God does not determine whether or whether you cannot behave. It simply determines how you're going to behave. The best thing about a man in Adam is that he's spiritually dead.

Utterly, totally destitute of that divine content that could ever allow him or enable him to implement the function of his creation to bear the image of the invisible God. To receive his glory. Now what's the second thing we know about a man who is in Adam?

That by his fall into sin he not only forfeited the divine content for which he was created, God himself. But that in his spiritual destitution that alienated him from the life of God his soul was invaded by an alien principle hostile to God, not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be.

It is a principle that is described in the Bible as the flesh. It has its origin in Satan himself. It is not to be confused with the physical body for there is nothing intrinsically sinful about that wonderful human body with which God has been pleased to clothe you.

There may be something very sinful about the way you use that body but there is nothing very sinful at all in the body itself. But you see there was a satanic principle an evil sin principle that invaded the human soul prostituted man's humanity abused and misused him so that instead of his members this body becoming the instrument for righteousness under the divine sovereignty of an indwelling almighty creator God his members became the instruments for unrighteousness.

The Flesh and the Principle of Sin

Righteousness has its origin exclusively in God. Righteousness has its origin exclusively in Satan. He that committed sin is of the devil. This principle of which Paul speaks in the second chapter of the epistles of the Ephesians and you happy quickened who were dead entrusts us with sin.

Paul is writing to dead men who have been raised from the dead but he is referring them back to their previous walk before the new principle of human behavior had been introduced by that spiritual resurrection or restoration of divine life that you and I call spiritual regeneration or in simpler language the new birth.

In trespasses and sins wherein in time past you walked across of this world this godless society of godless men according to the prince of the power of the air the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience among whom also we all had our conversational behavior in times past in the lusts of our flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and whereby nature the children of wrath in which at one time you walked habitually you were following the course and fashion of this world you were under the sway of the tendency of this present age following the prince of the power of the air you were obedient to him and you were under his control this demon spirit that still constantly works in the sons of disobedience.

This is the principle that is elsewhere described as sin sin not to be confused with sins. Sins which are the acts that derive from sin as the principle the fruit that stems from the root sin. It's this word that Paul uses in his epistle to the Romans in chapter 7 this chapter of the epistle to the Romans and verse 15.

I do not understand my own actions their will. I do not practice or accomplish what I wish but I do the very thing that I loathe which my moral instinct condemns. Verse 16. If I do habitually what is contrary to my desire that means that I acknowledge and agree that the law is good, morally excellent and that I take sides with it.

However, it is no longer I who does the deed but the sin principle which is at home in me and has possession of me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me that is, in my flesh. This principle that has prostituted my humanity and made me an enemy of God my maker.

I can will what is right but I cannot perform it. I have the intention and urge to do what is right but no power to carry it out. For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do. But the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am ever doing.

Now if I do what I do not desire to do it is no longer I doing it. It is not myself that acts but the sin principle which dwells within me fixed and operating in my soul souls under sin. So we discover that the man in Adam is not only destitute of divine life he is spiritually dead but he is dominated by an alien principle that makes him the enemy of God because it is itself hostile to God not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be it is lawless.

And that is why the outworking of this principle is lawlessness and sin is lawlessness pig-headed, stubborn, hostile attitude to God that repudiates man's basic humanity created man to be inhabited by God brought himself in man exclusively to be the origin of his own ev... the cause in man of his own effect exclusively the origin of all true righteousness spiritually dead dominated by and walking after the flesh.

Physical Death and the Two Adams

What's the third thing that we know about a man in Adam. It's this that if nothing happens to change the situation he will die physically speaking to the Pharisees in the 8th chapter of John's gospel.

John's gospel in chapter 8 and verse 23. And he said unto them. You are of this society of a fallen race the seed of a fallen animal from above in your sin in your sin disintegration of your body to stand at last morally responsible before the God who made you humanity robbed him of spiritually dead dominated by and walking after the flesh.

And if nothing happens to change to die in his sin now. That's the program. On the one hand this is characteristic of the man who is still in Adam. This is the characteristic of any man or woman or boy or girl no matter what family in which you may have been born no matter how much you may have been tutored mentally in the facts of the Christian faith.

This is the condition tonight in which you still are if there has not taken place in the infinite mercy of God that spiritual resurrection whereby God on God's terms has restored to you that divine content that makes you man again as God intended man to be from the temple of the living God.

Would you turn back to that verse the 22nd or the 15th of 1 Corinthians 1 Corinthians and chapter 15. Verse 21. By man came death also the resurrection of the dead. His name was Adam and in him all are dead.

Who is the second man. Direct word order. All in the same chapter. Verse 45 is described as the last or the second Adam. 5 of chapter 15. So it is written. The first man Adam was made a living soul and the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

Verse 47. The first man is of the earth. The second man is of the Lord from heaven. I want you to notice that there have only been at any time created man to function only two. First was the first Adam who in his innocency and before he believed the devil's lie and acted on the lie he believed implemented that purpose for which he was created enjoyed and he shared and he declared the glory of God.

This was Adam in his innocence and God walked with him in the garden in the cool of the day. He enjoyed in his innocence the unbroken fellowship with God his maker and enjoyed the smile of God his maker in the very image and likeness of God his maker.

This was the first Adam and he died. And since the first Adam fell into sin there has only been one other man who ever fulfilled the function for which man was created. Only one other man ever walked this earth of whom the father looking down from heaven can say.

Christ as the Second Man

This is my beloved son who was tempted in all points like as you are and yet without sin in this equality he need never have done it deliberately as God taught himself nothing taught himself the form and fashion of a man deliberately subjected himself to those limitations which he as God had imposed upon man as his own creation and demonstrated for thirty three years on earth the principle of divine living by virtue of his relationship to the father.

The father that dwelleth in me he doeth the work I want you to know said the Lord Jesus that for every step I take and for every word I speak and for everything I do and for all that I am the father himself is the origin of his own image and the source of his own activity.

And without my father I can do nothing. This was the perfection of his manhood. I want you to understand that when the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world he did not come to be fallen man and he did not come to be regenerate man.

When the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world he came to be the second man if ever. You and I want to know how to behave as a Christian a redeemed sinner restored to his true humanity to function on earth on the way to heaven as God intended man to function.

We've got to examine very very very closely the life of the Lord Jesus himself as we were so ably reminded this morning as the living father hath sent me and I live by the father he that eateth me shall live by me the second man.

Christ's Death and Spiritual Resurrection

And for 33 years on earth the Lord Jesus demonstrated that utter dependence of man upon God that is the divine principle. You turn back now to the 5th chapter of the 2nd epistle to the Corinthians 2 Corinthians and chapter 5 verse 14.

The examination that we have already made is an essential background against which alone we can begin to understand. The argument that leads to the conclusion of the 17th verse for the love of Christ constrains us because we thus judge that if one man man understood if one died for all there was only one good reason for it.

Justification for the fact that this man the man of Christ Jesus God at work. Justification for the fact that he, one man died for all men. What is it? All were dead all without exception. For in Adam all died.

It may be at this juncture that we should clarify our thinking in this particular respect. When the Lord Jesus Christ came to this world he did not come to save guilty men from future death. Jesus Christ came to this world as perfect man.

He came to raise dead men from death. The ability that one day you will die in consequence of your sin sin is that you and I without exception were born dead in Adam. Deliverance from a future impending threat is an invitation to dead men to be raised from the dead and live.

This is the gospel has never before. Spiritual regeneration is nothing less than a spiritual resurrection the restoration of life to the lifeless. When Jesus Christ came as the sinless second man that ever was to lay down his life upon the cross it was to kill death dead and bring life life, immortality.

Know this that if one day you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your redeemer you were raised from the dead. That's why Paul writing to the Ephesians says you have to be quick so we're dead. He's writing to resurrected men.

And a Christian is nothing less than a resurrected man, woman, boy or girl who was dead but is alive. And if Jesus Christ the one man died for all men it was only for this good reason that all men were dead.

Living Exclusively for Christ

And he saves us out of death into life. Jesus said I am come that you might have what you don't have life and that you might have it more abundantly. He came to switch the lamps for in him was life who was in the beginning with God and was God and by whom all things were made.

The Word in him was life. And this life that was in him was the light of man and he that hath a son. Should you therefore anticipate of the redeemed sinner who has been reconciled to God on the basis of his atoning vicarious sacrifice and has been restored to life which life is the light of man.

You should see the glory a restored image. Anything less than this is not enough. Anything less than this involved in conversion is a shabby imitation of the real thing. It's a parody of what God was at when he sent his son into the world.

A quickening spirit who raises the dead died for all. Then were all dead. That's the first fundamental statement of fact. The next in verse fifteen that he died for all they which live. And that is not all he died for all because all were dead.

That of the all who were dead they which live from the dead who by believing into dependence out of death into life darkness into light. That they who live in the company of redeemed sinners out of every nation, kindred, tribe and tongue who have called upon the name of the Lord have claimed mercy though they never deserved it.

The mercy that grace provides God's riches at Christ's expense. That's grace that they which live should not live unto themselves but unto him which died for and rose again. In other words he emphatically declared is this that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for all men who were dead was designed in God's eternal economy to introduce to those who through his death have been restored to life an entirely new life for him who died and who rose again.

That of course is why you read in the eighth chapter of the epistles of the Romans in verse one. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Why not? Because judgment has already fallen upon their savior substitute because the sinless savior died.

My sinful soul is counted free and God the just is satisfied to look on him condemned and pardon me. But is that all? No. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. But this is the characteristic of a man who is in Christ Jesus and who has been acquitted by faith who walks to and for himself but he walked to and for him who was dead but who rose again from the dead.

In other words my dear Christian friend tonight you were redeemed through the shed blood of Christ. That your total personality might be monopolized by the divine spirit reestablishing the Christ rule in the area of your thinking your mind in the area of all your attitudes and affections your emotions reestablishing thereby the Christ rule in the area of your will that you exercise once more under a God-tutored mind and God-controlled emotions until your whole humanity becomes once more that human vehicle that declares the divine glory so that you can say to me to live now as Christ.

I become re-inhabited by God for God Jesus Christ in me as the father within him. I see it now. This is the gospel. This is what it's all about. I was in Adam dominated by the flesh on the way to hell to die only in my sins but in the infinite mercy of God.

He sent the second man in all his sinlessness to have imputed to him my guilt that there might be imputed to me his righteousness and not only imputed but divinely imparted for the living Christ who died for me rose again to live in me.

And now he becomes the fulcrum he becomes the pivot. He becomes the center about which my total behavior pattern must be oriented in me. The only hope of glory Christ in me the origin of his own image now to be the cause of his own effect.

Is that what happened when you were converted? Is this what you understood by your decision to receive Christ as redeemer? That from the moment of your repurchase by Christ for God your total humanity would become utterly available to his unquestioned monopoly?

Is that what you meant when you registered your decision for Jesus Christ? If not then you weren't ready to become a Christian. All you were ready for was to escape hell and get to heaven. That isn't the object of the exercise.

It is that from the moment of your resurrection out of death into life you should henceforth live exclusively to and for Jesus Christ so that he might declare himself in terms of your humanity. Now you'll get the sense of the 16th verse.

Christian Identity and the Measure of Human Worth

We're almost there in a moment the truth will filter out. It's a little bit confusing in the King James's version but let me read it to you first out of that verse 16. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh.

Yea though we have known Christ after the flesh yet now henceforth know we him. No more. Little bit confusing that isn't it? Now I'd like to read that same verse to you from the Amplified New Testament that you'll find extremely helpful.

Consequently in the light of all that I've been saying to you that a man in Adam is dead spiritually that a man in Adam is dominated by the flesh and walks after the flesh his behavior patterns prostituted by the devil himself to die only in his sin unless a spiritual resurrection takes place.

But because Christ died the second man a man in Christ is spiritually alive he is now re-inhabited by and dominated by the Holy Spirit so that he may live in the power of the endless life of the risen Lord.

Consequently consequently says the apostle for this good reason on the basis of this unchallengeable argument from now on we estimate and regard no one from a purely human point of view in terms of natural standards of value says Paul the Apostle in the light of all that we have come now to understand about a man who is in Christ all those standards of value by which in the past we evaluated a man's worth have gone by the board says Paul the Apostle.

I recognize that the worth of a man is no more nor less than the measure in which his total personality is dominated by the Christ who died for him and who rose again to live in him. That is the sole exclusive legitimate measure by which a man's true worth may be evaluated.

How much of Christ is revealed through him. I would have come into a church to which I was a stranger and were naughty enough. I might nudge you when I saw some affluent looking gentleman come in through the door and say how much is he worth.

And if you were caught off your guard you would say if he's worth a dollar he's worth a million. And I would say to you I'm sorry you have misunderstood me. I didn't ask you how much money he had got in the bank.

I asked you how much he was worth. Because a man can have all the money in all the banks in all the world. And so far as God is concerned he's worth nothing. I would ask you call to your pulpit and I would say to you what's he worth.

And you might begin to elaborate upon the degrees that he had accumulated by his scholarship. A man has the right and sometimes the duty to accumulate degrees but that won't determine his worth. A man who can learn facts and get the right answer.

A man who can earn by his memory so many marks out of a hundred can attain to any kind of degree whether it be that of an engineer or a doctor or a parson. Your spiritual worth will not be determined by your academic capacity to memorize facts and commit them to paper and get them to be worth nothing.

So far as God is concerned you are a redeemed sinner who has claimed cleansing through the blood of Jesus Christ. You are worth no more nor less than the degree to which Jesus Christ is given expression in terms of your personality your behavior the measure in which you have entered into his glory.

That's how much you're worth. How much are you worth he said. Even though we once did estimate Christ from a human viewpoint and as a man among men. Yet now we have such knowledge of him that we know him no longer in terms of the flesh.

According to these carnal standards of measurement says Paul the Apostle there was a time when I was just Saul of Tarsus intelligent evaluation of the man called Jesus that I had gave them mutual consent.

Saul of Tarsus Encounters the Glory of Christ

Jesus Christ was the illegitimate child of a lying faithless woman by virtue of her hallucinations to have deceived an angel but betrayed the man whom she professed her love. That's the best I knew. And it's what I believed.

Because everybody believed it and some still do in the 20th century basis of this standard of measurement. How much socially was Jesus Christ in terms of education and scholarship. He had no more than would qualify him to stand at a carpenter's bench and be just a common craftsman compared with those who were of my class of scholarship.

How much was he worth. I was promoted above many of my equals in the Jews religion. I was the bright eyed boy of my class. He was worth nothing. How much was he worth ecclesiastically repudiated by the highest theological authorities of my day.

He had no home to live in a fanatical rabble rouser and a troublemaker. He even had to borrow a coin for one of his illustrations he was an incorrigible scrounger. He lived on other people. He borrowed their donkers.

He was borrowed from start to finish. He was born in a borrowed tomb. He was crucified on a borrowed cross in a borrowed grave. How much was Jesus Christ worth by all normal reasonable intelligent standards.

Do you blame Saul of Tarsus. Had you been one of his contemporaries in his position. This man of doubtful birth by all popular concepts a bankrupt from the start repudiated by everybody that really counted socially ecclesiastically scholastically would you blame him.

I wonder today with these qualifications how many churches would call Jesus Christ to their pastor. Mission boards would dispatch him to the mission field. How many would invite him to become chairman of their building committee.

I wonder what approval Jesus Christ would receive today. He was worth by all human standards. I once estimated Jesus Christ as a man among men. A man in one blinding encounter on the road to demand. He looked into the face of a man and saw the glory of God.

His faith utter humiliation. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And in that awful moment of humiliation there was revealed to Saul of Tarsus the true worth of a man. He discovered that a man is only worth as much as can be seen of God in him.

Period. And he was emancipated. Saul of Tarsus was born delivered from the hollow art of living in a fool's paradise of faulty values. A world of artificial standards anchored to a cloud and blown by every wind effect it found reality in God in the face of Jesus Christ.