Christian Living

Benefits of the New Nature—Inspiring Image

by J.W. Phillips
06/05/25
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Benefits of the New Nature—Inspiring Image

One important benefit of the new nature is the new self-image it provides. Josh McDowell says that “persons with a poor sense of self-worth ... struggle with the tension of trying to be acceptable while believing they are not.”¹ Jessie Penn-Lewis said this effort isn’t helped when the Accuser “pours on you morning, noon, and night ....”²

All these condemning conclusions, whatever their basis in fact, only serve to drive another nail into the coffin of self-respect.

Actually, such performance-based respect is bound to end in accusation. This point, with heightened drama, was surely taught at Sinai when it belched its fury, thundering the message of guilt to anyone, anywhere, who thinks one’s own goodness might be good enough.

But aren’t you glad this isn’t the end of the story?

Self-worth is essential, and properly deriving that worth is indispensable to eternal life. For this reason, then, Jesus came to earth to establish a new identity for us by giving us a new nature.³

A.W. Tozer reflected on the new nature’s relationship to our image by first asking, “Now how could it be that this eternal God who had no beginning, no creation, no origin, this mighty God—how could it be that he could assume to himself the nature he had created?”

Tozer’s answer is logical, and easily discoverable: “… because human nature was made in the image of God, it is therefore appropriate and consistent that the divine nature could assume the human nature ….”⁴

From the very beginning God had determined that we would have his image, and that determination resulted in a divine intervention to restore the image that Satan shattered in Eden.

Concerning this restored image that lifted the child of God above every condemnation, Tozer wrote:

Nothing in heaven is higher than this. All the earth scraped together and all its riches would not be as high as this. All the celestial heavens and the astronomic heavens rolled together would not be as high as this. Not all those strange and mysterious beauties we read about in heaven and see by the eye of faith—not all these things together would be as much as this: Christ in you, the hope of glory.⁵

It would be good if the story ended with the restoration of the image of God in man, but there’s a thug and thief on the scene today. And, as was true in the beginning, with renewed efforts he moves with concealed cunning to steal our restored identity.

Identity theft, we know, is a major problem in modern society, resulting in much loss and great frustration. But all the havoc and chaos of identity theft is even more evident in the spiritual domain. Thus, there’s a need to expose mistaken thinking, and to disclose the truth of our real identity.

The story is told of a tiger cub that somehow got lost and fell in with sheep. Quite naturally—because he lived with the sheep, grew up with the sheep, and had as his only environment these sheep—he began to think of himself as a sheep. But one day a sure enough tiger approached, giving off a roar. Alarmed by what he heard, the tiger who thought he was a sheep responded with a feeble “baah.”

Again, the larger tiger roared, this time louder than before! Once more, though, the tiger with a confused identity bleated his pitiful, strange-sounding “baahs.” When this ferocious tiger roared a third time, something within that younger tiger began to resonate. Thus, he soon returned the roar, and with each successive roar, he awakened to his true identity.

Impressively, the story ends with this once confused tiger walking over territory he formerly feared to enter.⁶

Thomas Howard asked the question, is there not a sense in which Christ the Tiger roars to us from his Word, awakening in us an identity that is higher than the one we had? Our true identity, the Bible makes clear, is not to be found in our past; it is to be found instead in our new nature.

In II Corinthians 5:16, the Apostle Paul said, “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.” Where people live, what they wear, what they look like, are inadequate criteria, because who they really are is not what we see, but what God says. And God says that they are a new creation—the precise point Paul makes in the next verse! All the perfections of the divine life, and all that satisfies God’s law, forever defines the essence of a true believer.

Who we are can never be improved and can never be diminished. Since the new nature is the Lord’s life within us, it is perfect and will always be so. Therefore, once this teaching about the new nature becomes a revelation to us, our struggle with inferiority will be over. And what will also be over is our difficulty in believing that God loves us.

Theologian Charles Hodge accurately described the problem that plagues many people.

The great difficulty with many Christians is that they cannot persuade themselves that Christ (or God) loves them; and the reason they cannot feel confident of the love of God, is, that they know that they do not deserve his love, on the contrary, that they are in the highest degree unlovely. How can an infinitely pure God love those who are defiled with sin, who are proud, selfish, discontented, ungrateful, disobedient? This, indeed, is hard to believe.⁷

The premise of this problem is erroneous, however, because, due to the new nature, a believer doesn’t have to identify with the behaviors Charles Hodge cited. Whatever sins are allowed to attach to a believer’s life represent a contradiction to the believer’s true identity and not an expression of it.

What God loves is what he gave: the new nature, the life of Jesus within. Therefore, there’s no difficulty in believing that God loves the person who has this new nature, and who in fact is this new nature. What’s not to love?

The implications the new nature has for relationships are enormous. And here’s the reason why: What we believe for ourselves we can also believe for others.

Ephesians 2:15, which talks about God making one new man, refers to the centuries-old animosity that existed between the Jews and the Gentiles. The scathing invectives that passed between these two groups would shatter anyone’s sensitivities. Such blistering, biting rebukes! Such a grab-them-by-the-throat contempt! And somehow God was going to reconcile people who acted like this?

He did so, this verse confirms, by creating “in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace.” God gave the Jew a new nature and the Gentile a new nature; and therefore what was impossible before, soon became a reality.

These former enemies, each blessed with a new nature, could now enjoy with each other a remarkably rewarding relationship. And just think: If God could do that for people like these, who at the time would have been at the top of anyone’s impossibility list, imagine what the new nature could do for believers today.

One implication of this fact is that whenever we see a Christian bogged down in the muck of sin, we don’t have to identify the muck—covered in it though he may be—with the believer.

Instead, we can be encouraged to conclude that what we see is a contradiction and not a reflection of who this believer really is.

Consequently, we should do what the Bible says love does and believe in him (I Corinthians 13:7), and then look for opportunities to articulate God’s view of this person.

This is one of the most powerful things we can do, attributable to the fact that identity precedes destiny! What we see is the way we’ll be! Therefore, to get the image right, and articulate to another in extended faith what this image is, can release that person into a new way of life.

It must be stressed, repeatedly, that the vision being articulated isn’t just mental; it’s actual—it is a reality that can be experienced!

Oswald Chambers, whose devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest, has blessed millions of people, once suffered four years of a broken intimacy with God. During this time, the Bible was a dull, uninteresting book to him.

But then one day God broke through, enabling Oswald Chambers to experience who he really was. “I was filled with the love of God,” Chambers said. “It is no wonder that I should talk about an altered disposition. God altered mine; I was there when he did it.”

For this to be our experience as well, we must become teachable before the Lord and allow him to show us what is true about the new nature he has given us.

But if we still think of ourselves as sinners, we’ll never ask God to make actual what we really don’t think exists. Moreover, if God did release our new nature within, that release would soon be shut-off by the contaminated thinking we have about ourselves. So off we would go for another season of stale worship and sterile service.

Experiencing what Oswald Chambers called “the altered disposition” produces an enormous impact on our self-image. It is regrettable that so many people, for so long a time, have languished under a spirit of self-doubting—or worse still, self-loathing!

People who have known this kind of agony find the eternal elevation of one’s self-esteem all the more special. It is one of the best benefits of the new nature.

Notes:
1. Josh McDowell, Building Your Self-Image, (Wheaton, Tyndale House Publishers, 1986), p.26.
2. Jessie Penn-Lewis, Life in the Spirit, (Parkstone, Poole. Dorset, England, n. d.), p.56.
3. While there are obvious truths embedded in the theme, knowing our true identity, this motif may mask more than it discloses. This is because the concept of identity is somewhat broad. In normal discourse identity can be discussed in terms of fingerprints, genetic code, race, gender, citizenship, career choice, a badge, a license, a credit card number, and other such criteria. Yet, one can have information about all these things and scarcely know the person at all!

When it comes to discovering who a person really is, a focus on the new nature is much more revealing than is a discussion of our identity, especially if the identity issue is mostly forensic, going no further than a discussion of imputed righteousness.

The same deficits of disclosure, by the way, are also attached to the subject, union with Christ. Somehow, this subject has attracted abstract thinking and a comparison of paradigms offered by different theological schools of thought. Meanwhile, specific and helpful information about our new nature remains almost entirely out of view.
4. A.W. Tozer, God’s Greatest Gift to Man, (Harrisburg, PA., n.d.), pp.9, 10.
5. Ibid., p.5.
6. There are reality-based counterparts to this fictitious story. In 2004 Russian authorities discovered seven year-old Andrei Tolstyk abandoned by his parents in a remote area of Siberia. For several years the boy’s only companion had been a guard dog. Incapable of speech, the little boy barked and growled when upset and bit people when provoked. He also adopted other canine characteristics, such as walking on all-fours and sniffing his food before he ate. Tolstyk was not the first boy in Russia to have been raised by dogs. In 1998, police found six year-old Ivan Myshukov near Moscow; and when discovered, Ivan functioned as the leader of a pack of dogs. Each boy thought he was a dog and acted as if he were a dog because the image reinforced by environment dictated that impression.
7. Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, (Grand Rapids, MI., Wm. B. Eerd-mans, reprint, 1955; 1986), p.290.