Michele: 0:00

Hey friends, welcome back to New Creation Meditations. I'm your host, Michele Kus, and I wanna give a quick shout out to my youngest listener. Shout out to Edie, who's age five, and she said something pretty amazing to her mom and her mom passed it on to me. She said we've never been taught like this and I just thought that was incredible. And it's true, Edie. Like we, most of the time aren't taught this way when we're in school or church. Those places are really good at talking to our brains and our minds, but you know, our spirit can learn too, and what I wanna do on this podcast is really speak to your spirit and have your spirit learn and come alive. So thank you so much, Edie, for reminding all of us that there's another way to learn, and it's important too. So it's taken me a little bit of time to get this episode together because I have been studying out a particular verse of scripture and the more I studied this verse, the deeper it went for me. So I never really felt ready to record this episode, and I still don't feel ready, but I'm gonna record it anyway because I wanna get something out to you. Something is better than nothing, right? So here we go.

Michele: 1:31

The verse that I wanna read to you this week comes from 2 Corinthians, chapter five, verse 17. And in the new living translation it reads this way this means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone, a new life has begun. Here it is in the English standard version. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Here it is in the new King James version. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. I'm gonna read it one more time, and this is from the Passion translation. Now, if anyone is enfolded into Christ, he has become an entirely new person. All that is related to the old order has vanished. Behold, everything is fresh and new.

Michele: 2:58

You may have figured out by now that this is the verse where I pulled out the phrase new creation and added meditations and came up with the name of my podcast, and I think it is extremely important for us to understand who we are in Christ, because that forms the basis of our entire walk with God, and so I want to unpack this verse just a little bit today. It goes miles deep, but I wanna give you just a little bit of a taste. So let's look at this very first phrase where it says now, if anyone is enfolded into Christ, if you've ever made a loaf of bread, you know that you have this lump of dough in front of you and you have to knead it and work it, and sometimes you need to sprinkle a little flour on there and fold it in, right. But the thing is, once you've sprinkled that flour and folded it in, it becomes part of the dough and you're never gonna be able to separate that flour out of the dough ever again. That flour has become enfolded into the bread dough and that, my friends, is exactly what happens when we come to Christ. We are enfolded into Him, we become one with Him and he becomes one with us and we become something entirely new. And just like you can never dig into that dough and separate out that flour ever again, we cannot be separated from the life of Jesus that is flowing in and through us ever again, and that is good news. Behold, everything is fresh and new. So let's talk about that word new.

Michele: 5:11

So in the Greek there are two words used in the New Testament for the word new, two different words. The first word is the word neos, N-E-O-S. And this new is a new with regard to time. So let's say that you have a pair of sneakers, and let's say they're Air Jordan one basketball sneakers, and you wear them every day and you wear them all the time, and you wear them constantly until they're completely worn out. So you go online and you find the exact same pair of Air Jordan one basketball sneakers, same color. You order those, they're delivered to your doorstep and they're brand new. This is neos. New it's the same kind of thing, the same quality, the same everything, but they're new in regards to time. So the old ones are old and worn out. The new ones are exactly the same, but they're brand new. That's neos. That is not the word that Paul uses in this phrase, "e is a new creation.

Michele: 6:31

The word that Paul uses in this verse, when he says if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, is the word kainos, k-a-i-n-o-s. He is a kainos creation. So what does kainos mean? So kainos refers to a newness that is qualitatively different than the thing that came before it. So it's not just something that replaces the old, like the new sneakers that replace the old sneakers, or You 2. 0, but it's actually something that has undergone a fundamental transformation. So neos new is like a replacement new, but a kainos new is like nothing we've ever seen before. It's like something unprecedented. It's like you have new DNA, almost as if you're a new species. That's what the word kainos means.

Michele: 7:47

Kainos new is new as to form, is new in quality. It's of a different nature. When you were enfolded into Christ, you were given a new nature. Behold, everything is fresh and new. All that is related to the old order has vanished. All that is related to the old order has passed away. It's dead. All that is related to the old you has died. The pre-Jesus you is deceased. In fact, the pre-Jesus you has been made extinct. And the you that is now enfolded into Christ, the you that is one with Him, is fresh and new and is something the world has never seen before. It's you unprecedented. It is not the new and improved you, it is not the You 2.0. It is the you with God's DNA.

Michele: 9:25

So let's do a quick meditation. If you can close your eyes, go ahead and do that, and I'd like you to just relax for a moment. You take a deep breath in and let it out. And take one more deep breath in and let it out and just become aware right now, of the presence of heaven all around you. My friend Ian always says the problem is not proximity, it's our awareness.

Michele: 10:13

So just become aware of the presence of heaven all around you, because all of heaven agrees with this statement of who you are, and so we want to agree with heaven, with what heaven says about us. So go ahead and put your hand on your heart and I want you to say I am a kainos creation. I am a kainos creation. I have been enfolded into Christ. I have been enfolded into Christ. Everything about me is fresh and new. Everything about me is fresh and new. Friends, this is your new declaration in Christ. You have full permission from heaven to declare yourself fresh and new, a kainos creation. The old has entirely passed away. The old is entirely extinct. If you ever forget, I want you to come back to this meditation and listen to it again and again, as many times as you need to, until you have it deep in your spirit that you are a kainos creation.