Re: I don’t think there’s a

Sorry if I misunderstood you John - your interpretation of what it means to be the new creation does (as far as I can see) reflect Andrew’s position. However, that is not the position of the NT, from almost any point of view. It is not the relationships, the participation in a new community, that guarantee personal transformation. That is provided by allegiance to Christ as Lord and Spirit reception - which is the precondition of membership.

If I could put it another way, I may take up my home in a hen-coop, but that wouldn’t make me a hen. I may live in a hangar, but that wouldn’t make me an aeroplane (airplane to you) . I may be a pig, and rent out an apartment in London’s exclusive Mayfair district, but that wouldn’t change me from being a pig.

In the NT, and in Acts, it is always the response to the preaching of the gospel (I mean the gospel of Jesus’s death and resurrection) in faith, in which allegiance is given to Jesus as Lord and the Spirit is received (usually audio-visually), which provides the basis for membership of the people of God. The glue that holds the people of God together is their unity in the Spirit - or koinonia in the Spirit, and their allegiance to Christ. You don’t get this simply by joining the crowd (or the club).

It’s interesting that Andrew’s position reflects the postmodern anti-ontological bias, in which reflection on ‘self’ or ‘inner being’ is regarded as outmoded and inadmissible. This may be the postmodern mindset, but by contrast, ontology is a primary issue of the scriptures. The question of what was wrong with Israel that she so persistently rebelled against God is the agonizing heartcry of the OT. The provision of the new covenant was an ontological necessity, in the light of the failure of the old, and is consistently presented as such.

P.S.

But - and this thought came to me while I was mowing the lawn, and is added about two hours later - to be completely even-handed, and to prevent Andrew getting cross with me again, from his point of view, the ‘gospel’ so described was only intended for the 1st century(ish) people anyway, and so wouldn’t apply to us today. We have a different gospel - but that sounds inflammatory, so maybe one could say, we have no gospel these days. We simply have the new creation pog (people of God), which one simply joins.