A POTTER AND CLAY MENTALITY vs. A NEW CREATION MENTALITY

September 16th, 2015 § 1

The growth and increase of fruit in the believer’s life is a “manifestation” of the life of Jesus that is already present. Most teaching in the church today is based on an Old Covenant model of the believer being the clay and God being the potter. God spins us around and around and applies pressure to form the clay to make His desired form and then He bakes us in intense heat to harden us to be strong. It all sounds very spiritual and plausible in light of the stuff this world throws at us and in light of the stuff we deal with in our flesh but it is a false view of the new dynamic that is now in Christ under the New Covenant. A new creation has come and is! Now the game is all about “seeing what is in the invisible” that “what is” might be “manifested and made visible!”

God’s will is to change our “potter mentality” to another reality, namely, a “new creation mentality!” (Hebrews 10:9) Through Jesus, God has terminated the Adamic race on the cross and raised a new race in His resurrection. Death and resurrection are not consistent with a “clay and potter mentality.” The new and living way is completely different.

I love the verse in Jeremiah (and quoted in Hebrews) where the prophet speaks for the Lord saying, “I will make a new covenant, which will NOT BE LIKE the covenant that I made with Israel when I brought them out of Egypt.” (Jeremiah 31:31-32)

The covenant of law is so different from the covenant of grace that those who were experts in the covenant of law (Paul) vehemently opposed God’s new covenant, thinking they were doing God’s will by fighting against it! It took a revelation from Jesus Himself to open Paul’s eyes to see what God had done through the promised Messiah!

The clay and potter mentality is all about shaping the natural. The military does it every day. The new creation mentality is supernatural. It’s a miracle of God that need only be “seen” to release the power of it. It is a DIFFERENT dynamic. To “behold” is to become manifestly what already “is” invisibly!

Makes sense that if God says the new covenant would NOT BE LIKE the old covenant that the dynamic of a covenant for the natural flesh (the law) would be a completely DIFFERENT dynamic from a covenant for a new spiritual creation born from above.

In the “clay and potter mentality” we are trying to get somewhere as contrasted from a new spiritual creation perspective where we are living from our destination, resting in our “port of call,” so to speak.

The New Covenant is not only about a different dynamic, but also about a different goal. Becoming more Christ-like is not the goal really but rather that is a by-product of the goal. The goal is fellowship and intimacy with our God through union. A bridegroom and a bride experiencing life together.

Even the goal is clearly seen as different in the New Covenant. The people under the Old Covenant knew nothing about “God teaching them Himself from within” or “God as Abba” or “God as Husband” or an unfettered access into the heavens to the very throne of God Himself, His throne of grace.

These are the things of the Spirit that are being revealed to us by the Spirit that our minds might be renewed day by day and our joy be made full in our journey with God, living on earth as it is in heaven. No more a “clay and potter mentality!” A “new creation mentality!”

As the prophet Isaiah said, speaking for the Lord about what was coming when Messiah would appear: “Behold! I do a new thing! Consider not the things of old! For I do a completely new thing!”

James Barron

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