As we celebrate Christmas over the next several days, I’m reminded of the prophet Isaiah and his poetry about the coming new creation.
“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD…Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:1-9)
Isaiah is trying to describe the indescribable. He’s talking about a day when the Messiah will rule all the nations from Jerusalem just as God had always promised would happen.
The dawn of this new creation would rise when the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, finally arrives in Jerusalem to take his rightful place as Lord and King of the entire world.
Of course, the manner in which Jesus came as Messiah (King) shocked everyone. Born among the poor in a dirty stable. Revealing himself to low-class shepherds and those who were social outcasts. Serving the poor, healing the sick and helping the needy. Being crowned with thorns and lifted up on a cross, instead of a throne.
Yes, this lowly Jesus of Nazareth came in a unexpected way to set our world right again. He came to bring the blessings of creation back by fulfilling God’s covenant with Abraham, which will bring these blessings not just to Abraham’s family but to the entire world.
N.T. Wright says it well,
“When Yahweh finally acts to deliver his people, to reestablish Jerusalem as the place where he will live and reign, it won’t be Israel alone that will benefit. As he promised to Abraham, back at the beginning, through this people the creator God will bring restoration and healing to the whole world…Isaiah never forgot that the reason God called Abraham in the first place was in order to put the entire creation back to rights, to fill heaven and earth with his glory” (Simply Christian, 85-86).
“When Jesus rose again God’s whole new creation emerged from the tomb, introducing a world full of new potential and possibility…Something happened in and through Jesus as a result of which the world is a different place, a place where heaven and earth have been joined forever. God’s future has arrived in the present” (Simply Christian, 116).
What Isaiah’s poetry anticipated has now broken in and given birth to a new dawn of a new era of new creation through the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.
The new creation, although it is not yet here fully, has begun. By faith and through union with Christ’s death and resurrection, we are all new creations, and have been transferred into God’s future reality right now in the present.
And so we celebrate the first coming of the Messiah and anticipate His second coming by living with Christ in us (Gal. 3:26-29) through Christ’s indwelling Spirit (Gal. 5:16-26), who day by day transforms us into the new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), the true humanity, that Jesus’ resurrection has made available to all who believe (Jn. 20:31).