A Huge Communication Problem

How involved were you when God created you? When God knit you together in your mother’s womb, how much were you involved in this? Did you have a say in being created? Did you do anything to affect how you were created? Did God ask you if you wanted to come into existence?

Of course the answer is no on every count. You contributed nothing. You offered no input on your genetic makeup, your personality traits, or the precise moment of your first breath. As Psalm 139:13-16 so beautifully declares, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God sovereignly decided and executed your creation without your consultation or cooperation. That is what it means to be a creature. By definition, the Creator brings existence out of nothing, unilaterally, and Jeremiah 1:5 confirms the same eternal foreknowledge: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5 that we are a new creation. We do not even know Jesus from a human point of view anymore, and neither do we see ourselves from a human point of view, because like Jesus we have a new type of existence. How did this new existence happen? Jesus told Nicodemus it is like the wind. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). It is by the sovereign work of God; you don’t know where it came from or where it went. You were not consulted. You did not vote. You did not assist. The Spirit swept in like an invisible force and performed a total reboot, a supernatural species upgrade that left the old humanity behind forever.

Paul says our old selves died with Jesus and we were raised in a new life. This new creation is intellectual and spiritual first, and because of this intellectual and spiritual foundation it is also physical. Before the curse animated our bodies in decay and death. But as Paul says in Romans 8:11, “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” The Father did not think we were part of Jesus’ body in the old sense. In our new creation the Father thinks we are part of Jesus. In His mind He thinks we are already seated with Him in the heavenly places, and all spiritual blessings are already given to us. Jesus sends the Spirit to baptize us in power, just like He has power. We are totally and utterly a new creation; no longer human in the old Adamic sense. Our old man with sins died. A new man who is both blameless and the righteousness of God exists in God’s mind.

I say this to illustrate how important we need to categorically see our new life in Jesus. Just as we did not ask God to bring us into existence and had no ability to effect our existence, it is exactly the same in our new creation. God did not ask me if I wanted to be the righteousness of God. Rather, He sent His Son and made it a reality, and faith arrives the moment God makes me aware that He created me as God’s righteousness in Jesus. Second Corinthians 5:21 settles it once and for all: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” No negotiation. No application process. Just sovereign grace.

I did nothing to earn or contribute to my existence. I did not earn the ability to breathe. I did not earn the ability to think. God gave it to me as part of existence itself. I can choose to think well, but that is because I am already a person. The point stands: I do nothing for my existence by definition—I cannot. It is the definition of the Creator to create existences. The same holds true with my new creation. I did nothing to earn or contribute to my new existence. I did not earn the ability to be God’s righteousness. I did not earn the ability to have God be my paycheck. I did not earn Abraham’s blessing. I did not earn to have all my sickness healed. Without asking, God made me a new creation in all these things. I do nothing for it. It is a creation issue. It is God’s doing.

People often struggle with forgiveness and seeing themselves righteous because they still have not given up on their old selves. But the old man is dead and buried. My old man is a corpse. It is my old existence, and because I am already a new creation it has nothing to do with me in my standing before God. Yet every aspect of my existence follows this same pattern. God is correct, and what He thinks is reality. I am a new creation, but if I am foolish enough to still see my old self as alive—a walking corpse or zombie—I will have a defeated and pathetic life. Let’s call it what it is: zombie theology. The old you is pushing up daisies in the graveyard of Calvary, yet some folks keep digging it up for life advice. God is probably face-palming from the throne: “I buried that guy with My Son—stop exhuming the past!”

My new creation has no conscience of sin, because it does not logically apply to my new creation. That corpse is dead and buried. Romans 8:1 shouts with finality, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

This is the same with something like healing and prosperity. Jesus took my sickness as lashes on His back—Isaiah 53:5 says “by his wounds we are healed”—and my old man died there with Jesus’ death. In substitution He gave me healing. My old man tried to use either human effort and money to get healed, or to earn it by merit from God in a begging prayer. But that old man is a corpse in God’s eyes and in mine. Who am I to disagree with God? The new creation of Oshea does not use human effort or money to get healed. The new creation of Oshea exists as part of Jesus’ body, in the mind of God. Does Jesus need to use money to get healed? Then I don’t. Does Jesus need to earn favor to deserve to get healed? Then I don’t.

Jesus became my poverty—2 Corinthians 8:9 declares “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich”—and I died with Jesus in that substitution. Then He gave me His wealth. The old man tried to use human effort to get prosperity. But in the creation I exist in now, Jesus is my paycheck and wealth, not me. We are to work because it is a command of God, but because Jesus already took our poverty and already gave us His wealth, we are to look to Him to be our breadwinner. We are to look to Him for the supernatural power to gain wealth, doors of favor, and miracle money finding its way to us. The old man, with his five senses and self-effort, was foundation and ability. But now my foundation is God’s revelation and my ability is Jesus’ ability. Trying to bootstrap what God already purchased is like showing up to a feast with your own peanut-butter sandwich while the host has slaughtered the fatted calf and says, “Dude, put that away—I’ve got this.” It is easy to pay tithes when you see yourself as a new creation where Jesus is your funnel of money, not your self-effort. The same holds for healing and good relationships. It is easy to give your time to knowing God when you see God as your favor that blesses you with good relationships.

In our new creation in Jesus, because we are part of Jesus’ body, Jesus is our provider for all things. The old creation looked to self and empiricism, but the new self looks to Jesus who richly provides us all good things, as 1 Timothy 6:17 reminds us.

The more you live as if the old you is relevant to your standing before God, the greater the degree you will have conscience of sin, be sick, and live in poverty. You need to live and see yourself in your new creation and definition in Jesus. The old you is utterly and completely irrelevant to your standing before God. The old you has no logical relevance to how you gain wealth and get healed. The old you does not exist in God’s mind. When you approach God for these things and act like the old you exists, God will still see the new you. And this is why your prayers have so little effect. You are seeing one reality and God sees another one. That is a huge communication problem. You must approach God as He sees you and engage Him on that reality. Then you will have success in receiving all freely given things that already belong to you in your new existence. Faith is not a beggar’s plea; it is a king’s decree, declaring what the Father already thinks about you in Christ. So walk in it. Act like the dazzling royalty you are. The old man is gone. The new has come. And that, my friends, changes everything.