New Nature & New Birth Revisited: A recent exchange of text messages with a good friend was prompted by his disagreement with a post I had written titled: “Two Natures.” In that article, I attempted to show from the Scriptures why I do not believe that believers are composed of two distinct and separate natures, commonly described as flesh and spirit, or the old man and the new man. He had supposedly read it carefully, and our exchange made it clear that he did not share those conclusions.
After reading a few of his responses, which contained nothing I had not heard before, I asked him a simple question: Where did this “new nature” you believe you received actually come from? We often speak of the old man, but what of the new man? When was he formed? When was he brought into being? The answer came quickly and without hesitation: at the new birth.
As I thought about that answer for a moment, it occurred to me that it really is the obvious one, and, in a sense, the only one. He is not wrong at that level. If there truly is a “new nature” that had no prior existence until some moment in time, what many call regeneration, then there is nowhere else for it to come from. Given the assumption of two natures, the new birth is the only place such a nature could be said to originate. In that sense, the answer feels inevitable, even self-evident. Where else would such a “new nature” come from, if not there? According to this view, the new birth marks the point at which a new, holy nature, sometimes called the divine nature, is created by God and added to the believer, while the old Adamic nature remains, so that both now exist together within the same person.
Within much of evangelical theology, and especially within reformed thought, this is the framework by which two-natures language is usually explained. The “old man” refers to the Adamic nature, the flesh, the indwelling principle of sin inherited from Adam. The “new man,” by contrast, is understood as a newly created, holy, and righteous nature brought into existence by God at the new birth. These are not merely two ways of speaking about the same person, but two distinct principles or natures believed to coexist within the believer, one earthly and corrupt, the other spiritual and pure, standing in continual opposition to one another.
When believers argue for the existence of two natures, they tend to return again and again to a familiar group of Scriptures. They point to the believer as a “new creature,” appeal to Paul’s language of putting on the “new man,” and reference being born of God or becoming a partaker of the divine nature. These passages are commonly understood to teach that God creates a new inward nature at the new birth which then exists alongside the old, providing the framework by which the Christian life is explained. The question, however, is not the truth or authority of these texts, but whether they are being asked to support a framework they were never intended to establish.
Many who speak of the new birth understand it as the moment when a new nature is created within the believer, set alongside the old. The struggle of the Christian life is then explained as a conflict between these two natures. But Scripture does not speak of life this way. It speaks instead of life as something found in Christ, given by God, and made known in time, not as a newly generated inner substance competing with what was already there, but as participation in a life that exists wholly outside of us in the Son. “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” I John 5:11.
When the new nature is said to originate at the new birth and is identified as that which is righteous, pleasing to God, and responsible for overcoming sin, a certain way of thinking begins to take shape. No true believer denies that Christ’s finished work is the only ground of salvation, yet righteousness can slowly come to be viewed as something partly located within us. Assurance then becomes tied to how strongly the “new nature” appears to be operating, and the Christian life is evaluated increasingly by inward experience. This is rarely the intention, but it is the direction such reasoning tends to move.
Over the years, I’ve heard countless believers speak confidently about this “new man,” and more than once I’ve found myself asking if I somehow missed him. If the way the new man is sometimes described is taken at face value, one might expect a noticeable and unmistakable internal transformation, and my own experience has often felt far less impressive by comparison. And yet, what has taken place has been anything but small. Where there was once only death, life and light broke in, light that didn’t merely add to what I knew, but dismantled it altogether, and in its place arose a real and abiding inclination toward the Lord. But as for some inward transformation that automatically overcomes evil from the inside out, I can’t say that’s been my experience; mine has been far more humbling than that.
What needs to be clarified is not whether the language of “old man” and “new man” exists in Scripture, but how that language is meant to be understood. Are these expressions meant to describe two inner substances coexisting within the same individual, locked in perpetual struggle, or are they ways of speaking about two distinct standings, two realms of life, two identities, one in Adam and one in Christ? Scripture consistently locates life, righteousness, and holiness not in an inwardly generated principle, but in a Person. I Corinthians 1:30. The contrast, therefore, is not between competing natures within the same person, but between two ways of standing before God: death in Adam and life in Christ. Romans 5:18. It is the manifestation of the difference between who we were in Adam and who we have always been in Christ, now brought to light. In other words, it is the revelation in time of a standing eternally fixed in Christ. II Timothy 1:9.
Once the issue is framed in terms of location and union rather than an inner division within the believer, much of the confusion introduced by a two-natures model begins to dissolve. Scripture does not present the believer as a divided self, part righteous and part corrupt, struggling to determine which side will prevail. It presents the believer as one who has been transferred from one realm to another, from Adam to Christ, from death to life. “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.” Colossians 1:13.
It should be said plainly that this is not a denial of the reality or necessity of the new birth. God truly gives life, and that life brings real change, and the transformation that follows is real. The world does not look the same, truth does not sound the same, and Christ is no longer distant or abstract. The transformation is undeniable. II Corinthians 5:17. And when Scripture speaks of that change, it does so in a particular way.
Scripture speaks of the new birth in the language of life and light, of hearing, believing, and knowing. I John 1:1-4. Life is given from above, light breaks in, ears are opened, and the truth is received. John says that those born of God “hear” His voice, John 10:27, “believe” the testimony, I John 5:1, and “know” God, I John 4:7. Paul speaks both of God shining in our hearts to reveal His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, II Corinthians 4:6, and of our having received the Spirit so that we might know the things freely given to us by God. I Corinthians 2:12. These texts describe illumination, reception, and participation, not the installation of a sin-proof nature.
It should not surprise us, then, if in trying to define the new birth too precisely, we soon find ourselves out of our depth. Our Lord Himself compares it to the wind, real, powerful, unmistakable in its effects, yet beyond our ability to trace or contain. Even natural life remains a mystery to us, though we live and breathe it every day. How much more the life that comes from above. John 3:8.
Perhaps the best way to summarize all of this is simply to say that the new birth does not give us a new nature to explain away sin, but a new life that turns us away from ourselves. It loosens our grip on ourselves and, in ways we cannot fully explain, fixes our gaze upon Christ, so that we find ourselves continually looking to Him. Hebrews 12:2. MPJ