Q. “A. L. O. C.” Will you kindly give a little help as to the Old Testament saints. We know they had life, and were saved as we are through faith; but had they the new birth, or new creation, in which the Holy Spirit dwells! Had they it without an inhabitant? What was their spiritual condition? To what things did our Lord refer in John 3, “Art thou a Master in Israel and knowest not these things?” How could Nicodemus know anything about the new birth? Was it the “new heart” and “new Spirit” of Ezek. 18:31?
A. The saints in the Old Testament days were born again. This is a positive necessity for any soul in order to “see” or “enter into” the kingdom of God. Whatever truth God had revealed, and was pleased to use and apply by the Holy Spirit to the conscience, when received by faith, produced a new birth in the soul. The new creation is quite a different thing. Man had not only corrupted his nature, and needed to be born anew, but he had been driven out from God, and thus had lost his place. The new creation is a new place, or order of things with God, into which Christ has entered as Man, dead and risen. We belong to it now because of redemption, and as possessing eternal life in Christ; but we are still connected with the old, and there are certain things of the old creation owned of God in which we have to walk, while morally we belong to the new order of things before God. Human relationships and the like, are the things to which I refer. They are of the old creation.
You do not express a scriptural thought in your phrase, “In which the Holy Ghost dwells.” He dwells in “your body” as a temple individually (1 Cor. 6:19), and also in the House of God as a Temple collectively; “know ye not that ye (plural) are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (1 Cor. 3:16). Hence “Had they it without an inhabitant?” has no force, if you mean that the Holy Spirit inhabits the new creation.
No doubt all the Old Testament saints were born again, and the life they received was eternal, though it was not definitely revealed under that name, until it was first displayed in the Son of God, a Man on earth. They were also morally of the new creation, although the time had not yet come to bring it to light. God was still dealing with and testing man on the earth. Eternal life is the Christian term for what we possess in Christ, for in it we are brought into fellowship with the Father and the Son, and thus have a nature suited to heaven.
The Old Testament saints trusted in God as known in grace. Their sins were passed over “through the forbearance of God,” in view of what the cross would accomplish (Rom. 3:25). In it God was proved righteous in His forbearance with them. Consequently sin was imperfectly known to them, and their consciences were unpurged, while our consciences are purged now by Christ’s blood (Heb. 10:2), which fits us to stand in the light of God’s presence. The tastes and desires of the new man in its aspirations after God and good were there; the conscience of the old man was there unpurged, but the distinction between the natures was not made known; they were looked upon and treated as concrete men, so to say. In conscience many go no further now, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit characterizing the Christian state, is indeed known to few.
Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, ought to have known that a new birth — “a new heart and new spirit,” was needed to partake of even the earthly blessings of the kingdom. The passage in Ezek. 18:31 bears on it; so does Ezek. 36:24-31, still more directly. In the latter they would have this new heart and spirit when gathered from the heathen, into the land of their forefathers, there to enjoy their “earthly things.” How much more fully needed to enjoy the “heavenly things” the Lord had now come to reveal.
The Christian has “spirit, soul, and body,” as a sinful man; self-will and “flesh” setting him against God. A new nature has been imparted from God Himself; it has not removed the old, or improved it. The same man, “spirit, soul, and body,” is now the property of another. A nature has been given suited to God, and to enjoy Him in light. The conscience is purged by the blood, on the ground of which he has been born of God. The Holy Spirit dwells in his body, and the same man, not now “his own,” but “bought with a price,” has to glorify God with his body, and hold it as the vessel, whether of the mind and character, or affections now wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, leading him to live by an object outside himself — even Christ. Thus the Apostle desires that “spirit, soul, and body” may be kept blameless till the day of Christ, when complete assimilation to Christ, even of his body, will take place. He has to walk as dead to the world, dead to sin, dead to the law; dead and risen with Christ. Morally of that new place into which Christ has entered as dead and risen, while still connected with the old creation, and in obedience recognizing what is of God in it; yet remembering that sin has come in and marred it all.
Words of Truth 5:176-180.