NEW

Did you know often times there are multiple Greek words translated into a single English word?  One significant example is the word love.  There are multiple Greek words that are very different from one another but in English it is translated as “love.”  Here is another example.  NEW.  There are a few Greek words translated as new or renew.  Check this out:  Neos:  recently born, young, youthful or new.  This word is like a plant that just sprouted out of a seed.  Here is a verse with the word neos.

Mark 2:22 And no one puts new (neos) wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the bottles destroyed; but new wine is to be put in new wineskins. (AMP)

I think the wine example is a really good illustration.  Wine used to be grape juice but now it is wine.  It is also fresh and not stale.  Old wine would be stale and likely be ready to turn into vinegar.  So it is like fresh wine from grape juice.

Here is another word for new: Kainos:  which means a new form or unused or unworn form (thinks of a new car or a new shirt).  It can also mean a new substance or a new kind, unprecedented, novel, uncommon or unheard of.  So this word translated “new” is really more like a new invention.  It is a new “thing” that hasn’t been seen before.  It is of course, not used but it isn’t a fresh form of an old it is entirely new.  Get it?  So check out this verse:

2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new (kainos) creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new (kainos) has come.

So in the Lance Literal Translation I would say: 

1 Cor 5:17 If you are in Jesus, if you have given your life to Him, If you have ask Him to come into you,  you are a new, one of kind, never been seen before, new invention that is unprecedented in the history of mankind.  All the old ideas, concepts, understandings, wisdom, explanations don’t work anymore because everything we used to understand has radically changed into something we haven’t seen before. (LLT)

Here is another verse with the same word:

Matt 26:28 This is my blood of the new (kianos) covenant, which is shed in exchange for the many for the release of sins.  29 But I say to you that I shall not drink again from this fruit of the vine until the day in which I shall drink it with you new (kianos) in the Kingdom of my Father.” (Aramaic Bible in Plain English)

Can you see it?  On this side of the cross we are in a different, new, unprecedented, never seen before, covenant.  On this side of the cross, in Him, we are a new, unprecedented, never been seen before, new creation partaking in the new covenant!  How cool is that.  None of this (new) should look like that (old).  This new covenant is not a repackaging of an old.  It isn’t grape juice becoming wine.  It is NEW, absolutely NEW and unheard of. 

No doubt the people of Jesus’ time hearing this message would have got that.  We lose it in translation.  Grace isn’t power to fulfill the law.  Grace abolishes the law.  Grace makes the law void.  Grace is Grace.  Jesus is the answer.  Jesus fulfills the law.  Grace and law are different.  They don’t mix.  They can’t mix.  That is why Jesus says this (same verse as above):

Mark 2:22 And no one puts new (neos) wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the bottles destroyed; but new wine is to be put in new (kianos) wineskins. (AMP)

Come on, now you have to be getting excited.  The “new” wine or fresh understanding, the revelation has to go into a new kind of container.  That is us.  If we tried to mix law, law paradigms, law performance, self-effort, carrots and stick with this new covenant understanding the wineskin (us) will burst.  We can’t contain the new understanding.  We need a new bottle.  We need to be made NEW.

Paul says the same thing in Galatians.

Gal 6:15 It doesn’t matter whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation.

Adam was not a “new creation.”  Adam had no capacity to be joined with eternal life so he was dead.  Apart from eternal life we are dead.  In Christ we are joined to the source of eternal life.  This same eternal life, this love-resourced life force is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.  This is the same life force that gives life to our mortal bodies.  We are truly a new kind of creation, something that has never been seen.  When we are born again, when we ask God to join with us in Christ and receive His Holy Spirit we are forever changed.  We are finally in the state He always intended. 

Why all the history?  Why the law?  Why the nation of Israel?  What was the purpose of all this and that?  To bring us to the end of ourselves.  To prepare us to receive Him.  To reconcile and redeem our nature to receive Him.  To be joined with Him for all eternity.  To receive eternal life, Jesus Himself.  This is the beauty of the new kind of covenant.  Under the old covenant there was stuff man was accountable for and stuff God would promise if man lived up to his side of the agreement.  It was about us earning His approval.  We never could.  We were never intended to.  Man was intended to be joined with God.  Man was intended to be His holy dwelling.  Man was intended to be His children.  When we are apart from Him we are dead.  When we are apart from Him we are in bondage.  When we are apart from Him we are lost.  In Him we are one with Him.  He supplies everything beginning with our very life.  His life is our life.  Apart from that is sin and death.  In His life is righteousness peace and joy.  In Him is the Kingdom.  In Him we live from the Kingdom.  It is a union.  It is something NEW. 

The old doesn’t work in the new.  It can’t be mixed.  My effort suggests my independence.  My independence is failure to abide in the life He has given me.  My independence is an affront to God.  My independence is an abomination to His new creation truth.  My purpose, my work, my goal, my effort is to surrender to this truth…Christ in me which is beyond understanding, which is the ultimate expression of love, which is Godly defined hope, which is manifest glory, it is His goodness in me and through me and around me.  It is the manifestation of God’s love for His children.  How dare we contaminate that perfect pure plan with my independent, self-serving, self-righteous, law-keeping poison. 

God is that good.  We just need to accept it.  Let’s get joined to Him.  Let’s ask Him to come in and dominate our lives with His pure goodness, beauty and love.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  It isn’t more NEW than that.  No wonder religion hates it.  Let us be NEW.  Let us be different.  Let us be set apart.  Let us be HIS CHILDREN.  I can think of no better NEW creation than us joined with Him.

Yay God!!

Lance