‘God’s new creation’ a sermon preached by Stephen Fielding at Tewin and at Ayot St Peter on 27 July 2008


Lord, what we know not teach us, and what we are not make us, in the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

This week, my mediation practice took me to Bath. It was a familiar kind of dispute. An elderly widow versus her stepdaughter in the matter of a will. The widow says that her husband, who’s left her very little in his will, should have left her more, and not only because he was exceptionally well off. She had looked after him for the last 7 years of his life when he was ill. ‘He was so difficult’, she said. ‘So bad tempered and impatient. I sometimes think’, she told me ‘that all men ought to have to give birth to babies. Then they wouldn’t make such a fuss when they’re ill!’ All of us who have been present at the birth of our children know that labour is just that – painful, often difficult, and involving a good deal of suffering.

This image of labour pains – of groaning in pain – is used by St Paul in the course of his letter to the Romans, which we heard this morning. It is part of his whole view of things. Jesus, he says, in his death and resurrection gave birth to a new creation. Out of the tomb at the resurrection God’s new creation was emerging. A new creation – the kingdom of God – was being born. And the death and resurrection of Jesus brought in a world of new possibilities. This was a world changing event. God’s new creation was breaking in, and things would never be the same again. That is the big idea for Paul.

What is the big idea for us? It is that we are part of that new creation too. Those who belong to Christ – those who are ‘in Christ’ – are a new creation. This means that you and I are part of the new world that is being reclaimed by God. And the key to it is the Holy Spirit – that spirit which is working out God’s future in the world; that spirit which is the guarantee and the pledge of what is coming in the future. And not just the pledge or the guarantee, but itself the means by which it will be achieved. The spirit, which is the key to our life in Christ, is the active agent bringing heaven to earth; it is the sphere of God’s power.


The spirit is the presence of the living God – who leads and guides us, who rebukes and encourages us, who tells us when we’ve got it wrong and tells us when we’ve got it right. The one who is remaking the creation into what it ought to be. Who gives us a down payment of God’s new world. Who shows that the future life with God forever has already begun to arrive here and now. And those who follow Jesus are given this spirit as a glimpse of what the new world will be like.

And now, you will say, what about the suffering? Doesn’t St Paul in that great chapter 8 of the letter to the Romans say a lot about suffering? He does indeed. He says it’s inescapable. He uses the image of labour pains – the whole creation groaning – and he tells of the reality of suffering. In a week that has seen the arrest of Radavan Karadzic, the world needs no reminding of suffering hideous and unspeakable today. In St Paul’s time, suffering and persecution were of course the absolutely expected fate of the Christian. This is not our expectation. But we suffer nevertheless. And God is reclaiming this world of suffering. He wants things otherwise. For one day, all creation will be rescued from corruption, sin, and injustice – the work begun in Jesus will one day be fulfilled as heaven comes to earth. Meanwhile we are to be part of that reclaiming. As St Paul says, the difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs, not only around us, but within us. The spirit of God is rousing within us. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. And the spirit is right alongside us helping us along – doing our praying in us.

What then have we been saying this morning? God’s new creation – the kingdom of heaven – has already started. The death and resurrection of Jesus gave birth to it. We are part of that new creation now through God’s life giving spirit. Suffering is part of our life – the groaning and the labour pains of God working his purpose out in us. But then finally the climax and the summary of what Paul says is this. Because we are part of God’s new creation now, we have the utter assurance that nothing – no suffering, no calamity, no pain, no wretchedness of any kind – nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the promise which the new creation brings.

AMEN