The New Creation (Part 2): Derek Prince Sermon (Transcript)

Full text of Derek Prince’s sermon titled ‘The New Creation (Part 2)’

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TRANSCRIPT:

Derek Prince – Bible Teacher

In our previous session, I spoke about the new creation, its totality, its completeness, that it affects every area of a human personality: spirit, soul, and body.

The spirit that was dead in sin is brought back to life in God. The soul that was in rebellion is reconciled and brought into submission and obedience, and the body becomes a temple for the Spirit of God to dwell in. And the Spirit of God can impart sufficient life to keep us strong and active and healthy until our life task is completed.

Now, out of the truth of the new creation, we’re going to go on to study two persons that relate to this new creation: two of the most important persons in the New Testament, and yet neither of them is ever given a name. They are simply known as the old man and the new man, or the old person and the new person.

And as I say, although they are not named, they are extremely important. And really, we cannot receive all that God has for us in the Christian life until we understand the nature of the old and the new man and God’s plan for dealing with both.

And my experience as one who travels very widely and ministers to Christians from many different backgrounds in different nations, many Christians really don’t have a clear picture of the nature of the old man and the nature of the new.

THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW (EPH. 4:17–24)

So let’s turn first of all to Ephesians chapter 4, and we’ll read verses 17 through 24.

Ephesians 4:17-24: “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding being darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”

That’s a picture of man in rebellion, cut off from God, going his own way, plunging into deeper and deeper darkness. But Paul says, if we have come to know Jesus, that’s not the course that our life is going to take.

And he says: “But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you’ve heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:”

And Paul is writing to people whom he believes to be Christians, but he says, it may be that some of you have never really grasped this important truth; you’ve never been taught. And as I said, my experience is that there are multitudes of Christians who have come to the Lord, been born again, and yet have never really been taught the truth that Paul presents in the next few verses. So let’s read those verses, keeping this in mind, asking ourselves, have I appreciated this? Have I apprehended this? Is this at work in my life?

Now this is as the truth as is in Jesus. Now, verses 22, 23 and 24: “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man, which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness.”

Paul there talks about the two men: the old man, the new. They are completely opposite to one another. The old man, he says, is growing corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. The actual, the Greek says the lusts of deceit.