Picture by Patrick Murphy: http://inspiredsketch.blogspot.com/

An excerpt from my booklet entitled, “Jeremiah: Fire Shut up in My Bones.”

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            “I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone…I looked, and there were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away.  I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger” (Jer. 4:23-28).

This verse foreshadows the utter devastation worked by God at the cross.  Notice that Jeremiah’s wording is the same as Genesis 1:2—“Now the earth was formless and empty….”  So complete was God’s destructive power against sin that the entire universe was brought to a state of ante-creation in Christ.  We have a need for the devastation of the cross to come into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.  All definition and fullness, all light and understanding, all life and humanity that is merely natural must be undone, and we must come to an utter end.  Then, into the darkness, nothingness, and lifelessness, the Lord’s word can come with a definition, fullness, light, and life that is not us but is God Himself.

We do not have need of a cleaned up, improved first creation; we have need of what is not this creation at all.  We do not have need of a Christianity which ministers to us as old creation people, propping us up with scriptural insights and prayers, keeping us alive with continued healing and feeding.  We do not need the resurrection of Lazarus, but of Christ.  We do not need a restored old man, we need an entirely new man.  Christianity should be a living out from this new man.  This man doesn’t need to get to heaven; He is from heaven (1 Cor. 15:47).  This man is not besieged by sin; He has died to it and lives to God (Rom. 6:10).  This man is not needing to be filled because all fullness dwells in Him (Col. 2:9, 10).  This man does not need healing for His wounds heal (1 Peter 2:4).  This man doesn’t live in fear of the devil for “He has no hold” in Him (John 14:30).

Old creation men will do anything to preserve their lives.  They will embrace holiness and put all their force of will into it, but they will never say, “Not my will” (Luke 22:42).  They will seek God’s anointing, but not the anointing for burial (Matt. 26:6-13).  They will swear, “As surely as the Lord lives,” but refuse the discipline and crushing of the Lord (Jer. 5:2, 3).  They will allow Christ to minister through them as long as they never need say, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).  Yet this is what we must come to.  We must come to a place of ante-creation for, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17).