All things are new....

Once we really understand what God is seeking, namely, something altogether new for Himself, then we shall see
clearly that we can never bring any contribution from the old realm into that new thing. God wanted to have us for
Himself, but He could not bring us as we were into that which He had purposed; so He first did away with us by the
Cross of Christ, and then by resurrection provided a new life for us. " If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (mg.
' there is a new creation'): the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new " (2 Cor. 5.17). Being now new
creatures with a new nature and a new set of faculties, we can enter the new kingdom and the new world.
The Cross was the means God used to bring to an end the old things' by setting aside altogether our 'old man', and
the resurrection was the means He employed to impart to us all that was necessary for our life in that new world. " We
were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the
glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life " (Rom. 6.4).
The greatest negative in the universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped out everything that was not of Himself :
the greatest positive in the universe is the resurrection, for through it God brought into being all He will have in the
new sphere. So the resurrection stands at the threshold of the new creation. It is a blessed thing to see that the Cross
ends all that belongs to the first regime, and that the resurrection introduces all that pertains to the second. Everything
that had its beginning before resurrection must be wiped out. Resurrection is God's new starting-point.
We have now two worlds before us, the old and the new. In the old, Satan has absolute dominion. You may be a
good man in the old creation, but as long as you belong to the old you are under sentence of death, because nothing of
the old can go over to the new. The Cross is God's declaration that all that is of the old creation must die. Nothing of
the first Adam can pass beyond the Cross ; it all ends there. The sooner we see that, the better, for it is by the Cross that
God has made a way of escape for us from that old creation. God gathered up in the Person of His Son all that was of
Adam and crucified Him; so in Him all that was of Adam was done away. Then God made, as it were, a proclamation
throughout the universe saying: 'Through the Cross I have set aside all that is not of Me; you who belong to the old
creation are all included in that; you too have been crucified with Christ!' None of us can escape that verdict.