Christ, The Creator of the New Humanity

By Warren Litzman

The Christ-life is the normal Christian life planned by our heavenly Father before the foundation of the earth was laid. It was His plan that the created human being would not and could not be a completed creation until he was joined to Christ in its spirit. Thus, the ultimate plan of God was for a union to take place; Christ’s Spirit would be joined to the human spirit, and this would create a whole new race of people. This would actually complete the Father’s plan for humans (Col. 2:10).

The Father went to extraneous means to accomplish this. In the Old Testament, we have at least five different ways God would deal with humanity. These are time periods we call dispensations. He gave a different gospel to each of these time periods. His objective in this was to see if humans could obey Him and, most of all, fall in love with Him. In every dispensation, humans failed Him. In every case, with few exceptions, people failed. The Father gave them all He could. They had unbelievable miracles; they were provided for in every way; promises and covenants were made again and again by the Father, and still they failed.

The Father’s objective in all of this was to see if humans, living on the bountiful earth, left on their own, would live for Him and love Him. This seems to be a test the Father put to Himself. He would give humanity every chance to prove their fidelity to Him. Why would a God that could do anything He wanted—even create a human that could do nothing but love Him—go to such ends to prove a point? The answer is obvious. God is love, and He will be loved by creatures, whatever the cost to Himself; but He will never force the human to love Him. To do so would be contrary to His kind of love.
From the earliest part of the Bible, we begin to get the message that the creation of Adam and Eve and their succeeding family of humans would not and could not be the final form of humanity (Gen. 3:15). From this point on in the Scriptures, we see this truth expanding. We see what will be hundreds of Scriptures pointing to a new and greater humanity than that which came from Adam and Eve, a humanity greater than any that is to be found in any of the past dispensations, a humanity that passes the original “God test.” Since humanity cannot pass the test of obedience and love within themselves, the Father will bring about a new creation.

But because God is love, He will give humanity another and final chance to please Him. He will do the hardest and most heart-rending thing He has ever done. He will send a part of Himself, God the Son, to earth and perhaps people will listen to Him. As the last attempt to get humans to love and obey Him, God sent His Son to Israel. This was the first specific group of people God dealt with. You would think that if God narrowed down to one nation His people to be dealt with, ignoring all others, specifically ignoring the Gentiles, He could get what He wanted. But shame upon shame, Christ came to His own, and His own received Him not. In fact, they had a hand in killing Him.

But our Father was not without hope. He would have people of His own, and they would love and obey Him. The death of His Son did two things for the Father to have a humanity of His own. One: there had to be cleansing of sin for the past, present and future humans. This was accomplished through the blood that was shed from Christ’s body while He hung on the cross.

Two: when Jesus died, the Father fixed it so that all the necessary victories Christ’s death would provide would also be the victories of every human that believed their salvation was in the death of Christ. The Father would place every human in Christ’s body so that when Christ died, they died; when Christ was buried, they were buried; when Christ was resurrected, they were resurrected with Him, and when He ascended on high, they ascended. This time no chance was taken by the Father to get what He wanted out of humans. By the death of Christ on the cross and by placing humanity in Christ, the Father could now work toward the creation of a new human race.

The most intricate part of the plan would be putting a part of Himself in this new creation for him to operate properly. To do this, He took nothing from Adam’s race. What He would do is reach back before the world and Adam were created (Eph. 1:4) and put into operation His plan of humans being “in Christ.” This would be the most intricate part, how to get Christ in humans and humans in Christ. Ah!! He would take an existing human and rebirth them.

He would rebirth them in their spirit, using their same old souls and bodies. This would not be difficult for Him to do; He is God, but it would be highly difficult for anybody to believe He would do it. He had Jesus of Nazareth to be the first to announce this awesome idea when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus (John 3:1–8). But even though Nicodemus was the religious leader of the day, he never understood what Jesus was talking about.

So, what would the Father do? If the leading scholar of that time could not conceive a rebirthing of humans, should the Father wait any longer? No, He would go ahead and put the Christ-life in every believer, whether or not they wanted it or even understood it. This would be His ultimate manifestation of grace. This happened on the Day of Pentecost, recorded in Acts chapter 2. 120 established believers plus 5,000 new ones were saved; not a one of them knew or realized that they were put in Christ and that Christ was birthed in them. They were born again and did not know it. The new humanity now existed, and they did not know about it. They could have known something about it had they remembered some of the last word Jesus spoke (John 14:20), but no, they did not know, and it would be another thirteen years before the Father would raise up a preacher to tell them all about it.