A New Creature in Christ Jesus by Daniel Nettleton

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 16, 1916

A New Creature in Christ Jesus

By Daniel Nettleton

DANIEL NETTLETON

“In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” Gal. 6:15.

I remember distinctly the time and place of my conversion. It was on my father’s old homestead in Nebraska, and it was so real and impressive that, although it occurred over forty years ago, it is as fresh and interesting to me as if it took place but yesterday.

I was a sinful, unsaved youth, about to enter upon my chosen life work. I read and believed the Bible, had a reverence for religion, and a desire in my heart to be a Christian, but I had not surrendered to God.

I attended a Methodist revival held in our district schoolhouse, and was deeply convicted of sin and of my great need of a Saviour. The night before my conversion I had gone forward and knelt at the “mourners’ bench.” There I made a public confession of my sinful condition, and expressed my desire to be a Christian; but I did not find the Saviour and deliverance from sin in the public meeting. I went to my home, very sad and with a deep sense of my sins. I slept but little that night. Early the next morning I sought the Lord as did Nathanael, alone under the trees in secret prayer. And as the Lord saw Nathanael under the fig tree and made him “an Israelite indeed,” so he saw me, and heard my prayer for forgiveness and deliverance from sin. I believe a real change took place in my heart and life at that time and place.

As I went from that place of secret prayer, I walked out into a new world. All my plans and purposes for life were changed. Incarnate love had taken hold of me and claimed me for its own. All nature took on a new aspect. The fields, the trees, the river, the sunlight, the deep blue sky,—all seemed to be praising God. But the change was in me. I was “a new creature.” Paul says, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17), and so it was in my case.

Since that glad day I have sinned and failed many times, but I have learned that as I received Christ Jesus the Lord, so I am to walk in him. The only remedy for sin is to confess the sin and then to believe that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

That which makes absolutely necessary this being “born again,” this passing from death unto life, is the fact that we are all born in sin. We are “dead in trespasses and sins,” and “by nature the children of wrath.” Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews,—and all unbelievers are like the Jews in this respect,—“You are of your father the devil, and the lusts [pleasure] of your father ye will do.” David knew this, for he wrote, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Therefore he prayed, as we must and will pray if our hearts are cleansed from sin, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

By nature we are not subject to God, for, as Paul says, “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God,” and, “in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.” “We know,” he says, “that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.” Realizing his wretched condition, he cries out, as every poor sinner who would be saved cries, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” Then as he beholds by faith “the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world,” he exclaims with joy, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” David illustrates his deliverance from sin in these words: “He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” When we have a similar experience we shall sing,—

“O the cleansing blood has reached me. Glory, glory to the Lamb!”

We cannot educate ourselves or our children unto this blessed life of faith, for it is written: “The just shall live by faith;” “ye are all the children of God by faith;” “ye must be born again.” “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” said Jesus, “and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Neither can it be obtained by observing the forms of religion. There is such a thing as “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” I have observed images of men and women in show windows. They have the appearance of real men and women, but they lack life. So it is with those who have only the form of godliness; they do not have the life and power of God. We must come to the Fountain of life, and drink of the living water. And of those who drink of that water Jesus says, “I shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

There is a difference between an artificial reservoir or cistern and a babbling, sparkling, flowing fountain of living water, and so there is a distinction between a cold, formal professor of religion and a real living, loving Christian. O brother, have you drunk at the living Fountain? Is this a real, living experience in your life? Our inability to change from a sinful to a righteous condition is taught us by our own experience and by the Word of God. Sin is something more than an act. Back of every sinful act is the sinful nature that prompts the act. It is this sinful nature that must be changed, and when it is changed, we shall be partakers of the divine nature.

In the seventeenth chapter of Numbers we read that God made Aaron’s rod to bud, blossom, and bear almonds in a single night. It was just as easy for God to make Aaron’s dry rod bloom and bear almonds, as it is for him to make a tree blossom and bear almonds. He can, if we give ourselves to him, make our lives, sinful though they may have been, to bear the fruits of righteousness. This truth is beautifully illustrated by the following incident:—

An old wire-covered door stood against the wall of a house. Its wood was warped by the weather, its hinges were rusted and broken, and it had been set aside as good for nothing. But the honeysuckle found it, and crept silently up and up, spreading its green fingers lovingly over rusted wire and rough framework, until finally the whole door was hidden in a lacework of green. Then the blossoms began to appear, bursting into white and gold and sweetness, until the old door was a mass of beauty. Some one found it just before Children’s Day, and marveled at its beauty. Suddenly the inspiration came to cut off the vine at the roots and carry the old door into the church. There it leaned against the pulpit wall next to the choir. No one looking upon that mass of lovely green leaves and white and gold blossoms would have dreamed the foundation was an old chicken house door. It was glorified and made fit for the house of the Lord.

That is the way Christ may come into our lives, covering all their ugliness and uselessness, and glorifying and beautifying them. It was not the glory of the old frame or the rusted wire, even had they been new and fresh, that shone in the church that day. It was the glory of the life that had come to dwell upon it, and twine about it, and interlace every portion of it, and blossom in beauty upon it. That is what Jesus will do for you and me if we let him come into our hearts; and when he does this for us, our song will be that of Isaiah: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.” Isa. 61: 10.

O, I am so glad we do not have to wait till we go to heaven to be made righteous and happy! God can make us both righteous and happy in this present sad and sinful world.

Here is one of God’s exceeding great and precious promises to every believing soul; “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” Eze. 36: 26, 27.

“The Lord is effecting transformations so amazing that Satan with all his triumphant boasting, with all his confederacy of evil united against God and the laws of his government, stands viewing them as a fortress impregnable to his sophistries and delusions. They are to him an incomprehensible mystery. The angels of God, seraphim and cherubim, the powers commissioned to coöperate with human agencies, look on with astonishment and joy, that fallen men, once children of wrath, are through the training of Christ developing characters after the divine similitude, to be sons and daughters of God, to act an important part in the occupations and pleasures of heaven.” And then when Jesus comes, these saved, transformed children of God shall be caught up to meet their Lord, and so shall ever be with him.

“Ten thousand times ten thousand, In sparkling raiment bright, The armies of the ransomed saints Throng up the steeps of light. ’Tis finished, all is finished, Their fight with death and sin; Open wide the pearly portals And let the victors in.”

“Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Cor. 15: 57.

Port Townsend, Wash.