We think of new things as having little if any history, but the Bible tells us the new-hearted new man has a full history that goes back in time many centuries. The history of the new man is of importance to us because, as a new man or member of the new humanity, we have a new spiritual history—past, present, and future.

The beloved old hymn asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” As a Christian, you were there all right—not as an observer, of course, but as a participant of sorts. You became a participant through spiritual baptism into Christ’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection that took place 2,000 years ago.

Paul writes: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20). But how could this be? Did Paul mean he was physically nailed to a cross next to Jesus? Not exactly. Yet, spiritually, the old-man Paul was crucified with Christ and the new-man Paul was resurrected with Him.

Figure 7-2: The history of your "old self":

The inherited history of a transplanted biological heart
In the introduction to this book, I told the story of Bob Morris and his successful heart transplant operation. Now, I’ll tell the rest of the story.

A part of Bob—his new biological heart—experienced everything the heart’s donor experienced.

Bob’s old heart had a history that began with his birth on September 3, 1953, in Idaho. He grew up in the mountains, spending as much time as he could hunting, fishing, and skiing. He dropped out of high school and went to work in housing construction. He was married a few years later, and became the father of four children. His heart became critically weakened due to a congenital condition. Finally, on May 9, 1997, he underwent heart transplant surgery. The history of Bob’s old heart had begun with his birth (conception, actually), and ended when it was removed during heart transplant surgery.

Bob’s new heart had a very different history. It was in its original “owner” when he was born on June 6, 1948, in Ohio. The donor had been a college football player at a state university, where he went on to earn a Ph.D. in English. He was married and the father of two children. He enjoyed a career as a photo journalist, and his work took him to many exotic places around the world. Then, he was killed in a tragic auto accident. He was an organ donor, and his uninjured heart proved to be a good match for transplant into Bob Morris.

The inherited history of the new man
A part of Bob—his new heart—had the same history as the heart’s donor. In a similar way, when God made you a new man in Christ, He gave you a new-man spiritual heart in the likeness of Christ. In this way, your new self took on the spiritual history of the new man. Everything that happened to the new man happened to you. Figure 7-3 depicts your new self’s new history.

Figure 7-3: The history of the "new man" is the Christian's new history:

Here is how you became a new man in Christ: You were chosen by Christ, and then received Him, by faith, as Lord and Savior. You were “born again”! At the instant you were chosen by Jesus, He saved you from your sins, redeemed, justified, sanctified, and reconciled to God. Most Christians are taught those biblical realities. But few understand that all of this was accompanied by a new spiritual heart. Perhaps you, as you read in this book what the Bible says about your re-birth as a new creation, are just now having your eyes opened to this wonderful, miraculous truth.

Your personhood, through spiritual baptism, was placed into Christ’s death and resurrection. It was crucified in that it was taken out of Adam, and resurrected in that it was placed in Christ. At the same instant, God removed your fleshly old heart (spirit, natural life, and soul), which you had inherited from Adam, and gave you a new spirit and a new soul. He placed His Spirit and the eternal life of Christ in your new spirit-part. The Holy Spirit placed you into Christ through spiritual baptism (not water baptism, which is a symbolic ritual of spiritual baptism).

You are a new man with a new spiritual history. Your old self was an old man whose history as a species began in the Garden of Eden and ended when you became a Christian. Had your old spiritual self continued to live on, your destiny was to spend time everlasting in hell. You became a new man at the time of your salvation, and the new man’s spiritual history became your new spiritual history. In this way you were crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ.

Paul writes that all of us believers were spiritually baptized into Christ and therefore into the history of the new man in Christ:

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self [being an old man] was crucified with Him, that our body of sin [the flesh, old human nature, old humanity] might be done away with.... Now if [since] we have died with Christ, we believe that we [as new creatures] shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him (Romans 6:3-9).

You were resurrected with Christ into newness of life (Romans 6:5, 8, 10, 11), spiritually detached from the world “and seated with Him in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6).

Now, let’s look again at Galatians 2:20, this time with my bracketed amplification. Just as Paul proclaimed this truth about himself, you, as a new man in Christ, can say the same about yourself: “I [as an old man] have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I [old self] who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I [as a new man] now live in the flesh [mortal body] I [as a new creature] live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

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