Theology

God’s Six Stages for Creating the New Nature

by J.W. Phillips
06/02/25
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God’s Six Stages for Creating the New Nature

Scripture tells us that our new man, our new nature, was created (Ephesians 4:24). It didn’t evolve, and it wasn’t installed.

But do you know how it was created? Was it created in a day? In a moment? In one stage? In multiple stages?

David cried, “Create in me a new heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10). So even back then, hundreds of years before Bethlehem, man knew what God knew: that there were going to be many more innings of sinning so long as the old heart remained.

Why, then, didn’t God simply speak the word, give the zap, and put this new heart within his people?

The reason he didn’t was because he couldn’t—this new heart wasn’t in existence yet; nor could it come into being by divine decree. While God could achieve the first creation by standing on the portals of heaven and letting loose his booming voice commands, he could never accomplish the “new creation” that way.

Think about it: The only heart that could live above sin was God’s heart. But God couldn’t just put his heart inside us, simply because he was of one order and realm and we were of another. So the only way God could give us this new heart was if somehow he entered our order—which is exactly what he did at Bethlehem.

This was stage one in a six-stage process that explains how our new nature was created.

Stage One: Bethlehem
Years ago J.B. Phillips wrote a book entitled When God Became Man. One day, while cleaning the office of a pastor, an employee saw this book on the shelf and, instantly shocked, she ran out of the office to ask the pastor, “Is this true?” Her face, flushed in excitement, communicated the enthusiasm of her words. She was determined to know if the title of this book was accurate!

For most people, such awesome truth hardly captures their imagination. They may watch Christmas plays, attend nativity scenes, sing the carols of the season—and never once be stunned or astonished by what is being celebrated.

Can you fathom it? The high and holy God whose eyes are too pure to even look upon sin, becoming what he had created—man! This is simply amazing! Much more amazing than a professor becoming a petunia, or a king becoming a worm!

A.B. Simpson once observed:

If a king should stoop to become a worm it would still be one creature becoming another, a lower gradation of the same class of being. But when Christ became a man and took upon him the form of a created being, he stepped out of his class completely and plunged to a depth of condescension which is absolutely without any standard of comparison.¹

Yet, this is precisely what had to happen first if man was going to get what he so desperately needed, a new heart.

It is in the Gospel of John that we read these words about Jesus, “He came unto his own.…” Commenting on this verse, Tozer writes:

All the pity God is capable of feeling, all the mercy he is capable of showing and all the redeeming grace he could pour out of his heart are at least suggested here in two simple words, ‘He came.’²

When contemplating the far-reaching implications of these words, Tozer offered this uplifting conclusion: “Gather together in one place all the great philosophy of every culture from the beginning of time, and none of it remotely approaches the wonder and profundity of these words, ‘He came.'³

Stage Two: The World
The second thing that had to happen was that Jesus had to be fully tested, a fact that the book of Hebrews expounds. Jesus couldn’t just descend upon a mountaintop one weekend and then airlift to glory. He had to enter fully into the human experience, which means he had to become a baby.

And then, as his life, like ours, took on new dimensions, new responsibilities, and new challenges, he had to respond to each dimension, responsibility, and challenge without compromise.

The necessity of this criterion was attributable to the fact that if men were ever going to get a perfect heart, that heart had to undergo first the most stringent tests. Consequently, just one sin, however slight and seemingly insignificant, would have brought this whole redemption project into terminal failure.

The wilderness temptations take on added drama when seen in this context. Our very salvation was at stake! Had Jesus not prevailed throughout this excruciating ordeal, he would not have qualified as the unblemished lamb.

As you read the gospel accounts of the serial opposition to Jesus, just remember one wrong response from him would have stopped our salvation. It wouldn’t matter how cruel they were and how tired he was. One lapse of judgment, one slippage into sin, would have meant eternal failure.

If you understand that, you won’t just read merrily along. You’ll intensely appreciate what was at stake, day after day, and love Jesus for living the life that would become your life.

Stage Three: The Cross
Jesus had to die, the reason for this being: He had identified himself with the human race, and by the will of the Father found himself facing the curse of sin that had been brought upon the whole human race—death. This curse of death, obviously, had to be removed, if the new heart was to have its intended future.

In order to remove the curse, the requirement was a perfect sacrifice—to use the symbolism of the Old Testament, an unblemished lamb. Anything less than that would have meant dying a victim’s death or, better still, a hero’s death, or maybe even a martyr’s death, but not a Savior’s death. Since Jesus was tempted in every respect but never sinned, he alone qualified to die a death that would satisfy God’s justice.

Do understand that God could never sweep sin under the rug and let bygones be bygones. This is because his justice—far from being trivial or excessively compulsive—was the very foundation upon which his own character rested. When analyzed more fully, this justice can be seen as that which preserves the safety and sanctity of Heaven.

Stage Four: The Resurrection
Jesus had to be raised from the dead. After all, if death were to have the final word, how would we ever get that new heart?

It is certainly significant that Revelation 1:5 says that Jesus was “the first born from the dead.”

But doesn’t this raise the question: How could Jesus be the first born from the dead? Wasn’t Lazarus raised from the dead just a couple of weeks before? And weren’t there many others raised from the dead when, just days later, that earthquake opened all those graves? Moreover, didn’t Jesus himself raise people from the dead while ministering in Israel? And, even as far back as the Old Testament, didn’t Elijah raise that little boy from the dead?

Some have tried to explain this verse by pointing out that Jesus wasn’t the “first born” in the sense of sequence or chronology; he was the “first born” in the sense of supremacy and priority of purpose. Which is true, but it doesn’t go far enough.

Actually, Jesus was the “first born” in the sense that he inaugurated a humanity that never existed before—sin free, debt free, and beyond any reproaches from the devil that have merit. Quite literally, Jesus was “born again.” Andrew Murray writes, “Jesus was born twice. The first time he was born in Bethlehem … But the second time he was born from the grave.”⁴

Consequently, this does stand in sharp contrast to Lazarus and all those others who came back from the dead. Because when they came back, they came back just as they had been before. However, when Jesus came back, he came back as the originator of a new heart, the superior successor to Adam, the confirmed head of a new race. In the words of Francis Schaeffer, Jesus was “the second founder of the human race.”⁵

Theology and psychology haven’t duly considered this remarkable fact, the implications of which are far-reaching. In his book, Making All Things New, Oswald Chambers stated what really happened at the resurrection:

Our Lord rose to an absolutely new life, to a life he did not live before he was incarnate; he rose to a life that had never been before. There had been resurrections before the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but they were all resuscitations to the same life that had been lived heretofore. Jesus rose to a totally new life.…⁶

In his book, A Man in Christ, James S. Stewart wrote, “When Jesus rose, the new age broke in. A new humanity came into being. A new moral and spiritual order was established.”⁷

Likewise, C.S. Lewis observed:

The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe … This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has been opened.⁸

Yet, additional steps were required before this new heart could become ours.

Stage Five: The Father’s Approval
The next step involved Jesus appearing before the Father. John 7:39 says “... for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Since Jesus had lived his entire earthly life submissive to the Father and totally dependent upon the Father, he of necessity but with gladness of heart would need to present this new heart for the Father’s approval.

Then—once the Father approved it, credentialed it, and glorified it—something else of great significance happened: The Holy Spirit entered into that new life.

Do you remember how God had told the prophets that he would give man a new heart and a new spirit? As a fulfillment of that pledge, the Holy Spirit cocooned his presence inside that new heart that Jesus had fashioned. This is why Paul speaks of “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2).

Stage Six: The Spirit’s Hosting
This is the essence of our new nature: The Holy Spirit indwelling a life that was miraculously created at Bethlehem, fully tested during those thirty-three years, offered as a saving sacrifice, born again in resurrection triumph, approved by the Father in Glory and hosted by the Holy Spirit.

Thus, as early as the second century we find the Church Father Irenaeus declaring, “Jesus Christ our Lord who, because of his immeasurable love, became what we are in order to make us what he is.”⁹

In his book, Love Abounding, G.D. Watson wrote:

Every part of Jesus’ life—the various traits of his life, the various instincts of that life, the various longings of that life—is implanted in the life that is born again, that is regenerated by the Holy Ghost.¹⁰

Yet for most Christians this life is more dormant than dominating, more latent than liberating.

There is one reason for this. The filling of the Spirit hasn’t been experienced! Why not? Largely because pastors don’t understand it, have never experienced it themselves, and don’t say what the Bible says about this experience (see my post, “The Filling of the Spirit—The Messaging Has Been a Mess”).

Tragically, the doctrine of the new nature has received, at best, scant attention from the pulpit. Despite its centrality to the gospel, people can sit in churches for years and never hear a teaching on the new nature. A brief mention is all they’ll get.

Notes:

1. A.B. Simpson, The Christ in the Bible Commentary, Volume Five, (Camp Hill, PA., WingSpread Publishers, 2009), p.40.
2 A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us, (Ventura, CA. Regal, 2009), p.62.
3. Ibid., p.63.
4. Andrew Murray, The Believer’s Secret of the Masters Indwelling, (Minneapolis, Minnesota, Beth-any House Publishers, 1977), p.89.
5. Francis Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time, (Glendale, CA., Regal Press, 1972), p.113.
6. Oswald Chambers, Making All Things New, (Grand Rapids, Discovery House Publishers, 1991), p.195.
7. James S. Stewart, A Man in Christ, (Vancouver, Regent College Publishing, 2002), pp.314, 315.
8. C.S. Lewis, Miracles, (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1947), pp.236-237.
9. Bradley G. Green, ed., Shapers of Christian Orthodoxy, (Downers Grove, Illinois, IVP Academic, 2010), p.57.
10. George D. Watson, Love Abounding, (Cincinnati, Ohio, God’s Revivalist Press, n.d.), p.208.