Grace Defined Part One – A New Creature

He touched me,
Oh, He touched me,
And oh the joy that floods my soul.
Something happened and now I know,
He touched me and made me whole.

~ William J. Gaither ~

“For by grace you have been saved…”

(Eph 2:8a)

If I had known what was about to happen, I might have never gone in. It was a warm, sunny, Sunday morning in June of 1979 and I needed no excuse to head to the beach instead of entering this little, white, First Full Gospel Church of Christ in Garden Grove, California. However, as my buddy Mark Johnson and I walked up we could hear a band rocking out inside and it seemed as good a way to spend a Sunday morning as any.

In my almost nineteen years on this planet, very few days had been spent inside any church building, and those usually for weddings.  I hadn’t given any serious thought to God since that time I was twelve on top of that big sand dune in the middle of the Rocky Mountains and at this moment I had forgotten about that too. My folks neither encouraged nor discouraged me from religious life as a child. For them religion was a personal matter and I was free to believe whatever I wanted on the subject which resulted in my not believing much at all either way.

They did love the outdoors and sent me to many camps in the mountains including the Colorado River Ranch for Boys, which is how I ended up on that sand dune. Mr. Anderson owned the boys camp and the Hilltop Ranch for Girls about ten miles away from us and all the land in between. At the end of the 5 week camp there was a dance and there was one girl I had seen that really caught my eye. I was twelve and girls had become much more interesting than in earlier years.

A dozen of us boys with our counselors had taken a two day rock hunting trip to the Utah desert. There I had discovered that there were ants two inches long and perfectly capable of eating an entire human if they wanted to, or so we were told. I had also found a beautiful piece of dark green agate. Back at camp they had a great rock shop and I started thinking about what I could make with this agate to give to the girl I liked when we went to the dance.

In 1972 cross necklaces were cool and I decided to make her one. The cross meant nothing to me, other than it was hip at the time. So I worked on that agate every day, shaping, polishing and shaping some more. I carried it with me everywhere I went, feeling the cool smoothness of it in my pocket and lovingly creating a thing of beauty. Two weeks later a busload of us headed out to check out some of the great places to see around the state of Colorado. One of our stops was The Great Sand Dunes National Monument (below).

The Great Sand Dunes National Monument is located in a high mountain valley, flanked by some of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains and has the tallest dunes in North America. They are one mile wide, by thirty miles long and almost 1,000 feet high at their summit. There is only one thing for a group of boys to do in such a place; head for the top!

Although it was mid-summer, the skies were overcast and dark, there was a stiff breeze blowing and the temperature was cool. As we climbed to the summit our group stretched out and I found myself alone. A couple guys had gotten to the top before me and had already headed down the other side. The next group was a long ways behind me as I wound my way along a high ridge to the very top of all this sand.

The wind was blowing the sand up so that there was a mist of sand about knee deep. The sound of the wind and the sand together made me feel like I was in a dream. As I looked about at the snow capped Rocky Mountains ten miles out in every direction I was overcome with the beauty and majesty of the place and found myself thanking the God that had made all of this wonder. I was so touched and so grateful that I fell on my knees and, fishing out the agate cross I had been shaping and polishing for the last two weeks, I buried it there in the sand as a thank you offering to the creator who had blessed me with this creation. As I went bouncing down the dunes pretending I was snow skiing I forgot all about this experience until seven years later.

It was not until my junior year of high school that I gave any consideration at all to spiritual matters. Up to then it had been girls, snow skiing, surfing, rock and roll and partying. But now I started to have a passing interest in things like Ouija Boards, Tarot Cards and Witchcraft.  I read up on the subjects, talked with friends about the weird and the supernatural and played around with Tarot Cards. However, in all of this my thoughts never turned to God. Still, I was becoming aware of an unseen world little by little.

My folks had hoped I would go to college, but I had no interest at the time. Wanderlust was starting to build up within me and I wanted to see the world. The day after I turned eighteen, my dad came into my room and said I either needed to start abiding by the rules of the house (I was a typical teenager from the seventies) or it was time to get out on my own. I chose the later, sold my pickup truck and left home a month later in August of 1978 on a four month trek across the country by thumb and by bus.

It was during this time of traveling through the fruited plains and the majestic purple mountains that I started to have a dream every couple weeks. As a general rule I never remember my dreams. Maybe twice in my eighteen years did I remember my dreams longer than five minutes after waking up. This one was different.

In this re-occurring dream I was on top of a high mountain with a small group of people I did not recognize. It was night time and we were looking down on the lights of a large metropolis in the distance. As we looked on, there was a very bright light above the city followed by the tale-tell mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb. I would always wake with a start. This dream visited me every few weeks and the memory of it was always as clear as a bell the days following.

In December I landed every ski bum’s dream job at Keystone Colorado complete with season tickets to Arapahoe Basin, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain and of course, Keystone. With two weekdays of skiing on and off the lifts without lines and living right on the Continental Divide (our employee housing was at 9,200 feet above sea level) I was in heaven on earth. The employee housing was dormitory style with two people sharing a large room divided by a modular and then sharing a kitchen, bathroom and shower with two other employees in another room.

It was shortly after moving into my new “pad” that my dream changed. It was the same, but it ended with me being hit be a blast of very hot air from the nuke and then waking up in a cold sweat. When I would wake up, I was always thinking “1984, 1984.” I was not sure what to make of this. The only thing I associated with 1984 was the book by George Orwell. I had this version of the dream a few times when my new roommate arrived between Christmas and New Years.

Mark Johnson was a “good ol’ boy” from Nashville with an accent to prove it. He was about a year older than me and we hit it off right away. About a week after Mark’s arrival I had a new dream. In this one Mark and I were in some sort of refugee camp up in the mountains. There was the distinct feeling that war was happening back in civilization and that the “authorities” were out to get us. Then, we were running for it, being chased through the forest. We reached a ridge and lit a forest fire which burned down the hill towards our pursuers as we dropped down the other side of the mountain. This dream also woke me up and, like the other, it stuck in my memory.

The next evening Mark and I were both off work and kicking back, passing the time and a joint when our conversation turned to dreams. I first told him about my nuclear attack dream I had been having and then about my most recent dream with Mark in it. Two very odd things happened.

First, Mark looked at me with amazement and told me he had had the exact same dream with the two of us in it the night before!  How two guys from two different parts of the country who had just met one another could have the exact same dream the same night was just down right spooky.  Then next thing that happened was almost as amazing.

Mark passed the joint back to me, reached under his bed, and pulled out a large Bible. He started reading to me out of Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation about the end of the world and the coming of Jesus Christ. I was intrigued. I had never read the Bible before except as a game in which a question was asked, eyes were closed, and the pages were flipped through until your finger poked a passage to see what the answer to your question was. To hear about the end of the world from the Bible in light of my dreams was something else entirely. My interest in spiritual things become piqued once more.

As the months passed there was plenty of other things to keep my attention besides the end of the world, but Mark and I would revisit the topic from time to time and he even shared his testimony with me one time about how he got saved. I still was not clear on this being saved topic, but it made for a good story. Besides Armageddon and some of the best snow skiing in the world (not to mention the views from 13,000 feet across the Rocky Mountains), there was a girl names Laurie.

The majority of my relationship with my new girlfriend does not pertain to the topic at hand, but there was a few weeks in February of 1979 that Laurie cause me to consider spiritual matters even more without ever meaning to. A book called the Amityville Horror was making the rounds in the employee housing and Laurie jumped right in when she got the copy from her roommate. It was supposed to be a true story of strange, demonic occurrences in a home in New England someplace and it “freaked” her right out (that was the appropriate term at the time).

She could not sleep at all, nor was she able to stop reading the book although I recommended that she do just that. She insisted in coming over to Mark and my room and sleeping with me because she was now scared of anything that went bump in the night. One night I awoke to find her breathing very fast and mumbling in her sleep. I put my hand on her forehead and a freezing cold chill ran right up my arm to my shoulder. I had never experienced anything quiet like that before and it scared me. I was now considering the unseen spirit world complete with the odd concepts of demons and Jesus Christ and God.

April rolled around and the ski season was starting to wind down. My folks had sold their home in Palo Alto with enough equity to pay off all their bills and buy a 37’ sail boat that they planned to live on while cruising up and down the eastern sea board. They asked me if I wanted their car and all their old furniture and I said sure. The only requirement was that I move it out of the house before the home closed escrow in early May.

Mark and I had already decided to head down to Southern California for the summer and a detour through my home town was not too far out of the way. So in late April we caught a plane to San Jose where my old friend Leonard picked us up. During the week we were packing up my old home into a U-Haul, two more things happened to intensify my interest in the spiritual.

An old girl friend of mine came by for a visit and we filled each other in on what had been happening over the past year. I told her about my dreams and then she told me about hers. Without going into all the details, it seemed that she was in the city I saw nuked when it was nuked. It was pretty wild. Then, one day while driving for a bite to eat and listening to the radio there was a short news announcement stating that religious physics were predicting world war three and the end of the world to take place in 1984.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up as my mouth dropped half open.

Mark and I just happened to spot the sign for two rooms to rent as we drove down Magnolia Boulevard in Garden Grove a week later. And the house, which had three rooms and only one tenant in it, had no furniture either. Perfect! We had a houseful! We got moved in, started looking for work and visiting the beach as much as possible. After a few weeks Mark said, “I am going to start going to church again, want to come?” You bet I did.

We first visited a Friends church up the street. I believe we were the only people under 60 years old in a congregation of about 500. It was the weekend of the Indy 500 and as the elderly pastor got up he began his sermon by saying, “Gentlemen, it is time to start your engines!” I don’t recall any engines being started that morning including my own.

Mark and I would go for walks around the neighborhood some evenings and a few days later we strolled past a little white church with a little white picket fence which was right around the corner from our house. We decided to try this First Full Gospel Church of Christ out the next Sunday.

As we rounded the corner that Sunday morning we could hear the band playing. Unlike our previous experience, these people were having a good old time. As we walked around the church to the entrance in the rear I couldn’t help but start snapping my fingers to the rhythm. We entered the small church to see a five piece band playing on stage complete with drums, electric guitar, tambourine and I don’t recall what else. Mark led the way about half way down and we shimmied our way to the middle of the row. About fifty people of varying ages were on their feet, clapping their hands and singing and I was thinking this was pretty cool.

We had been singing for about ten minutes when something really, really strange happened. An older women in her fifties started speaking in a language that I did not recognize. She was standing directly in front of Mark and I and she must have gone on for at least a few minutes all the while gesturing back at me with her eyes closed. I did not know what to make of this and I started strongly considering the exits to make an escape, but now other people had sat on both sides of us and I could not easily get out without having to ask people to move. Finally she stopped and the pastor got up to pray and starts his sermon.

Looking back now, I am certain that the pastor had changed his message when he saw Mark and I come in. We were probably the only people he did not know and went right into a systematic Gospel salvation message. Although I had bits and pieces of the Gospel wandering about in my head from conversations with Mark over the past four months, this was the first time in my life that I had heard it explained so clearly.

He covered the creation, the fall of man, and the problem of sin and how it separated us from fellowship with God. He explained the nature of God as both loving and righteous and the reason God the Son, Jesus Christ, had to come as a man to do what we could not do for ourselves. He described Christ’s death on the cross and His subsequent resurrection and ascension and the free gift of salvation through faith in Him.

He finished by explaining that God wanted a personal relationship with each of us and that by turning from our selfish ways and receiving the gift of salvation we could enter into that relationship with the Creator of the Universe.  I listened intently to everything and it all made perfect sense to me. I recall that it was so very clear to my mind as if a light bulb had gone off as I took it all in.

The pastor closed his message and asked the congregation to stand for prayer. He then prayed for a while and started listing different needs that people could raise their hands for if they needed prayer. “Does anybody need prayer for financial needs, please raise your hand? Does anyone need prayer for healing, please raise your hand.” And on he went. Tucked in the middle of all these he said, “Would anybody who does not know Jesus and would like to meet him, please raise your hand.” My eyes were closed and I was very interested in knowing this Jesus so my hand shot up.

He went on for a short while longer and then ended the prayer and said, “Would the young lady who needs prayer for healing, please come to the front? And would the young man who would like to meet Jesus, please come to the front?”  I think the entire congregation turned around to see who was going to get saved.

All of a sudden, my heart was beating a hundred miles a minute and I was giving the exit signs serious consideration again. I watched a pretty blond girl about my age make her way down the isle towards the front where the pastor had moved to, but I was frozen where I stood. I felt torn. Part of me wanted to leap over the pew and make a bee-line for the back door and another part felt like I was being drawn down to the front of the church. I looked at Mark and he was grinning from ear to ear looking back at me. In that southern drawl of his he said, “Go on now, go on.”  After another moment’s hesitation, I went.

I stopped about ten feet behind the girl who was speaking quietly with the pastor. He then prayed for her and another strange thing happened. As he prayed for her, she fell over backwards and was caught by a man standing behind her. All the doors in the building were open to let the breeze through including the one on the other side of the pastor and I was sure that I could juke him out and make that door in less than 3 seconds. But I couldn’t move.

He came up to me, introduced himself, asked my name and shook my hand with warmth and kindness that made me feel at ease. He then went through every point of the gospel he had explained in his message, asking me if I believed each one. I did and I said so.

“Do you believe Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that He was born of a virgin?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe He was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin?”

“Yes”

“Do you believe that Jesus was nailed to a cross and offered His soul as a sacrifice for your sins and the sins of the world?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that He rose from the dead on the third day and now sits at the right hand of the Father?”

“Yes.”

He then asked me if I wanted to meet Jesus (which I was now anxious to do) and led me in a prayer of repentance from my old selfish life and of faith towards God.

At that point, right then, the most wonderful feeling of joy and peace and power started to flow into me from the top of my head and down into my body and my legs. This was amazing to me. It was unlike any drug or high I had ever experienced and kept getting stronger and stronger. I didn’t know it then, but the Spirit of God was flowing into me in waves, cleansing me from all unrighteousness and sin and making me a new creature in Christ Jesus. I was being born again.

The pastor started pushing me on the forehead and I realized he wanted me to fall backwards like the girl had. If he had left well enough alone for a few more seconds, I probably would have of my own accord because I was becoming overwhelmed by what was happening inside me. Nevertheless, I let myself fall back so he would leave me alone and was caught and let down to the floor all the while in utter amazement of what was taking place within me.

When I left that church that morning, I was so amazed, overwhelmed and in awe of what had just happened. I was not sure exactly what had just happened, but I knew my life would never be the same again. I had been touched by a power completely outside of myself and there was a peace and wonder within me that I could not explain.

What had just happened to me?

What exactly happens at the point of salvation?

Please consider the follow scriptures:

“But as many as received him [Jesus], to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:” (John 1:12 KJV)

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” (Romans 1:16a  ESV)

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. “ (1 Corinthians 1:18 ESV)

Notice the emphasis?

Salvation does not take place because of intellectual assent, but by the power of God. It is not because of our own strength or efforts, but by the power of God. In John 1:12 quoted above we see that one believes on Jesus name, receives Jesus and then the power of God makes us children of God.

In His conversation with a religious ruler of the Jews, Jesus said,

 “…unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

“… Except unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”   (John 3:3, 5 partial – ESV)

The term “born again” may also be translated “born from above.”  I understand this to mean born by God supernaturally and not born by a woman naturally. In verse five Jesus indicates we must be born of water and of the Spirit. I believe this to mean born naturally (of water – i.e. the bag of water that the baby grows inside his mother) and then born supernaturally of the Spirit of God. (Other valid interpretations of “water” may be the Word – see Ephesians 5:26 & 1 Peter 1:23 or it may be referring back to the promise of the new covenant in Ezekiel 36:23-27)

Paul, in his letter to Titus, explains this “born again” experience as follows:

“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”  (Titus 3:4-7 ESV)

This is what I experienced: “The washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” I often described the flowing of that power through my body as that of an inside Jacuzzi, as if I was being made clean and new from the inside out. According to both Jesus and Paul, this is accomplished by the Holy Spirit.

At the top of this chapter I quote the first half of Ephesians 2:8 which says:

“For by grace you have been saved…”

Yet in the verses we have looked at we are told that we are saved by the power of God and by the Holy Spirit. In Zechariah 12:10 and Hebrews 10:29, we find the Holy Spirit referred to as the Spirit of Grace. Thus it would seem that when we are saved by the Holy Spirit of Grace, we are being saved by the power of God. We are born again from above by the Spirit of God.

This is a supernatural experience. Paul speaks to this in his letter to the believers in the city of Ephesus when he writes:

“…that you may know…what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead…God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved…“  (Ephesians 1:18-2:5 ESV partial – emphasis mine)

“The immeasurable greatness of his power toward us…..that he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead.”

Wow!

The phrase “…made us alive together…” in the Greek is the word suzōopoieō, which means to vitalize in union. God gives us new life with Him. He makes us alive together spiritually. This is something amazing and hard to grasp, but I will attempt to summarize this new spiritual vitalized in union birth is a way that makes sense.

We see that after hearing and believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we surrender to God and receive the gift of God which is “eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom 6:23) At that moment the Spirit of Grace comes upon us in power with the “washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” We are literally born from above and born of the Spirit with the same mighty power that rose Christ from the dead.

The result of this new birth is a new creature.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV)

Perhaps the best example we can find of this in nature is the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. Just as the butterfly has completely different characteristics than the caterpillar, so does our new creature or new man from our old natural man. In all of this, Grace is central and we must understand what it is and how it works.

In regards to this new birth, I will define Grace as follows:

Grace is: the Power of God, worked in us by the Spirit of God, unto Salvation, a New Birth and a New Creature.

Once we are saved by Grace, we then need to learn how to walk in Grace. Starting in Chapter Three I will go into great detail regarding Grace and your Christian walk as a new creature in Christ Jesus.

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, “ (Colossians 2:6 ESV)

Previous: Introduction – This Book is for You

Next: Chapter Two – Robes of Righteousness and the Wilderness Permit