Here’s a great New Creation quote that I heard this morning in a lecture by N.T. Wright:
“There is no square inch of the cosmos, no split second of created time, which is not desired by God, claimed by God and will one day be filled by God. And God’s creation, therefore, of us in the present — the worldwide family of those who believe the gospel — is the firstfruit and sign of that future.”
This is a great reminder of our future — that what God did for Jesus at his resurrection, God will do for the entire creation. And we will be given renewed, transformed physical bodies to share in that future. Such a future dazzles my imagination. It produces such hope, such motivation, such breath-taking excitement!
And the fact that if anyone is in Christ in the present, that new creation has burst into the present creation and swept that person up into a reality and a responsibility that is awesome. It is more than we are a new creation. It is even more than we embody the new creation in human form. It is that God’s new creation surprises us, bursts upon us, and sweeps us up into God’s life and God’s story. It’s about God and his faithfulness to his creation and his faithfulness to his covenant with Israel.
It’s God who fills not only our future with incredible hope, purpose and expectation, but also our present.
Journeying Home 
‘This is a great reminder of our future — that what God did for Jesus at his resurrection, God will do for the entire creation.’
Jesus became a ‘life-giving spirit’, did he not?
Hebrews 1 says
“In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
11They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
12You will roll them up like a robe;
like a garment they will be changed.
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end
Wear out like a garment. Roll them up like a robe. Like a garment they will be changed.
As NT Wright explains in one of his books, old clothes never wear out and are never thrown away and then replaced by new clothes. The metaphor means that when garments are worn out,perish, rolled up and changed, they are patched up and mended, never replaced.
I forget the exact place where he discusses that metaphor, but it is in one of his books.
Hi Steven. Thanks for your thoughts on this. You bring up a good point regarding the resurrection. Paul does call Jesus a “life-giving Spirit” in 1 Corinthians 15:45. The way I understand it is that Paul is using Adam and Christ in order to continue the contrast between the two natures of our physical body that humans have and will have — “psyche” (soul) and “pneuma” (spirit) (1 Corinthians 15:44). Currently humans have a “psychikos” (soulish) body, a physical body animated by the soul. But at the resurrection, God will do for us what he did for Jesus. Our psychikos body will be renewed into a “pneumatikos” (spiritual) body, a physical body animated by the Spirit. Humans inherited their current body when God created Adam as a living “psyche.” This body will be transformed and renewed by Christ, who is both the first “new” human (with a pneumatikos body) and the giver of the life-giving pneuma.
I love the metaphor you bring up from Hebrews — old clothes that are worn out and needing mending, not replacement. I believe Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 15 of the psychikos and pneumatikos body is following a similar route as Hebrews 1. Paul is describing the same physical body. He is describing the renewal of our current body into the body that will allow us to dwell in the renewed heavens and earth.