Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
17. Therefore ] i.e. as a conclusion from 2Co 5:15-16, in consequence of Christ’s Death, His Life, His superhuman, Divine personality.
if any man be in Christ ] The Vulgate puts no stop at Christ, and renders ‘if there be any new creature in Christ’ (‘if ony newe creature is in Crist,’ Wiclif). Tyndale translates as above. For ‘in Christ,’ see Rom 16:7; Gal 1:22; and chap. 2Co 12:2.
he is a new creature ] These words may be rendered there is a new creation, i.e. a new creation takes place within him. Whosoever is united to Christ by faith, possesses in himself the gift of a Divine, regenerated, spiritual humanity which Christ gives through his Spirit (cf. Joh 5:21; Joh 6:33; Joh 6:39-40; Joh 6:54; Joh 6:57; 1Co 15:45 ; 1Pe 1:3; 1Pe 2:2; and 2Pe 1:4. Also chap. 2Co 1:21-22, 2Co 3:18, 2Co 4:11, 2Co 5:5). This life, which he possessed not before, is in fact a new creation of the whole man, “not to be distinguished from regeneration.” Meyer. So also Chrysostom. Cf. Joh 1:13; Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5; Tit 3:5. The margin of the A. V. renders let him be, which is grammatically admissible, but hardly suits the context.
old things ] Literally, the old things. Cf. the ‘old man,’ Rom 6:6; Eph 4:22; Col 3:9; the ‘former conversation’ or manner of living, before the soul was dominated by the Spirit of Christ.
are past away ] Literally, passed away, i.e. at the moment of conversion. But as the Dean of Peterborough has shewn in the Expositor, Vol. vii. pp. 261 263, this strict use of the aorist cannot be always pressed in Hebraistic Greek.
behold, all things are become new ] Many MSS., versions and recent editors omit ‘all things.’ The passage then stands ‘behold, they are become new.’ If we accept this reading, the passage speaks more clearly of a conversion of the whole man as he is, thoughts, habits, feelings, desires, into the image of Christ. The old is not obliterated, it is renovated. As it stands in the A.V. it relates rather to a substitution of a new nature for the old. Isa 43:18-19; Rev 21:5.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Therefore if any man be in Christ – The phrase to be in Christ, evidently means to be united to Christ by faith; or to be in him as the branch is in the vine – that is, so united to the vine, or so in it, as to derive all its nourishment and support from it, and to be sustained entirely by it. Joh 15:2, every branch in me. Joh 15:4, abide in me, and I in you. The branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine; no more can ye except ye abide in me. See also Joh 15:5-7, see the note on Joh 15:2. To be in Christ denotes a more tender and close union; and implies that all our support is from him. All our strength is derived from him; and denotes further that we shall partake of his fullness, and share in his felicity and glory, as the branch partakes of the strength and vigor of the parent vine. The word therefore ( Hoste) here implies that the reason why Paul infers that anyone is a new creature who is in Christ is that which is stated in the previous verse; to wit, the change of views in regard to the Redeemer to which he there refers, and which was so great as to constitute a change like a new creation. The affirmation here is universal, if any man be in Christ; that is, all who become true Christians – undergo such a change in their views and feelings as to make it proper to say of them that they are new creatures. No matter what they have been before, whether moral or immoral; whether infidels or speculative believers; whether amiable, or debased, sensual and polluted yet if they become Christians they all experience such a change as to make it proper to say they are a new creation.
A new creature – Margin, Let him be. This is one of the instances in which the margin has given a less correct translation than is in the text. The idea evidently is, not that he ought to be a new creature, but that he is in fact; not that he ought to live as becomes a new creature – which is true enough – but that he will in fact live in that way, and manifest the characteristics of the new creation. The phrase a new creature kaine ktisis) occurs also in Gal 6:15. The word rendered creature ( ktisis) means properly in the New Testament, creation. It denotes:
- The act of creating Rom 1:20;
- A created thing, a creature Rom 1:25; and refers:
- To the universe, or creation in general; Mar 10:6; Mar 13:9-11; 1Pe 3:4.
- To man, mankind; Mar 16:15; Col 1:23.
Here it means a new creation in a moral sense, and the phrase new creature is equivalent to the expression in Eph 4:24, The new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. It means, evidently, that there is a change produced in the renewed heart of man that is equivalent to the act of creation, and that bears a strong resemblance to it – a change, so to speak, as if the man was made over again, and had become new. The mode or manner in which it is done is not described, nor should the words be pressed to the quick, as if the process were the same in both cases – for the words are here evidently figurative. But the phrase implies evidently the following things:
- That there is an exertion of divine power in the conversion of the sinner as really as in the act of creating the world out of nothing, and that this is as indispensable in the one case as in the other.
(2)That a change is produced so great as to make it proper to say that he is a new man. He has new views, new motives, new principles, new objects and plans of life. He seeks new purposes, and he lives for new ends.
If a drunkard becomes reformed, there is no impropriety in saying that he is a new man. If a man who was licentious becomes pure, there is no impropriety in saying that he is not the same man that he was before. Such expressions are common in all languages, and they are as proper as they are common. There is such a change as to make the language proper. And so in the conversion of a sinner. There is a change so deep, so clear, so entire, and so abiding, that it is proper to say, here is a new creation of God – a work of the divine power as decided and as glorious as when God created all things out of nothing. There is no other moral change that takes place on earth so deep, and radical, and thorough as the change at conversion. And there is no other where there is so much propriety in ascribing it to the mighty power of God.
Old things are passed away – The old views in regard to the Messiah, and in regard to people in general, 2Co 5:16. But Paul also gives this a general form of expression, and says that old things in general have passed away – referring to everything. It was true of all who were converted that old things had passed away. And it may include the following things:
(1) In regard to the Jews – that their former prejudices against Christianity, their natural pride, and spirit of seducing others; their attachment to their rites and ceremonies, and dependence on them for salvation had all passed away. They now renounced that independence, relied on the merits of the Saviour, and embraced all as brethren who were of the family of Christ.
(2) In regard to the Gentiles – their attachment to idols, their love of sin and degradation, their dependence on their own works, had passed away, and they had renounced all these things, and had come to mingle their hopes with those of the converted Jews, and with all who were the friends of the Redeemer.
(3) In regard to all, it is also true that old things pass away. Their former prejudices, opinions, habits, attachments pass away. Their supreme love of self passes away. Their love of sins passes away. Their love of the world passes away. Their supreme attachment to their earthly friends rather than God passes away. Their love of sin, their sensuality, pride, vanity, levity, ambition, passes away. There is a deep and radical change on all these subjects – a change which commences at the new birth; which is carried on by progressive sanctification; and which is consummated at death and in heaven.
Behold, all things are become new – That is, all things in view of the mind. The purposes of life, the feelings of the heart, the principles of action, all become new. The understanding is consecrated to new objects, the body is employed in new service, the heart forms new attachments. Nothing can be more strikingly. descriptive of the facts in conversion than this; nothing more entirely accords with the feelings of the newborn soul. All is new. There are new views of God, and of Jesus Christ; new views of this world and of the world to come; new views of truth and of duty; and everything is seen in a new aspect and with new feelings. Nothing is more common in young converts than such feelings, and nothing is more common than for them to say that all things are new. The Bible seems to be a new book, and though they may have often read it before, yet there is a beauty about it which they never saw before, and which they wonder they have not before perceived. The whole face of nature seems to them to be changed, and they seem to be in a new world. The hills, and vales, and streams; the sun, the stars, the groves, the forests, seem to be new. A new beauty is spread over them all; and they now see them to be the work of God, and his glory is spread over them all, and they can now say:
My Father made them all.
The heavens and the earth are filled with new wonders, and all things seem now to speak forth the praise of God. Even the very countenances of friends seem to be new; and there are new feelings toward all people; a new kind of love to kindred and friends; and a love before unfelt for enemies; and a new love for all mankind.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
2Co 5:17
Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature.
In Christ and what it involves
I. The new relation indicated. The believer is in Christ.
1. As the ground of his acceptance (Php 3:9). Christ by His atoning sacrifice has supplied the grounds whereby sinful men may become objects of complacent regard to God. We are lost in ourselves, but are to find ourselves in Him, surrounded by His merits as with a wall of defence, sheltered by them as by an all-embracing canopy. This alone is the position wherein we are accepted in the beloved.
2. As deriving from Him his spiritual life (Joh 15:4-5; cf. Gal 2:20). The link of union being faith. Christ is the living soul of the spiritual life of the believer. The order is, first the believer enters into Christ by faith, then Christ enters into the believer by power. The branch is in the tree by union with it, and the tree is in the branch by the life it imparts to it in the nourishing sap.
3. As the sphere of his activities. Suppose, e.g., a person hears a glowing account of Australia. He believes every word of the account. By this act of faith Australia enters his heart, and he becomes possessed by an intense desire to get there. Physically, Australia and he are thousands of miles apart, but morally Australia dwells in his heart, and has become a motive power within him, and will not give him rest until it brings him bodily there. He ventures across the ocean, until he finds himself actually in the country which was already in his heart. Here, now, he lives and acts. Thus it is with the believer; the whole fabric of his life becomes permeated by its spirit and purposes. Such expressions as in sin, in faith, in wisdom, in love, in the spirit, mean that the particular things in which the person is said to be, form the sphere of his activity, the circle in which he moves, the atmosphere in which he breathes. And this devotedness of life to Christ is not limited to the religious activities, but includes all secular employments.
II. The new experiences involved in this relation.
1. He who is in Christ is a new creation. In what sense? Clearly not in any physical or constitutional sense, for in that case he would not be the same person after the change. The latter portion of the text explains the nature of this important process. It is not the person that passes away, but his things, his former principles, motives, aims, and habits: and new ones have been substituted.
2. This change involves an entire reversal of the whole tenor of the life. Take, e.g., the steam locomotive. Its course is in a certain direction, but connected with it is the reversing gear. By the action of this gear the engine which may be seen proceeding with such speed in one direction may in a few minutes be seen moving with equal velocity in the contrary direction. The change does not involve any change in its construction, but only in its course; every wheel, rod, and crank that worked before works now, only in the reverse direction. This represents the change effected upon the believer through his relation to Christ. There has been no change effected in his constitution, only the whole course of his activities has been changed as to direction. And the change in these respects has been so entire as to justify the statement that he who has undergone it is a new creature. The new life is so different from the old, so changed as to its employment and aims, as to be like the life of another person. Paul himself is a striking exemplification of this truth. (A. J. Parry.)
If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature
When the Apostle Paul said this, I suppose he was thinking of himself. What a different man he had become since he was a Christian! I do not wonder that he thought himself almost a new creation by the Almighty Maker. How many old things had passed away; how many new things had come! His whole manner of thought had been revolutionised. Before, he was on the highway to position and honour in the Jewish Church; now, he was reviled as an apostate. He had entered a new world of thought and life. But notice the stress laid by the apostle, here and elsewhere, on that little preposition in. It is to be in Christ which makes one a new creature. So he says, My wish is that I may be found in Him; and in another place, When God revealed His Son in Me. It is one thing to be with Christ, and another thing to be in Him. If we had been with Christ when He was walking the streets of Capernaum or Jerusalem, we might not have thought much about it. Nicodemus was with Him, and had a long conversation with Jesus, but does not seem to have come again. Judas was with Jesus during all His ministry, and then betrayed Him. We are all of us with Jesus, in a certain sense, by being taught about Him from childhood, by growing up in the midst of Christian society. But we are not necessarily in sympathy or union with Him on that account. Our purposes may be very different from His. Contiguity is not union. How often parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, live together, side by side, for years, in utter ignorance of each others inmost thoughts, sorrows, experiences, and hopes. They do not understand each other at all; for it is mutual love, not proximity, which leads to mutual knowledge. Nor is it enough even to be strongly attached to others, and clingingly devoted to them. That does not necessarily produce real union. We may cling to them externally, yet never be in them, never get a glimpse of the real secret of their lives. It was the sort of feeling with which a snail sticks to the rock, or a barnacle to a ships bottom–because they need something strong and solid to cling to. To cling to another for our own comfort is not to be in him. So some persons cling to Jesus-for their own salvation. Weak in themselves, they need something to hold them up. They may cling merely for their own sake, only to be saved. They have not entered into the mind or the heart of Christ at all. Nor is it enough to have a great deal to say or to do about Christ in order to be in Him. You may spend your life in talking about Him, using His Name on all occasions, and yet be in no real union with Him. Men may fight for Him, die for Him, and not be in Him. The crusaders who went to Palestine to die under the banner of the Cross were, many of them, in no sympathy with Him. To be in Christ we must love Him. But love means much more than blind affectionate instincts, or clinging attachments, or sudden emotions. Love looks up to receive a higher influence, to be inspired by a purer life. Love must elevate us, or it is not really love. If any man loves, he is in the person he loves. He has entered into his soul, and has something of his spirit. If any man loves Christ, he is in Christ, because he has something of Christs spirit, and is a new creature. He has something added to him, or developed out of him, that was not there before. There is nothing sudden, nothing artificial about this. This change is as natural as that by which the blood renews the body; the body seeming to continue the same, but always becoming different. It is a growth, and all growths are gradual. Conversion is always sudden, for it is simply turning round. But regeneration is gradual, for it is a growth. Paul was converted in a moment on his way to Damascus. He changed his mind about Christianity. He began a new life. But it took him a long time to become a Christian. Thus, if we are in Christ, we grow into new convictions. Not into new speculations or beliefs, for these may change suddenly, or may not change at all. Belief puts us with Christ, but not in him. A creed is like a carriage, which may take us to the place where our friend is, but cannot put us into communion with him. But if we are in Christ, we have new convictions. Spiritual things become more real to us. God becomes to us more real. So, also, if we are in Christ, we grow into new affections. A change of heart, as it is called, does not mean any new faculty or power of loving implanted in us, which we had not before. It means having new objects of love. What we did before merely from a sense of duty, we now do with pleasure. So, again, the Bible is a new book if we are in Christ. If you stand outside of the Cathedral of Milan, or the Minster of Cologne, and look on the vast windows of the choir, they seem dark and dingy. But go inside and let the light stream through them, and they turn into emeralds, and sapphires, and rubies, and are gorgeous with the forms of saints and angels. So enter into a book, sympathise with the spirit and aim of its author, and you can understand it. We call the Bible a supernatural book. I call it the most intensely natural book ever written. It is a revelation of human nature, showing its motives and workings. It is like a watch with a transparent dial, through which we look and see the movement. Again, if we are in Christ, life becomes new. Nothing prevents life from seeming old, stale, flat, and weary, like having an object–something we are interested in, something we love to do. The higher and better this object is, the more of interest it adds to our life. There is no end to the joy and freshness of existence, if we can have Christ in our hearts, and be in His heart, by drinking His spirit. And if any man be in Christ, death is new. Death has lost its terrors. (Jas. Freeman Clarke.)
The man in Christ, and what he becomes
I. The state supposed. If any man be in Christ.
1. Any man may be in Christ. For what hinders? Nothing from without the sinner himself. There is no prohibition, no legal barrier interposed to prevent any one being in Christ.
2. Every man must be in Christ in order to be saved.
3. Every believer is in Christ. The sinner, by the first act of faith in Christ, becomes united to Him, or one with Him. In what respects one? Not one in essence, in nature, or person; but one with Christ in law–in the eye of the Divine Lawgiver. The believer is so treated as if he had done what Christ did.
II. The consequent change affirmed. The change is not antecedent to, but consequent on, the state of being in Christ. Every man in Christ is brought into–
1. New relations. Every state of being gives rise to corresponding relations. A state of poverty, for instance, has its relations generally among the poor of this world; of wealth, among the rich; of rank, among the noble; of power, among the powerful; of rule and authority, among the rulers of this world; of liberty, among the free; of subjection, among the servile; and of captivity, among the captives. So it is with spiritual relations. Of these Christ is at once the source and the centre. The relations of every one in Christ are all changed. Being in Christ the man is out with Satan; he is severed from the world.
2. Receives a new nature or disposition. New relations tend to the formation of a new character, to fit the man in Christ, for intercourse with those to whom he is spiritually related. A mere superficial and temporary change will not answer the appellation of a new creature. That can mean nothing less than a real, a radical, a universal, and abiding change over the whole man, over his whole spirit, and soul, and body. The new creature has new views. It is in the new as it was in the old creation; the first element produced to dispel the darkness and disorders all around was light. New inclinations as well as new views. New affections.
III. The evidence adduced. Old connections with the devil, the world, and the flesh, are broken off; old idols are cast away. Behold, all things are become new. The man in Christ becomes a Christian, who is become a new man, and comes into a new world. To the new creature, even old and familiar things wear a new aspect. To his eyes, the sun shines with new splendour, the heavens display new glory, the manifold works of God present new wonders. Behold! which is a note of attention, of wonder, and of admiration.
1. With attention, for its certainty and importance.
2. With wonder, for its novelty.
3. With admiration, for its excellence. New things may be noteworthy for their greatness and novelty, but not for excellence or usefulness. (Geo. Robson.)
Man in Christ a new man
(text in conjunction with 2Co 5:13-16):–We can attach only four intelligible ideas to the expression in Christ.
1. In His ever-sustaining energy. This cannot be the idea, inasmuch as Paul uses it to designate the state of a particular class of men; whereas all men, good and bad, live in Him.
2. In His dispensation. Again, as Paul means here the state only of a certain class of men, this cannot be the idea, since all men now during eighteen hundred years have been in Christ in this sense.
3. In His affection. There is propriety in a man saying of his friend, or a loving parent of his child, He lives in me. He mingles with all my thoughts, sympathies, and plans. In this sense men are verily in Christ.
4. In His character. Without figure, we live in the character of others. The soul of the: artist lives in the genius of his master; that of the pupil in the ideas and mental habits of his admired teacher. The spirit of our heroes, the ideas of our favourite authors, do we not live in them? So all men in a moral sense live either in Adam, or in Christ. The selfishness, the carnality, the falseness, and the moral atheism, which came into the world through Adam, form that moral atmosphere which the millions breathe as their vital air. To be in Christ is to be so thoroughly impregnated with His ideas, so imbued with His spirit, so inspired with His purposes that our spirits live in Him. This connection is most vital. Hence the Bible teaches that what the foundation is to the building, the fountain to the stream, the root to the tree, the head to the body, Christ is to the good. Now he that is so in Christ is a new creature, a new man. This man has three things new.
I. A new imperial impulse (2Co 5:14). Love transfigures the lover into the spirit of the object. Now this love in Pauls case became the dominant passion of his being. It carried him on like a resistless torrent.
1. This new governing impulse is incomprehensible to those who possess it not (2Co 5:13). The apostle under its influence appeared to be mad to some. They saw him brave the greatest perils, etc., and they could not discover the principle which produced this self-sacrificing conduct. It was not ambition, for Paul repudiated power. It was not avarice, for Paul suffered the loss of all things. The world never has understood the principles that rule the truly good. The world did not understand Christ; even His own relations considered Him mad. The world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Love alone can interpret love.
2. Arises from reflection upon the death of Christ. The apostle assumes that Christ died for all. Now the fact that Christ died for all, seemed to suggest to the apostle two strong reasons why he should be zealous in the cause of Christ.
(1) That the whole world was in a ruined condition. Then were all dead, in a moral sense. With this view of the world, he felt overwhelmed with the magnitude of his work.
(2) That the principle of self-sacrifice is the binding principle of action. He died for all, that they which live, etc. Selfishness is the death of the world. Christ died to destroy it.
II. A new social standard (2Co 5:16). Henceforth implies that he did once know men after the flesh; that his conduct towards men was once regulated by carnal standards. Such standards, however, Christianity regards as false and evanescent. It estimates man by his righteousness and not by his rank. The fact that this is the true standard serves:
1. As a test by which to try our own religion. What is the kind of sympathy we have with Christ?
2. To guide us in the promotion of Christianity. In our endeavours to convert the world, we are not to inquire if men are rich or poor, etc.; it is sufficient to know that they are men, and that they are morally dead.
3. To indicate the principle on which we should form our friendship with men. It should be not on account of their material condition but of their spiritual character.
4. As a rule to regulate our actions. Paul said, When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood. Spiritual considerations not material ones then ruled him; principles not persons became his authorities.
III. A new spiritual. History (2Co 5:17). In what sense can you call this change a creation?
1. It is unlike the first creation in many respects. The first creation–
(1) Was the production of something out of nothing. It is not so in the new. No new element or faculty of being is produced; the change is simply in the mode and course of action. When a vessel that has been pursuing her course to some northern port turns directly round and sails to the south there is no change in the vessel, the mariners, or the cargo. The change is simply in the course.
(2) Presented no difficulties. The Creator had only to speak and it was done, to command and it stood fast. But in this moral change there are resisting forces–the world, the flesh, and the devil.
(3) There was nothing but direct force. There was no instrumentality. But in this change you must have Divine argument, suasion, example: God did not strive to create, but He strives to save.
2. Wherein then is the propriety of representing this moral change as a creation? In both cases there is the production
(1) of something new; a new imperial passion, love! This passion for Christ is a new thing in the universe.
(2) Of something new by Divine agency. The architect can rear n cathedral, the sculptor can carve from marble, the painter can depict life on his canvas, the machinist can construct engines, but not one of them can create. God alone can create. It is so in this moral change. He alone can produce it.
(3) Something new according to a Divine plan. Everything in the universe is formed by plan. The work in the human soul is also so. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, etc. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of Christ. Conversions are accomplished by plan. We may not know the plan. The architect has the outline of that majestic cathedral which is in course of building:–very few, if any, know of it; he has it in the secrets of his own brain. Still the building under his superintendence is advancing. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are helping to work his plan. Some are excavating the mountains, and some are ploughing the seas, etc. Very few of the workers are known to each other, yet the act of each helps to work out the plan of the architect. So it is in the moral creation. Heaven, earth, matter, mind, even hell is unwittingly working for it.
(4) Something new which develops the Divine glory. The universe is a mirror of God, etc. There is more of His glory seen in the free intellect, the pure sympathies, the lofty aspirations, the refined conscience of one regenerate soul than the whole material universe displays.
(5) Something new in n gradual way. According to geology unnumbered ages were taken up in bringing this earth to its present form as a suitable residence for man. So man does not become virtuous and great by a bound; it is by a series of efforts and a course of training.
3. These remarks are sufficient to show the propriety of representing mans moral change as a creation. It is not, however, the things without that change. Material nature, society, events that pass over him–all may remain the same; but the change is within. His consciousness is changed, and with that all has changed. He looks at the forms of the universe with a new eye, with a new judgment. He looks at all through the medium of a new passion, and all assume new phases. If you would have me admire some fine piece of architecture, or some magnificent painting, inspire me first with a love for the artist. The moment we look at the universe through love to Christ, the Great Architect, it becomes new: the old universe passes away, and new heavens and a new earth appear. Conclusion: Such, then, is what Christianity does for us. What a world this will be when Christianity shall have realised its sublime mission! I rejoice to believe that that period will one day come. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Man in Christ a new creature
I. What a new creature is. It is a second birth added to the first.
1. The efficient cause is the Holy Ghost; who but God can alter the hearts of men, and turn stones into flesh?
2. The organical cause or instrument is the Word of God (Jam 1:18).
3. The matter is the restoring of Gods image lost by the fall. He does not bestow new faculties, but new qualities. As in the altering of a lute, the strings are not new, but the tune is mended; so, in the new creature, the substance of the soul is not new, but is new tuned by grace; the heart that before was proud is now humble, etc.
II. What kind of work the new creature is.
1. A work of Divine power (Eph 1:20). It is a work of greater power to produce the new creature than to make a world.
(1) When God made the world He met with no opposition; but when God is about to make a new creature Satan and the heart oppose Him.
(2) It cost God nothing to make the world, but to make the new creature cost the shedding of Christs blood.
2. A work of free grace. There is nothing in us to move God to make us anew; By the grace of God I am what I am.
3. A work of rare excellency. A soul beautified with holiness is like the firmament bespangled with glittering stars; it is Gods lesser heaven. In the incarnation, God made Himself in the image of man; in the new creation, man is made in the image of God.
4. Concerning the new creature, I shall lay down two positions:
(1) That it is not in the power of a natural man to convert himself, because it is a now creation.
(2) When God converts a sinner, He doth more than use a moral persuasion, for conversion is a new creation.
III. The counterfeits of the new creature.
1. Natural honesty, moral virtue, etc. Morality is but nature at best. Heat water to the highest degree, you cannot make wine of it.
2. Religious education. This is a good wall to plant the vine of grace against, but it is not grace. Have not we seen many who have been trained up religiously, who have lived to be a shame to their friends?
3. A form of godliness. Every bird that hath fine feathers hath not sweet flesh; all that shine with the golden feathers of profession are not saints. How devout were the Pharisees! Daedalus, by art, made images to move by themselves, insomuch that people thought they were living; formalists do so counterfeit a devotion that others think they are living saints–they are religious mountebanks.
4. Change of opinion. Man may change from error to truth, yet only in the head, not in the heart.
5. Sudden passion, or stirring of the affections. Many desire heaven, but will not come up to the price. King Herod heard John gladly; his affections were moved, but his sin was not removed.
6. Trouble for sin, i.e., while Gods judgments lie upon men; when these are removed, their trouble ceaseth (Psa 78:34-36). Metal out of the furnace returns to its former hardness.
7. Possession of the Spirit. A man may have some slight transient work of the Spirit, but it doth not go to the root; he may have the Spirit to convince him, not to convert him, the motions of the Spirit, but the walk after the flesh.
8. Abstaining from sin. This abstaining may be from restraining grace, not renewing grace. Men may leave gross sin, and yet live in more spiritual sins; leave drunkenness and live in pride; leave uncleanness and live in malice.
IV. Wherein the essence of the new creature exists.
1. In general it is–
(1) A great change. He who is a new creature is not the same man he was. He is of another spirit.
(2) A visible change, one from darkness to light. Paul, when converted, was so altered that all who saw him could scarcely believe that he was the same.
(3) An inward change. Though the heart be not new-made, it is new moulded.
2. More particularly it consists in two things.
(1) Old things are passed away. Old pride, old ignorance, old malice; the old house must be pulled down ere you can set up a new, yet though it be a thorough change, it is not a perfect change; sin will remain. If sin then is not quite done away, how far must one put off the old man, that he may be a new creature? There must be–
(a) A grieving for the remains of corruption (Rom 7:24).
(b) A detestation of old things, as one would detest a garment in which is the plague (Psa 119:63).
(c) An opposition against all old things; a Christian not only complains of sin, but fights against it (Gal 5:17).
(d) A mortification of old corrupt lusts (Gal 5:24; Rom 6:11).
(2) All things are become new. The new creature is new all over; grace, though it be but in part, yet it is in every part. There is–
(a) A new understanding (Eph 3:24). The new creature is enlightened to see that which he never saw before. He knows Christ after another manner. He knows himself better than he did. When the sun shines into a room it discovers all the dust and cobwebs in it; so, when the light of the Spirit shines into the heart it discovers that corruption which before lay hid. A wicked man, blinded with self-love, admires himself; like Narcissus, that seeing his own shadow upon the water, fell in love with it.
(b) A renewal of conscience. The least hair makes the eye weep, and the least sin makes conscience smite. A good conscience is a star to guide, a register to record, a judge to determine, a witness to accuse or excuse; if conscience doth all these offices right, then it is a renewed conscience, and speaks peace.
(c) The will is renewed. An old bowl may have a new bias put into it; the will having a new bias of grace put into it is strongly carried to good, and carries all the affections along with it.
(d) A new conversation. Grace alters a mans walk; before he walked proudly, now humbly; before loosely, now holily; he makes the Word his rule, and Christs life his pattern.
Conclusion–
1. In this, true Christianity consists. It is not baptism makes a Christian; many are no better than baptised heathens.
2. It is the new creature fits us for communion with God. Birds cannot converse with men unless they had a rational nature put into them, nor can men converse with God, unless they partake of the Divine nature. Every one that hangs about the court doth not speak with the king.
3. The necessity of being new creatures. Till then–
(1) We are odious to God.
(2) Our duties are not accepted with God; they are but wild grapes. When they brought Tamarlane a pot of gold he asked what stamp it had on it, and when he saw the Roman stamp on it he refused it; so if God doth not be His own stamp and image on the soul, He rejects the most specious services.
(3) Get no benefit by ordinances. The Word preached is a savour of death; nay Christ Himself is accidentally a rock of offence.
(4) We cannot arrive at Heaven (Rev 21:27). Heaven is not like Noahs ark–that received clean and unclean. Only the pure in heart shall see God.
4. The excellency of the new creature.
(1) Its nobility. The new creature fetcheth its pedigree from heaven; it is born of God, and is fellow-commoner with angels.
(2) Its immortality. The new creature is begotten of the incorruptible seed of the Word, and never dies.
5. The misery of the unregenerate creature; dying so good were it for that man if he had never been born. (T. Watson.)
The new creature
Our text is to be viewed–
I. As a requisition upon the sinner. Nothing short of a new creation can constitute any man a Christian.
1. If we consider the extent of the requisition, as applied to individuals, the emphasis rests upon the word any. It matters not who he may be. No man can become a Christian in any other method.
2. The requisition may be considered in its application to character in each individual. Here the emphasis is on the words new creature.
(1) The object to be obtained marks this necessity for a new creation. This object is not to be in the church. That may easily be secured by conformity to outward ordinances. It is not reform in external conduct merely. This may be accomplished by mans own exertions. It is not to obtain a good reputation among men. But it is to be in Christ, and to be made an heir of everlasting glory. This object no partial change of character can secure.
(2) That which separates men from God is a radical perversion of motive and principle; the change required therefore is a change of the heart, a new creation of the soul in its principles and objects of pursuit. They have but one simple want. But that want is a total one. They must be new men.
II. As a privilege to the Christian. He is a new creature–
1. In the personal relations which he sustains.
(1) In his relations to God his Creator and Judge. He stands in the Divine presence no longer under condemnation. The penalty for his sin has been endured. God is no longer angry, but is a reconciled Father. He enjoys the comfort of this new relation. His conscience is peaceful through the blood of sprinkling, and perfect love has cast out fear.
(2) In his relation to Jesus the Saviour. Once, like others, he despised and rejected Him. Now he has embraced Him in the warm affections of his heart, as his comfort, and hope, and portion for ever.
(3) In his relations to men around him. To the children of God, wherever they are, he is a brother and a friend. To the unconverted, he feels a bond of pity which he never knew before. He now knows the galling chain which they ignorantly wear. He labours and prays that they may also become new creatures in Jesus Christ.
2. In his personal character.
(1) He is released from the dominion of sin. It may dwell within him, but it dwells there as a captive, not as a ruler.
(2) He is released from the darkness and confusion of mind, which sin has produced. The image of God which was lost in mans apostasy, has been restored. In the true order of his powers, his whole soul is devoted to the service of God. Thus his heart has become right in the sight of God.
(3) He has received a principle of Divine grace within him, which shall flourish and increase for ever.
3. In his associates. There was a time when he avoided the society of the pious, when he loved the associations of the worldly. Now there has been a total revolution in all his intercourse with men. He has forsaken the society of those who fear not God, and he selects for his friends those in whom he can find the mind of Christ. He now regards men according to their character in the sight of God.
4. In his occupation and enjoyments. His desire is in the fulfilment of every required duty, to honour the God whom he delights to serve. Religion sanctifies his daily engagements. His comforts and joys come to him from above. He looks beyond the bounds of sense to find his joy and his crown of rejoicing in eternity. Prayer is no longer a task but a pleasure. The Bible comes to him not so much to remind him of a duty as to call him to a privilege.
5. In his prospects. (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)
The believer a new creature
I. The Christians position–in Christ. There are three stages of the soul. First–Without Christ, this is the state of nature, and is a most unhappy condition. It is inconvenient to be without gold; it is miserable to be without health, without a friend, without reputation, but to be without Christ is the worst lack in all the world. The next state, in Christ, leadeth to the third, with Christ, which is the state of glory.
1. Our business now is with the second, in Christ, which is the state of grace. I never heard of any persons being in any other man but Christ. We may follow certain leaders, and imitate eminent examples, but no man is said in these respects to be in another.
(1) We must interpret this by scriptural symbols.
(a) We were all of us in the first Adam. Adam stood for us. Now, as in Adam we all fell, so all who are in Christ are restored.
(b) Noahs ark was a type of Christ. Christ is the ark of God provided against the day of judgment, and we are in Him.
(c) Christ is Gods eternal city of refuge, and we, having offended, flee for our lives and enter where vengeance cannot reach us.
(2) Christ represents us as being in Him as the branch is in the vine.
(3) Paul describes us as being in Christ also as the stone is in the building. In some of the old Roman walls you can scarcely tell which is the firmer, the cement or the stone, for their cement held the stones together as though they were one mass of rock; and such is the eternal love which binds the saints to Christ.
2. How do we conic to be there?
(1) By faith.
(2) By love.
When love and faith come together, then there is a blessedly sweet communion.
II. The believers character–a new creature. The phrase suggests–
1. A radical change.
(1) A man may undergo many changes, but they may be far from being radical enough to be a new creation. Ahab may humble himself, but he is Ahab still.
(a) Conversion is sometimes described as healing; but healing does not rise to the radical character of the text. Naaman washed in Jordan, and came up with his flesh clean like unto a little child; but it was the same flesh and the same Naaman. The woman, bowed down with infirmity eighteen years, was marvellously changed when she stood upright; but she was the same woman.
(b) There are great moral changes wrought in many which are not saving. A drunkard may become sober, and many persons of debauched habits regular; and yet their changes may not amount to regeneration. The most startling changes will not suffice unless they are total and deep. The Ethiopian might change his skin, the leopard his spots; but the leopard would remain a leopard, and the Ethiop would still be black at heart.
(c) Even the metaphor of resurrection does not go so far as the language of the text. The daughter of Jairus is the same child, and Lazarus is the same man after restoration to life. A new creation is a root-and-branch change; not an alteration of the walls only, but of the foundation; not a new figuring of the visible tapestry, but a renewal of the fabric itself.
(2) We are new creatures through being in Christ. People object to the doctrine that men are saved by faith in Christ on the ground that there must be a great moral change. But if those who are in Christ are new creatures, what greater change can be desired? He who believes in Christ, finding himself pardoned, loves Christ, and loves the God who gave Christ, and love to God expels love to sin.
2. A Divine work. If any doubt it, let us bid them make the effort to create the smallest object.
(1) Regeneration is Gods sole work. In the first creation who helped God? So the sovereign will of God creates men heirs of grace.
(2) It was more difficult to create a Christian than to create a world. Unto Him, then, be glory and strength!
3. Remarkable freshness. It is very long since this world saw a new creature. All the creatures we now see are old and antiquated. Any new creature coming fresh into the world would startle us all. And yet the text tells you that there are new creatures upon earth, fruits that have freshness and bloom of Eden about them, life with the dew of its youth upon it; and these new creatures are Christian men. There is a freshness about them which is to be found nowhere else. He that prayed yesterday with joy, shall pray in fifty years time, if he be on earth, with the selfsame delight. He that loves his Maker, and feels his heart beat high at the mention of the name of Jesus, shall find as much transport in that name, if he lives to the age of Methuselah, as he doth now. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Of the nature and necessity of the new creature
That Gods creating of a new supernatural work of grace in the soul of any man, is that mans sure and infallible evidence of a saving interest in Jesus Christ. Why the regenerating work of the Spirit is called a new creation. First, the same almighty Author who created the world created also this work of grace in the soul of man (2Co 4:6). Secondly, the first thing that God created in the natural world was light (Gen 1:3), and the first thing which God createth in the new creation is the light of spiritual knowledge (Col 3:10). Thirdly, creation is out of nothing; it requires no pre-existent matter. So it is also in the new creation (1Pe 2:9-10). Fourthly, it was the virtue and efficacy of the Spirit of God which gave the natural world its being by creation (Gen 1:2). Fifthly, the Word of God was the instrument of the first creation (Psa 33:6-9). Sixthly, the same power which created the world still supports it in its being: the world owes its conservation, as well as its existence, to the power of God. Just so it is with the new creation (Jud 1:1, Preserved in Christ Jesus, and 1Pe 1:5). Seventhly, in a word, God surveyed the first creation with complacence and great delight (Gen 1:31). So this also in the second creation; nothing delights God more than the works of grace in the souls of His people. Next we must inquire, in what respects every soul that is in Christ is made a new creature; and here we shall find a threefold renovation of every man that is in Christ. First, he is renewed in his state and condition: for he passeth from death to life in his justification (1Jn 3:14). Secondly, every man in Christ is renewed in his frame and constitution; all the faculties and affections of his soul are renewed by regeneration: his understanding was dark, but now is light in the Lord (Eph 5:8); his conscience was dead and secure, or full of guilt and horror, but is now become tender, watchful, and full of peace (Heb 9:14); his will was rebellious and inflexible; but is now made obedient and complying with the will of God (Psa 110:2). Thirdly, the man in Christ is renewed in his practice and conversation; the manner of operation always follows the nature of beluga. Now the regenerate not being what they were, cannot walk and act as once they did (Eph 2:1-3). Thirdly, let us inquire into the properties and qualities of this new creature. First, the Scripture speaks of it as a thing of great difficulty to be conceived by man (Joh 3:8). Secondly, but though this life of the new creature be a great mystery and secret in some respects; yet so far as it appears unto us, the new creature is the most beautiful and lovely creature that ever God made; for the beauty of the Lord Himself is upon it: The new man is created after God (Eph 4:24). Thirdly, this new creature is created in man upon the highest design that ever any work of God was wrought: the end of its creation is high and noble (Col 1:12). Fourthly, this new creation is the most necessary work that ever God wrought upon the soul of man: the eternal well-being of his soul depends upon it; and without it no man shall see God (Heb 12:14; Joh 1:3-5). Fifthly, the new creature is a marvellous creature; there are many wonders in the first creation (Psa 111:2). But there are no wonders in nature, like those in grace. Sixthly, the new creature is an immortal creature (Joh 4:14). Seventhly, the new creature is an heavenly creature; It is not born of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God (Joh 1:13); its descent is heavenly. Eighthly, the new creature is an active and laborious creature; no sooner is it born, but it is acting in the soul (Act 9:6). Behold he prayeth! Activity is its very nature (Gal 5:25). Ninthly, the new creature is a thriving creature, growing from strength to strength (1Pe 2:2), and changing the soul in which it is subjected from glory unto glory (2Co 3:18). Tenthly, the new creature is a creature of wonderful preservation. There are many wonders of Divine providence in the preservation of our natural lives, but none like those whereby the life of the new creature is preserved in our souls. Fourthly, we will demonstrate the necessity of this new creation to all that are in Christ, and by Him do attain salvation; and the necessity of the new creature will appear divers ways. First, from the positive and express will of God revealed in Scripture. Secondly, this new creation is the inchoative part of that great salvation which we expect through Christ, and therefore, without this, all expectations of salvation must vanish. Salvation and renovation are inseparably connected. Thirdly, so necessary is the new creation to all that expect salvation by Christ; that without this, heaven would be no heaven. Fourthly, there is an absolute necessity of the new creature to all that expect interest in Christ and the glory to come, since all the characters and signs of such an interest, are constantly taken from the new creature wrought in us. Fifthly, the last thing is, how the new creation is an infallible proof and evidence of the souls interest in Christ; and this will appear divers ways. First, where all the saving graces of the Spirit are, there interest in Christ must needs be certain; and where the new creature is, there all the saving graces of the Spirit are. Secondly, to conclude: where all the causes of an interest in Christ are found, and all the effects and fruits of an interest in Christ do appear, there, undoubtedly, a real interest in Christ is found; but wherever you find a new creature, you find all the causes and all the effects of an interest in Christ. Is the new creature the infallible evidence of our saving interest in Christ? From hence, then, we are informed–
Inference 1. How miserable an estate all unrenewed souls are in.
Inference 2. On the contrary, we may hence learn what cause regenerate souls have to bless God for the day wherein they were born.
Inference 3. Learn from hence that the work of grace is wholly supernatural; a creation-work is above the power of the creature.
Inference 4. If the work of grace be a new creation, let not the parents and friends of the unregenerate utterly despair of the conversion of their relations, how great soever their present discouragements are. If it had been possible for a man to have seen the rude chaos before the Spirit of God moved upon it, would he not have said, Can such a beautiful order of beings, such a pleasant variety of creatures, spring out of this dark lump? Surely it would have been very hard for a man to have imagined it.
Inference 5. If none but new creatures be in Christ, how small a remnant among men belong to Christ in this world!
Inference 6. If the change by grace be a new creation, how universal and marvellous a change doth regeneration make upon men! First, because the work of grace is wrought in divers methods and manners in the people of God. Some are changed from a state of notorious profaneness unto serious godliness; there the change is conspicuous and very evident: but in others it is more insensibly distilled in their tender years, by the blessing of God, upon religious education, and there it is more indiscernible. Secondly, though a great change be wrought, yet much natural corruption still remains for their humiliation. Thirdly, in some the new creature shows itself mostly in the affectionate part in desires after God; and but little in the clearness of their understandings, for want of which they are kept in darkness most of their days. Fourthly, some Christians are more tried and exercised by temptation from Satan than others are; and these clouds darken the work of grace in them. Fifthly, there is great difference and variety found in the natural tempers and constitutions of the regenerate; some are of a more melancholy, fearful, and suspicious temper than others, and are therefore much longer held under doubtings.
Inference 7. How incongruous are carnal ways to the spirit of Christians! who being new creatures, can never find pleasure in their former sinful companions and practices. If none be in Christ but new creatures, and the new creation make such a change as hath been described, this may convince us how many of us deceive ourselves, and run into fatal mistakes in the greatest concernment we have in this world. First, that the change made by civility upon such as were lewd and profane is, in its whole kind and nature, a different thing from the new creature. Secondly, that many strong convictions and troubles for sin may be found where the new creature is never formed. Thirdly, that excellent gifts and abilities, fitting men for service in the Church of God, may be where the new creature is not; for these are promiscuously dispensed by the Spirit, both to the regenerate and unregenerate (Mat 7:22). Fourthly, be convinced that multitudes of religious duties may be performed by men, in whom the new creature was never formed.
Next, therefore, let me persuade every man to try the state of his own heart in this matter. First, consider well the antecedents of the new creature; have those things passed upon your souls, which ordinarily make way for the new creature.
1. Hath the Lord opened the eyes of your understanding in the knowledge of sin and of Christ (Act 26:18).
2. Hath He brought home the Word with mighty power and efficacy upon your hearts to convince and humble them (Rom 7:9; 1Th 1:5).
3. Have these convictions overturned your vain confidences, and brought you to inward distress of soul.
Secondly, consider the concomitant frames and workings of spirit, which ordinarily attend the production of the new creature.
1. Have your vain spirits been composed to the greatest seriousness and most solemn consideration of things eternal, as the hearts of all those are whom God regenerates?
2. A lowly, meek, and humble frame of heart accompanies the new creation; the soul is weary and heavy laden (Mat 11:28).
3. A longing frame of spirit accompanies the new creation; the desires of the soul are ardent after Christ.
Thirdly, weigh well the effects and consequents of the new creature, and consider whether such fruits as these are found in your hearts and lives.
1. Wherever the new creature is formed, there a mans course and conversation is changed (Eph 4:22).
2. The new creature continually opposes and conflicts with the motions of sin in the heart (Gal 5:17).
3. The mind and affections of the new creature are set upon heavenly and spiritual things (Col 3:1-2; Eph 4:23; Rom 8:5).
4. The new creature is a praying creature, living by its daily communion with God (Zec 12:10; Act 9:11). If the new creation be a sound evidence of our interest in Christ, then let me persuade all that are in Christ to evidence themselves to be so, by walking as it becomes new creatures. The new creature is born from above; all its tendencies are heavenward. Let every new creature be cheerful and thankful: if God hath renewed your natures and thus altered the temper of your hearts, He hath bestowed the richest mercy upon you that heaven or earth affords. This is a work of the greatest rarity. This is the Lords doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. There are unsearchable wonders in its generation, in its operation, and in its preservation. (John Flavel.)
The new creature delineated
Consider this change, on account whereof Christians are new creatures in respect of–
I. The inward frame of mind. And this is what the Scripture calls a new heart, a new spirit, a renovation in the spirit of the mind, a transformation by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. There is a change in their–
1. Apprehensions.
(1) They had once a notional sight only of the being and perfections of God; but now they appear to them the surest realities.
(2) They once saw no beauty in Christ, nor were sensible of any need they stood in of Him; but He is now altogether lovely.
(3) They once saw no great evil in sin; but it now appears an evil and bitter thing.
(4) They once saw no great beauty in holiness; but it now appears the most amiable grace.
2. Purposes. Once the bent of their mind was towards the earth; it is now towards heaven.
3. Affections. There is a change in their–
(1) Love. They now hate what they once loved, and vice versa.
(2) Sorrow. The things which once moved their grief were worldly losses and crosses, pain in their bodies, etc. As for their sins, they were not grieved on account of them. But the new creation has wonderfully turned the channel of their sorrow.
(3) Hope. This they once placed on the creature; but they now place it on the Creator. They had once no views beyond this earth; but they now reach to heaven.
(4) Fear. The things which once moved their fear, were the threats of men, the frowns of the world, etc. They now fear Gods displeasure more than anything else. They dare not now live in sin.
(5) Anger. They were once angry with those who were a hindrance to them in sin; but they now love and thank them. Their anger is now turned against themselves.
II. The outward course and manner of life. They do not now live in sin as they once did; but have put off concerning the former conversation, the old man, etc. And this reformation is sometimes so remarkable that it is taken notice of, and admired by others. But this change carries more in it than what is negative. It is a change not only from sin, but to holiness. That is, they live in the practice of the whole of their duty; all that duty they owe, either to God, their neighbour, or themselves. (C. Chauncey, A. M.)
The change which grace makes in the human character
I. A visible change–Behold. There is a change without as the expression and effect of a change within. This visibility will appear–
1. To ourselves. If a man entertains a hope that it has taken place, and yet is not able to perceive that he is in any wise different from what he was before, that man ought rather to fear than hope.
2. To others. It behoves us so to conduct ourselves that men shall take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus. We must seem to be religious as well as be so actually. How otherwise can we be the lights of the world? Must we not show our faith by our works?
II. An admirable change. The interjection is thrown in not barely to attract attention, but to excite wonder and admiration. It is admirable if we consider–
1. Its author. It is God. Every work of God is admirable. What a noble piece of work is man, even in his ruins! how much more then in his restoration!
2. The loving-kindness displayed in making it. Behold, what manner of love is here!
3. Its nature and connections. It is a singular change, infinitely superior to any other of which the human character is susceptible. Other changes are necessarily superficial; this is deep and radical. It inserts a new mainspring. What evils other changes restrain or abate, this eradicates; and this communicates the reality of the good, of which they do but put on this appearance.
III. A thorough change. All things are become new. There may be a partial reformation, while the heart remains unchanged; but if the heart is changed, the reformation must be universal. Where one trait of the Christian character is found, there they are all found. Where faith is, there is love, for faith worketh by love; and where these are, in inseparable society is found the whole sisterhood of graces, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance. And so the heart that hates one sin hates all, and is equally disposed to renounce all. Therefore if any of you find that your religion is not universally influential, you may conclude that it is vain.
IV. A change of the nature of a substitution, and not a superaddition. There is a passing away of the old things, and a coming in their place of new. The new man is not put on over the old man, but the old man is first put off. The soul becomes dead unto sin before it is made alive unto righteousness.
V. A great change. It is hardly necessary to affirm this after what has been already said, It is a work of God; a new creation; a passing from death unto life, a being born again, a translation out of darkness into marvellous light, a resurrection.
VI. A permanent change. It lasts. (W. Nevins, D. D.)
Is conversion necessary
I. In order to salvation a radical change is necessary.
1. Everywhere in Scripture men are divided into two classes, with a very sharp line of distinction between them–sheep lost and sheep found, guests refusing and guests feasting, wise virgins and foolish, sheep and goats, men dead in trespasses and sin and alive to God, men in darkness or in light, children of God and children of wrath, believers who are not condemned and of those who are condemned already, etc., etc.
2. The Word of God speaks of this inward change as–
(1) a birth (Joh 1:12-13; Joh 3:1-36; Joh 5:4; 1Jn 5:1).
(2) A quickening (Eph 1:19; Eph 2:1).
(3) A creation, as in our text, and this also is no mere formality, or an attendant upon a rite (Gal 6:15; Eph 2:10; Eph 4:24).
(4) A translation (Col 1:13).
(5) A passing from death unto life (1Jn 3:14; Joh 5:24).
(6) A being begotten again (1Pe 1:3; Jam 1:18). Can you conceive of any language more plainly descriptive of a most solemn change?
3. The Scriptures speak of it as producing a very wonderful change in the subject of it.
(1) In the character (Rom 6:17; Rom 6:22; Col 3:9; Gal 5:24).
(2) In feeling. Enmity to God is exchanged for love to God (Col 1:21). This arises very much from a change of mans judicial state before God. Before a man is converted he is condemned, but when he receives spiritual life we read there is therefore now no condemnation, etc. This altogether changes his condition as to inward happiness (Rom 5:1; Rom 5:11).
4. It is further represented as the chief blessing in the covenant of grace (Jer 31:33, cf. Heb 10:16; Eze 36:26-27
II. This change is frequently very marked as to its time and circumstances. Many souls truly born of God could not lay their finger upon any date and say, At such a time I passed from death unto life. Conversion is often so surrounded by restraining grace that it appears to be a very gradual thing, and the rising of the sun of righteousness in the soul is comparable to the dawning of day, with a grey light at first, and a gradual increase to a noonday splendour. Yet, as there is a time when the sun rises, so is there a time of new birth. If a dead man were restored to life, he might not be able to say exactly when life began, but there is such a moment. There must be a time when a man ceases to be an unbeliever and becomes a believer in Jesus. In many cases, however, the day, hour, and place are fully known, and we might expect this–
1. From many other works of God. How very particular God is about the time of creation! The evening and the morning were the first day. God said, Let there be light: and there was light. So in the miracles of Christ. The water turns at once to wine, the fig-tree immediately withers away, the loaves and fishes are at once multiplied in the hands of the disciples. Miracles of healing were as a rule instantaneous.
2. From the work itself. If it be worthy to be called a resurrection, there must manifestly be a time in which the dead man ceases to be dead and becomes alive.
3. From the conversions mentioned in Scripture. Paul was one moment an opponent of Christ, and the next was crying, Who art Thou, Lord? and this conversion was to be a pattern (1Ti 1:15-16). Let us look at other instances. The Samaritan woman, Zacchaeus, Matthew, the three thousand at Pentecost, the Philippian jailer. It would be much more difficult to find a gradual conversion in Scripture than a sudden one.
4. From experience. The matter is one about which I feel it a weariness to argue, because these wonders of grace happen daily before our eyes, and it is like trying to prove that the sun rises in the morning.
III. This change is recognisable by certain signs.
1. A sense of sin. True conversion always has in it a humbling sense of the need of Divine grace.
2. Faith in Jesus.
3. The change of his principles, objects, desires, life. A convert once said, Either the world is altered or else I am. The very faces of our children look different to us, for we regard them under a new aspect, viewing them as heirs of immortality. We view our friends from a different stand-point. Our very business seems altered. We learn to sanctify the hammer and the plough by serving the Lord with them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Regeneration
is–
I. A change.
1. A real change; from nature to grace, as well as by grace.
2. A common change to all the children of God. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
3. A change quite contrary to the former frame. What more contrary to light than darkness? (Eph 5:8); flesh to spirit (Joh 3:6); translation from one kingdom to another (Col 1:13).
4. A universal change of the whole man, It is a new creature, not only a new power or new faculty. Understanding, will, conscience, affections, all were corrupted by sin, all are renewed by grace.
5. Principally an inward change. It is as inward as the soul itself. It is a clean heart David desires, not only clean hands (Psa 51:10). If it were not so, there could be no outward rectified change. The spring and wheels of the clock must be mended before the hand of the dial will stand right.
II. A vital principle. This new creation is a translation from death to life (1Jn 3:14). It is not, then, a gilding, but a quickening; not a carving, but an enlivening.
III. A habit. It is impossible to conceive a new creature without new habits. Nothing can be changed from a state of corruption to a state of purity without them.
IV. A law put into the heart. Every creature hath a law belonging to its nature. Man hath a law of reason, beasts a law of sense and instinct, plants a law of vegetation, inanimate creatures a law of motion. A new creature hath a law put into his heart (Jer 31:23; cf. Heb 8:10). It is called the law of the mind (Rom 7:23), it beginning first in the illumination of that faculty as sin began first in a false judgment made of the precept of God, You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. It consists in an inward conformity of the heart to the law. The soul hath a likeness to the word and doctrine of the gospel within it (Rom 6:17). As melted metal poured into a mould loses its former form, and puts on a new shape, the same figure with the mould into which it is poured; the soul, which before was a servant of sin, and had the image of the law of sin, being melted by the Spirit, is cast into the figure and form of the law.
V. A likeness to God. Every creature hath a likeness to something or other in the rank of beings: the new creature is framed according to the most exact pattern, even God Himself. The new creature is begotten; begotten, then, in the likeness of the begetter, which is God. Were not a real likeness attainable, why should those exhortations be, of being holy as God is holy, pure as He is pure? (1Pe 1:15; 1Jn 3:3). (S. Charnock, B. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 17. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature] It is vain for a man to profess affinity to Christ according to the flesh, while he is unchanged in his heart and life, and dead in trespasses and sins; for he that is in Christ, that is, a genuine Christian, having Christ dwelling in his heart by faith, is a new creature; his old state is changed: he was a child of Satan, he is now a child of God; he was a slave of sin, and his works were death; he is now made free from sin, and has his fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. He was before full of pride and wrath; he is now meek and humble. He formerly had his portion in this life, and lived for this world alone; he now hath GOD for his portion, and he looks not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are eternal. Therefore, old things are passed away.
Behold, all things are become new.] The man is not only mended, but he is new made; he is a new creature, a new creation, a little world in himself; formerly, all was in chaotic disorder; now, there is a new creation, which God himself owns as his workmanship, and which he can look on and pronounce very good. The conversion of a man from idolatry and wickedness was among the Jews denominated a new creation. He who converts a man to the true religion is the same, says R. Eliezer, as if he had created him.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
If any man be in Christ, is as much as, if any man be implanted or ingrafted into Christ, by faith united to him,
he is a new creature; ( the Greek is, a new creation); a phrase which argueth the greatest change imaginable, and such a one as can be wrought in the soul by no other power than the power of God. We have the same expression, Gal 6:15. The ellipsis of the verb makes some translate it: Let him be a new creature, supplying for . But the next words show us, that the apostle is speaking of what is past:
Old things are passed away, old affections, passions, notions, &c. He hath the same soul, but new qualities, new apprehensions in his understanding, new inclinations in his will and affections, new thoughts, counsels, and designs. The predicate showeth, that the term, be in Christ, cannot be understood of those that are only in the church, and turned from paganism to the Christian faith; for there are many such in the world, in whom there is no new creation, and who have in them nothing of this new creature.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
17. Thereforeconnected withthe words in 2Co 5:16, “Weknow Christ no more after the flesh.” As Christ has entered onHis new heavenly life by His resurrection and ascension, so all whoare “in Christ” (that is, united to Him by faith as thebranch is In the vine) are new creatures (Ro6:9-11). “New” in the Greek implies a new naturequite different from anything previously existing, not merely recent,which is expressed by a different Greek word (Ga6:15).
creatureliterally,”creation,” and so the creature resulting from thecreation (compare Joh 3:3;Joh 3:5; Eph 2:10;Eph 4:23; Col 3:10;Col 3:11). As we are “inChrist,” so “God was in Christ” (2Co5:19): hence He is Mediator between God and us.
old thingsselfish,carnal views (compare 2Co 5:16)of ourselves, of other men, and of Christ.
passed awayspontaneously,like the snow of early spring [BENGEL]before the advancing sun.
beholdimplying anallusion to Isa 43:19; Isa 65:17.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Therefore if any man be in Christ,…. There’s a secret being in Christ from everlasting; so all that are loved by him, espoused unto him, chosen and preserved in him, to whom he was a covenant head, surety, and representative, are in him, united to him, and one with him; not in such sense as the Father is in him, and the human nature is in him, but as husband and wife, and head and members are one: and there is an open being in Christ at conversion, when a man believes in Christ, and gives up himself to him; faith does not put a man into Christ, but makes him appear to be in him: and such an one “is a new creature”; or, as some read it, “let him be a new creature”: who understand being in Christ to be by profession, and the sense this, whoever is in the kingdom or church of Christ, who professes himself to be a Christian, ought to be a new creature: the Arabic version reads it, “he that is in the faith of Christ is a new creature”. All such who are secretly in Christ from everlasting, though as yet some of them may not be new creatures, yet they shall be sooner or later; and those who are openly in him, or are converted persons, are actually so; they are a new “creation”, as the words may be rendered: , “a new creation”, is a phrase often used by the Jewish h doctors, and is applied by the apostle to converted persons; and designs not an outward reformation of life and manners, but an inward principle of grace, which is a creature, a creation work, and so not man’s, but God’s; and in which man is purely passive, as he was in his first creation; and this is a new creature, or a new man, in opposition to, and distinction from the old man, the corruption of nature; and because it is something anew implanted in the soul, which never was there before; it is not a working upon, and an improvement of the old principles of nature, but an implantation of new principles of grace and holiness; here is a new heart, and a new spirit, and in them new light and life, new affections and desires, new delights and joys; here are new eyes to see with, new ears to hear with, new feet to walk, and new hands to work and act with:
old things are passed away: the old course of living, the old way of serving God, whether among Jews or Gentiles; the old legal righteousness, old companions and acquaintance are dropped; and all external things, as riches, honours, learning, knowledge, former sentiments of religion, are relinquished:
behold, all things are become new; there is a new course of life, both of faith and holiness; a new way of serving God through Christ by the Spirit, and from principles of grace; a new, another, and better righteousness is received and embraced; new companions are sought after, and delighted in; new riches, honours, glory, a new Jerusalem, yea, new heavens, and a new earth, are expected by new creatures: or the sense of the whole may be this, if any man is entered into the kingdom of God, into the Gospel dispensation, into a Gospel church state, which seems to be the sense of the phrase “in Christ”, in Ga 3:28 he is become a new creature, or is got into a new creation, as it were into a new world, whether he be a Jew or a Gentile; for with respect to the former state of either, “old things are passed away”; if a Jew, the whole Mosaic economy is abolished; the former covenant is waxen old, and vanished away; the old ordinances of circumcision and the passover are no more; the daily sacrifice is ceased, and all the other sacrifices are at an end, Christ, the great sacrifice, being offered up; the priesthood of Aaron is antiquated, there is a change of it, and of the whole law; the observance of holy, days, new moons and sabbaths, is over; the whole ceremonial law is at end; all the shadows of it are fled and gone, the things they were shadows of being come by Christ, the sum and substance of them; and there is no more a serving God in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the Spirit: and if a Gentile, all the former idols he worshipped he turns from, and his language is, “what have I to do any more with idols? or what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” all former sacrifices, superstitious rites and ceremonies, with which he worshipped them, are relinquished by him; with all other Heathenish customs, rules, and methods of conduct he had been used to: “behold, all things are become new”; to the one, and to the other; the Gospel dispensation is a new state of things; a new form of church state is erected, not national, as among the Jews, but congregational, consisting of persons gathered out of the world, and anew embodied together; new ordinances are appointed, which were never in use before, as baptism and the Lord’s supper; a new and living way is opened by the blood of Christ into the holiest of all, not by the means of slain beasts, as among the Jews, nor by petty deities as with the Gentiles; a new commandment of love is enjoined all the followers of the Lamb; and another name is given them, a new name, which the mouth of the Lord their God has named, not of Jews nor Gentiles, but of Christians; and new songs are put into their mouths, even praise to God: in short, the Gospel church state seems to be, as it were, a new creation, and perhaps is meant by the new heavens and new earth, Isa 65:15 as well as those who are the proper members of it, are new creatures in the sense before given.
h T. Hieros. Roshhashana, fol. 59. 3. Vajikra Rabba, fol. 170. 4. Bemidbar Rabba, fol, 202. 3. Cosri, fol. 62. 2. & R. Levi ben Gersom in Exod, fol. 108. 1. Tzeror Hammor, fol. 121. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
A new creature ( ). A fresh start is made (). is the old word for the act of creating (Ro 1:20), but in N.T. by metonymy it usually bears the notion of , the thing created or creature as here.
The old things are passed away ( ). Did pass by, he means. Second aorist active of , to go by. The ancient () way of looking at Christ among other things. And yet today there are scholars who are trying to revive the old prejudiced view of Jesus Christ as a mere man, a prophet, to give us “a reduced Christ.” That was once Paul’s view, but it passed by forever for him. It is a false view and leaves us no gospel and no Saviour.
Behold, they are become new (, ). Perfect active indicative of , have become new (fresh, ) to stay so.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
A new creature [ ] . Or creation. Compare Gal 6:15. The word ktisiv is used in three senses in the New Testament. The act of creating, as Rom 1:20. The sum of created things, as Revelation 3 14; Mr 13:19. A created thing or creature, as Rom 8:39. The Rabbins used the word of a man converted from idolatry. “He who brings a foreigner and makes him a proselyte is as if he created him.”
Old things [ ] . Rev., correctly, the old things. See on 1Jo 2:7, and Rev 12:9.
Passed away [] . Lit., passed by. So Luk 18:37; Mr 6:48. As here, Jas 1:10; Mt 5:8; Mt 24:34, etc.
Behold. As if contemplating a rapidly shifting scene. As in a flash, old things vanish, and all things become new.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Therefore if any man be in Christ,” (hoste ei tis en Christo) “So, if anyone is in Christ,” Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, young or old, denoting a universality of the offer and acceptance of salvation, in Christ (a person) not in a form of ceremonies, Eph 2:10; Joh 15:5.
2) “He is a new creature,” (kaine ktisis) “He is a new (kind of) creation;” has a new, divine nature. imparted in regeneration, or the new birth, Joh 3:3; 1Pe 1:23; Col 3:10; Gal 6:15.
3) “Old things are passed away,” (ta archaia parelthen) “The old (archaic) things passed away;” such as ancient customs and rituals and ceremonies of the Law of Moses, and the old life of sin and its selfish follies, Col 2:14-17; Rom 12:1-2.
4) “Behold all things are become new “ (idou gegonen Kaina) “Behold they have become, (come to be) new,” refreshing, of fresh coloring, Heb 8:13; a new era of dating time sprang from the coming of Christ, a new moral and ethical code, a new philosophy of life, and a new Christian society came from the concept men could and should abide in, be created anew in Christ Jesus, not in or by Moses or by the Law. Php_3:7-9.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
17. Therefore if any man is in Christ. As there is something wanting in this expression, it must be supplied in this way — “ If any one is desirous to hold some place in Christ, that is, in the kingdom of Christ, or in the Church (551) let him be a new creature ” By this expression he condemns every kind of excellence that is wont to be in much esteem among men, if renovation of heart is wanting. “Learning, it is true, and eloquence, and other endowments, are valuable, and worthy to be honored; but, where the fear of the Lord and an upright conscience are wanting, all the honor of them goes for nothing. Let no one, therefore, glory in any distinction, inasmuch as the chief praise of Christians is self-renunciation.”
Nor is this said merely for the purpose of repressing the vanity of the false apostles, but also with the view of correcting the ambitious judgments of the Corinthians, in which outward disguises were of more value than real sincerity — though this is a fault that is common to almost all ages. For where shall we find the man that does not attach much more importance to show, than to true holiness? Let us, therefore, keep in view this admonition — that all that are not renewed by the Spirit of God, should be looked upon as nothing in the Church, by whatever ornaments they may in other respects be distinguished.
Old things are passed away. When the Prophets speak of the kingdom of Christ, they foretell that there will be new heavens and a new earth, (Isa 65:17,) meaning thereby, that all things will be changed for the better, until the happiness of the pious is completed. As, however, Christ’s kingdom is spiritual, this change must take place chiefly in the Spirit, and hence it is with propriety that he begins with this. There is, therefore, an elegant and appropriate allusion, when Paul makes use of a commendation of this kind, for the purpose of setting forth the value of regeneration. Now by old things he means, the things that are not formed anew by the Spirit of God. Hence this term is placed in contrast with renewing grace. The expression passed away, he uses in the sense of fading away, as things that are of short duration are wont to fall off, when they have passed their proper season. Hence it is only the new man, that flourishes and is vigorous (552) in the kingdom of Christ.
(551) “ Et estre tenu pour membre de ceste saincte compagnie;” — “And to be regarded as a member of that holy society.”
(552) “ C’est… dire, dont il falle faire cas;” — “That is to say, that we must esteem.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(17) Therefore if any man be in Christ.To be in Christ, in St. Pauls language, is for a man to be united with him by faith and by baptism (Rom. 6:3-4), to claim personally what had been secured to him as a member of the race for whom Christ died. In such a case the man is born again (Tit. 3:5)there is a new creation; the man, as the result of that work, is a new creature. The old things of his life, Jewish expectations of a Jewish kingdom, chiliastic dreams, heathen philosophies, lower aims, earthly standardsthese things, in idea at least, passed away from him at the time when he was united with Christ. We may trace an echo of words of Isaiahs that may have floated in the Apostles memory: Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold I make new things (Isa. 43:18-19). The words in italics are in the LXX. the same as those which St. Paul uses here.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
17. Therefore Rather, so that, in accordance with these new aspects.
The newness which the man sees in all things else is truly in himself. For as, according to 2Co 5:14, all are dead from the primitive Edenic life, and, 2Co 5:15, are made alive by Christ’s death, so this seeing all things as new is the effect of that new consciousness of a renovated life.
All things are become new Visibly to us, because we are new. And this our consciousness of renewal is a gleam of the grand regeneration initiated by the cross of Christ and consummated at Rev 21:1. To say, with Meyer and others, that this is rabbinical language, is pitiable. It comes, as phrase, from Isa 65:17; as thought, it comes from the great fact that Christ’s cross, conditionally, regenerates the man and brings forth a new world. To compare with this the language of the rabbins, that a proselyte was a new creature, belittles the great truth.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new (or ‘the old has passed away, the new has come’).’
As a result of that if any man is in Christ he is a new creature, newly created in Christ. When a man is ‘in Christ’ through his response to the word of the cross everything is changed for him. All the old things, his old life, his old ambitions, his old aims, are passed away. He is a transformed person. His whole life has become new. He is a new creation. He lives only for Christ, and as it were allows Christ to live out His life through him (2Co 5:15). He is born anew of the Spirit (Joh 3:5-6), and made a partaker of the divine nature (2Pe 1:4).
Alternately this could be translated, ‘there is a new creation’. Both translations are equally possible, and the word does normally refer to ‘the creation’ elsewhere. But the meaning then is almost the same. It means that for the man in Christ the whole creation becomes new. He looks at everything in a different way, and from a different point of view. He has entered into the new beginning, the Kingly rule of God over His ‘new’ creation, which has come in Christ.
However, the continuation from 2Co 5:16, and the statement in 2Co 5:15 strongly favour that we see it as meaning ‘a new creature’. The point there is that such a one is different, and that is why he sees things so differently. He is a totally new person. On the other hand the transition to ‘all things’ in 2Co 5:18 has been suggested as favouring ‘a new creation’, (although ‘all things’ can probably there mean something else).
The word ‘new’ means ‘something different from before’. It means here totally new. He is a transformed person. What is common to both interpretations is that for the man in Christ life changes. He has a new perspective. He lives a new life. He is thus a ‘new’ person.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
2Co 5:17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, &c. Gal 6:14-15 may give some light to this place. To connect this and the preceding verse with St. Paul’s discourse here, they must be understood in reference to the false apostle, against whom St. Paul is here justifying himself;making it a grand point, in this as well as his former epistle, to shew that what the false Apostle gloried in was no just cause of boasting. Pursuant to this just design of sinking the authority and credit of that false apostle, St. Paul, in this and the following verses, insinuates these two things: 1. That the ministry of reconciliation being committed to him, they should not forsake him to hearken to and follow that pretender. 2. That they being in Christ, and so a new creation, should, as he does, not know any man in the flesh,not esteem or glory in that false apostle, because he might perhaps pretend to have seen our Saviour in the flesh, or to have heard him, or the like. The original word , signifies creation, and is so translated. Rom 8:22 and the passage may either mean, as above, that if any one be in Christ, it is as if he were in a new creation, wherein all former relations, considerations, and interests are ceased, and all things in that state are new to him; or it may imply (and I doubt not but the word takes in both) that there is a new creation in his heart,his appetites, apprehensions, and pursuits being changed, and his life actually amended and fully reformed.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
2Co 5:17 . Inference from 2Co 5:16 . If, namely, the state of matters is such as is stated in 2Co 5:16 , that now we no longer know any one as respects his human appearance, and even a knowledge of Christ of that nature, once cherished, no longer exists with us, it follows that the adherents of Christ, who are raised above such a knowledge of Christ after a mere sensuous standard, are quite other than they were before ; the Christian is a new creature , to whom the standard is no longer suitable. The apostle might have continued with instead of ; in which case he would have assigned as ground of the changed knowledge the changed quality of the objects of knowledge. He might also, with just as much logical accuracy, infer, from the fact of the knowledge being no longer , that the objects of knowledge could no longer be the old ones, to which the old way of knowing them would still be applicable, but that they must be found in a quality wholly new. He argues not ex causa, but ad causam . The former he would have done with , the latter he does with (in opposition to Hofmann’s objection).
] a Christian ; for through faith Christ is the element in which we live and mov.
] for the pre-Christian condition, spiritual and moral, is abolished and done away by God through the union of man with Christ (2Co 5:18 ; Eph 2:10 ; Eph 4:21 ; Col 3:9-10 ; Rom 6:6 ), and the spiritual nature and life of the believer are constituted quite anew (comp. 2Co 5:14-15 ), so that Christ Himself lives in him (Gal 2:20 ) through His Spirit (Rom 8:9 f.). See on Gal 6:15 . The form of the expression (its idea is not different from the , Tit 3:5 ; Joh 3:3 ; Jas 1:18 ) is Rabbinical ; for the Rabbins also regarded the man converted to Judaism as . See Schoettgen, Hor. I. pp. 328, 704 f., and Wetstei.
. . .] Epexegesis of ; the old, the pre-Christian nature and life, the pre-Christian spiritual constitution of man, is passed away; behold the whole the whole state of man’s personal life has become new. [236] There is too slight a resemblance for us to assume for certain a reminiscence of Isa 43:18 f., or Isa 65:17 ; as even Chrysostom and his followers give no hint of such an echo. By the of vivid realization, and introduced without connecting particle (“demonstrativum rei presentis,” Bengel; comp. 2Co 6:9 ), as well as by the emphatically prefixed (comp. 2Co 12:11 ), a certain element of triumph is brought into the representation.
The division, according to which the protasis is made to go on to (Vulgate: “si qua ergo in Christo nova creatura;” or is taken as masculine: “si quis ergo mecum est in Christo regeneratus,” Cornelius a Lapide), has against it the fact, that in that case the apodosis would contain nothing else than was in the protasis; besides, the prefixing of . would not be adequately accounted for.
[236] Not only in reference to sin is the old passed away and everything become new (Theodoret: ), but also certainly, however, in consequence of the reconciliation appropriated in faith in relation to the knowledge and consciousness of salvation, as well as to the whole tendency of disposition and will. Chrysostom and Theophylact unsuitably mix up objective Judaism as also included, and in doing so the latter arbitrarily specializes : . . .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
DISCOURSE: 2021
THE CHRISTIAN A NEW CREATURE
2Co 5:17. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
A FAITHFUL discharge of our duty to God has in every age rather provoked the displeasure, than conciliated the favour, of a wicked world. The most eminent characters, instead of escaping censure by means of their distinguished piety, have on the contrary incurred the greatest portion of obloquy and reproach. It was thus that St. Pauls love and zeal were requited by many at Corinth; he was deemed beside himself. But indifferent both to their censure and applause, he declared to them the motives by which he was actuated; he told them plainly that he was under the constraining influence of the love of Christ, and that, however strange his views and actions might appear, they, if they were Christians indeed, would certainly adopt and imitate them; their present views and habits would pass away, and all become new. In the words of the text we have the character of a Christian,
I.
Figuratively expressed
A man is said to be in Christ, when he is engrafted into him as a branch of the living vine, or, in other words, when he truly believes in Christ: he is then a Christian. But in order to shew what a change every man experiences when he becomes a Christian, the Apostle says of him that he is a new creation [Note: .]. In this term there is a reference to the creation of the world, which may be considered as a type or pattern of that work which God performs in the hearts of his people. The correspondence between them may be seen in the manner, the order, and the end of their formation
1.
In the manner
[The world was created by God, according to his own sovereign will, without the intervention of human aid: and, though brought into existence in a moment, was gradually perfected in its various parts [Note: Gen 1:3-31.]. Thus the souls of Gods people are regenerated purely by the sovereign will of God, and entirely through the agency of his word and Spirit [Note: Jam 1:18. Joh 1:13. Tit 3:5.]; though they use the appointed means, it is God alone that renders those means effectual [Note: 1Co 3:5-6 and Eph 2:10.]; He who made the light to shine out of darkness, shines into their hearts to give them the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ [Note: 2Co 4:6.]. There is an instant of time, however unknown to us, when the new man as well as the old, receives the vital principle; a moment, wherein we are quickened from the dead, and pass from death unto life: but the work of grace is carried on in a constant progression, and the inward man is renewed day by day [Note: 2Co 4:16.].]
2.
In the order
[Light was the first thing that was produced in the material world: and, after that, the confused chaos was reduced to such a state as that there should be an harmony in all the parts, and a subserviency in each to the good of the whole. Thus light is first darted into the mind of the regenerate man [Note: Col 3:10.]; a view of his guilt and misery is given to him, and then his disorderly passions, which blinded his judgment and sensualized his soul, are rendered subject to reason and religion [Note: Eph 1:17-18. Col 1:9-10.].]
3.
In the end
[The world was formed by God for his own glory: as all things were by him, so also were they for him [Note: Col 1:16. Rev 4:11.], It is for this end also that he renews the souls of men after his own image. He rejoices indeed in the good of his creatures, and in a subordinate measure may propose that as the end of his dispensations: but we are assured his principal intent is, to shew forth the exceeding riches of his own grace, and to exalt himself in the eyes of his redeemed people [Note: Eph 2:7.].]
We are at no loss to understand the preceding figure, since we have, in the text, its import,
II.
Plainly declared
Justly is a work of grace represented as a new creation; for, as in the reduction of the confused chaos to order and beauty, so also in the restoration of the soul after Gods image, old things pass away and all things become new. The Christian experiences this change,
1.
In his views of every important subject
[He once judged sin to be a light and venial evil: if it were of a very gross nature indeed, or committed against himself in particular, he might feel some indignation against it: but if it were not reprobated by the world, or injurious to himself, he would behold it without sorrow and practise it without remorse. But very different are his views of it when once his eyes are opened to behold it in its true colours: it then appears to him as base, loathsome, abominable: he hates it from his inmost soul: he desires deliverance from it as much as from hell itself: he would not harbour it in his heart for one moment, but would extirpate it utterly, as well from his thoughts as from his actions. Nor are his sentiments less altered respecting Christ: he once felt no love towards him, notwithstanding he complimented him with the name of Saviour. But now the name of Jesus is precious to him: he is filled with admiring thoughts of his incomprehensible love: he adores him with devoutest affection; and cleaves to him with full purpose of heart. He once saw no beauty nor comeliness in him; but now views him as fairer than ten thousand, and altogether lovely. The same change takes place with respect to the world, and holiness, and every thing that has any relation to eternity: so that he really becomes altogether a new creature.]
2.
In the great ends and aim of his life
[The unregenerate man, to whatever class he may belong, whether he be sensual and profane, or moral and devout, invariably makes self the principle and end of all his actions: his life is one continued scene of self-seeking, self-pleasing, self-complacency. He makes his very duties to God subservient to his main end of gratifying his desire after self-approbation and the applause of man. But these old desires are mortified when once he becomes a real Christian: they will indeed often rise in his mind, because he is renewed only in part; but he has a far higher end, which he infinitely prefers, and to which he gives a deliberate, determined ascendency. He has a concern for the honour of his God; and he strives that God in all things may be glorified through Christ Jesus. Whether his actions be of a civil or religious nature, he still proposes to himself the same end, to glorify God with his body and his spirit which are Gods [Note: 1Pe 4:11. 1Co 6:20. 1Co 10:31.]. To this the Apostle seems to have peculiar respect in the preceding context [Note: See ver. 15. with which, rather than with ver. 16. the text is connected.]; nor is there any thing that more strongly characterizes the child of God.]
Application
1.
Let every one put this question to himself, Am I a real Christian?
[The Apostle leaves no room for exceptions in favour of any man whatsoever; if any man be a Christian, he is, and must be, a new creature. Nor does this import a mere change from profligacy to morality, or from a neglect of outward duties to the performance of them: the change must be entire; it must pervade every faculty of the soul; it must influence all our words and actions, our thoughts and desires, our motives and principles. Has then this great change been accomplished in us? On this point eternity depends. O that we might not give sleep to our eyes or slumber to our eyelids, till we can return a favourable answer upon sure and scriptural grounds!]
2.
Let those who have experienced a work of grace, seek to have it carried on and perfected in their souls
[It must ever be remembered, that the renovation of the soul is a gradual and progressive work: we are to be continually putting off the old man, and putting on the new [Note: Eph 4:22-24.]. Let us then not rest in low attainments; but rather, forgetting the things that are behind, let us press forward unto that which is before. Let us beg of God to perfect that which concerneth us, and to form us altogether into his own image in righteousness and true holiness. It is by our progress that we must manifest the work to have been begun; and then only can we be sure that our path is right, when, like the light, it shineth more and more unto the perfect day.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (18) And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; (19) To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
There is somewhat very blessed in what the Apostle hath here set down, both in its effects, and in its cause. Paul first marks the effects. A man in Christ is a new creature. How comes he so? He then assigns the cause: the cause is of God. All things are of God. From everlasting, Jehovah in his threefold character of Persons, loved the Church in Christ, with an everlasting love. And each glorious Person gave manifestations of it. God the Father chose the Church in Christ, gave the Church to Christ, willed the being, and the well-being of the Church in Christ, before all worlds.: And when in the time-state of the Church, she fell in the Adam – nature of sin and transgression; God was in Christ reconciling the world the Church, unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. See 1Jn 2:2 and Commentary. God the Son loved the Church, betrothed the Church to himself before time, and in time redeemed her by his blood. And God the Holy Ghost anointed the Church with her glorious Husband and Head before all time, and in the day of time, in her effectual calling, regenerated her nature in Christ Jesus. Hence, in every individual instance of Christ’s mystical body, everyone that is in Christ is a new creature.
And what is highly worthy the Reader’s closest regard is this, that the new creature is a change of the whole man. A new heart, and a new mind, the Lord saith, I will give you, and a right spirit I will put within you, Eze 36:26 . So that it is a new creature, not a new name; a new principle altogether, not a new opinion. And indeed, the very name implies as much. For a new creature can only be produced by the same Creator which gave the being at the first. Creation-work can only be from God; and that without any other pre-disposing cause. Reader! mark well the features of character in the new creature! Then see if it be your portion. Moreover, the Apostle saith: All things are of God. So that the new creature, with all the properties which define the new-birth, are of divine origin, and come from divine giving. The new nature, the new heart, the new being, the new life, the new light, the new mind, yea, everything which can be said to constitute newness of character; all are of God. Are they new born? Then is it not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, Joh 3:8Joh 3:8 . Are they renewed in the spirit of the mind? This also is of God. Tit 3:4-6 . Are they quickened to a new life? Jesus saith: I am the light, and the life of men, Joh 8:12 . In short, everything in the new creation, both on cause, and effect, is of the Lord. I create the fruit of the lips: peace, peace to him that is far off; and to him that is near, saith the Lord, and I will heal him. Isa 57:19 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
XXIX
THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION
2Co 5:17-7:16
This discussion commences at 2Co 5:17 , and extends to the end of 2Co 7 . Before going forward with this discussion, I want to call attention to some critical questions involved in the preceding chapter. In 2Co 5:11 , what is the meaning of the “fear of the Lord” “Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men”? Does it mean that the dreadfulness of God, or the fear that men may have of God? My answer is that it means God’s fearfulness or dreadfulness, his awful character in holding each sinner to strict account for all of his sins “Knowing the fear of the Lord.”
In 2Co 5:14 , “The love of Christ constraineth us” does the love of Christ here mean Christ’s love for us, or our love for Christ that does the constraining? My answer is, it means our love for Christ, that is superinduced by our conception of Christ’s love for us. When we relied upon Christ’s love for us, that awakened our love for Christ, and that constrains us to do what we do for Christ. What is the meaning of “constrain”? That is, does it simply mean to impel, or does it manifest its etymological meaning of narrowing down or shutting up to, so that we cannot do anything but that? Virtually it means the latter that my love for Christ shuts me up to doing what I do. In other words, Luther said when they demanded that he recant, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” That is, his love of Christ put it out of his power to abjure his conception of justification by faith.
2Co 5:17 says, “Wherefore ‘if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.” “Therefore” always refers back, and there are two things to which it refers back: (1) 2Co 5:15 , that Christ died for us, and so we are under obligation not to live unto ourselves, but unto Christ. (2) 2Co 5:16 , “As Christ died for us, we henceforth know no man, after the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” These are the two reasons why a man is a new creature. The old things have passed away, meaning that old things are covered by new things. After conversion, a man is a new creature. Before conversion a man is his own guide, and the knowledge he has is after worldly understanding. I once heard a sermon preached on this text, and one of the members said, “I have found out by that text that I am not a Christian.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Old things have not passed away, and all things have not become new. My wife is not new. The sun shines as it did before, and I get hungry as I did before. According to that sermon I am not converted.” That preacher did not understand the force of the “therefore.” He did not see in what respects a man was new that he is new in that he no longer lives unto himself but unto Christ, and no longer forms his judgment by worldly knowledge, but by spiritual knowledge. All of the old things that touch these points have passed away.
I heard a very prominent Baptist preacher, without knowledge of Greek, or a critical study of the text, preach on that text to set forth the evidences of conversion. He enumerated a dozen evidences by which one might know he was a Christian, without noticing either one of the two that the text expresses. When he got through I said, “Whenever you take a text there is always a better sermon in it, according to its true meaning, than any sermon you can preach away from it. Everything you said was true, but you ought to have gotten it from other scriptures.”
In preaching on the evidences of conversion from this text one must confine himself to this line of thought that an unconverted man lives unto himself and decides all questions according to the way it pleases him, but the converted man is a new creature in that respect, and decides things as Christ would have him decide, though contrary to his inclinations.
When the Baptist General Convention met at Belton I preached a sermon on “The Ministerial Office,” and commenced the sermon with stating that every preacher was under obligation when he selected a text to give its primary meaning and then its contextual meaning. Then he may deduce from the principles involved a new line of thought. But his new theme must be a logical development from the primary and contextual meaning. He should never take a text and preach a sermon without telling what it means primarily, and in its context. The most suitable description of a sermon that violates this rule is credited to a Negro: First, he took his text; second, he left it; third, he never got back to it.
The new creation may mean a great deal more than Paul says here, but all the meaning here is that a man who is in Christ no longer lives unto himself, but unto Christ, and no longer judges according to the spirit of the flesh, but after the Spirit of God.
We now come to the most important part of this second letter. We may make mistakes about some things in this letter, and the mistakes will not be fatal, but if we make a mistake on the reconciliation part of this letter we have made a radical mistake. 2Co 5:18-21 contain a brief discussion of reconciliation. If one understands these verses, he is a pretty sound theologian. The word “reconciliation,” first of all, implies that there has been a previous enmity. Second, the ground of the enmity is that man is a sinner. Third, it implies that, being a sinner, he is lost. All of that can be brought out in this passage clearly.
What does reconciliation mean? That the two at enmity have been brought to perfect peace. Who is the author of this reconciliation? “All things are of God, who reconciled us to himself.” There never was a case where a man at enmity with God was himself the cause or the occasion of the reconciliation. Then what is the meritorious ground of the reconciliation? “Who reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ.” The ground of the reconciliation is what Jesus has done. What the method of the reconciliation? “God was in Christ recon” oiling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.” They must be reckoned somewhere. Look at the last verse: “He hath made him to be sin for us.”
The method of reconciliation is to impute the man’s sins to Christ, and not to the man, and impute Christ’s righteousness to the man. Christ is to be accounted a sinner in the place of the man, and the man righteous in the place of Christ. God made the just one to take the place of the unjust one. The strongest passage in the word of God on the doctrine of substitution and imputation 2Co 5:21 . No man who denies what is called the doctrine of imputation has ever been able properly to interpret this passage.
This method is perfectly in harmony with what the prophet declared in Isa 53:5 : “Our iniquities were laid on him. By his stripes we are healed. The chastisement of our peace was on him, and because it was on him it pleased the Lord to bruise him.” God bruised him. He poured out his soul unto death and made an offering of himself for the sinner.
What is the blessing that hereby comes to the sinner? The forgiveness of sin. If the sinner’s sins are charged to somebody else, and that sinner is acquitted, then he is free. If a brother owes $100 and the surety pays it, the creditor cannot collect that $100 from the original debtor, for the debt has been paid by the surety. So far we have considered reconciliation Godward. God cannot, by his nature and attributes, be reconciled to the sinner until satisfaction be made to his infracted law. He must be propitiated before he can become propitious. His justice claims must be met and satisfied.
But what is the ministry of the reconciliation? The text says, “And hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” The ministry of reconciliation is God’s appointing men to go and preach the terms of reconciliation. What authority then is conferred upon the preacher that goes to preach this? “We are ambassadors of Christ.” What is an ambassador? The United States sends an ambassador to England, and gives him credentials. At the court of St. James in England he is the representative of the United States. Whatever he does under that authority binds the United States. But an ambassador is not allowed to go beyond his instructions, and any ambassador that goes beyond them must be held responsible to the government that sent him.
A preacher then goes with divine instructions not to say, “peace, peace when there is no peace,” but to set plainly before the unconverted the only terms of reconciliation that the sinner shall repent of his sins and accept the Lord, and the evidence that he has accepted Christ is that he no longer lives unto himself but unto Christ, no longer as the world judges, but according to the Spirit of God. That is the whole subject of the gospel in a nutshell. It is of the highest importance that a preacher should understand it. “We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us: We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God.” I consider that the most important thought in the second letter. The work of Christ reconciles God to man. The work of the Holy Spirit reconciles man to God.
Taking up 2Co 6 , let us advance in the thought. What is the time to be reconciled? At an acceptable time I hearkened unto thee, And in a day of salvation did I succor thee; Behold, now is the acceptable time; Behold, now is the day of salvation. That is, no minister has a right to treat with a sinner on the morrow, next week, or next year. He has to hold the sinner down in every sermon to immediate reconciliation with Christ.
Mr. Spurgeon, in talking to his preacher-students, tells of an incident that he witnessed. He was visiting an Episcopalian preacher, and a man under conviction of sin came to see his pastor. He told Mr. Spurgeon to stay and hear what the man had to say. The sinner stated his case. The preacher said, “You go home and read a certain book on the ‘Evidences of Christianity’ and read certain passages, and pray to the Lord, and in a week come back to see me.” Mr. Spurgeon leaped to his feet and said, “My dear sir, don’t dismiss that man that way. You have no right to do it. He comes to you as an anxious sinner, for you to tell him what to do, and you have marked out a line of conduct that may take him beyond his life time. If you will permit me, I will tell him what to do. Let him now accept Christ; let us pray now that he may at once accept Christ.” The Episcopalian said, “If you want to do it, do so.” Mr. Spurgeon said to the man, “Will you right now look to the Lord Jesus Christ while we pray,” and he knelt down to pray and the man arose happily converted.
We should never postpone a convicted sinner’s case. If the man is not under conviction we may work to convict. But when a contrite and penitent man comes, who feels that he is a sinner, and wants to know what to do to be saved, we should deal with him just as Paul did with that jailer at midnight, who said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” He was saved that very night. There is the great failure in most meetings.
One Sunday in Oklahoma City I preached three times. I suppose there were fully 2,500 that heard the sermons. The audience room was very large, and it was crowded. In the afternoon I was preaching to men, and I came to the point of immediate reconciliation to God. Since God is the author of this reconciliation, and since the blessing of reconciliation is remission of sins and since that comes by imputation of our guilt to Christ, and the ‘imputation of his righteousness to us, what use is there for us to take time? If salvation be a gift, how long does it take to receive a gift? A wonderful impression was made. Three men came to see me after the sermon on the subject of immediate acceptance of Christ. One of them offered me an extravagant sum of money if I would stay and hold a meeting.
I heard a very distinguished preacher take this text: “We beseech you in Christ’s stead be ye reconciled to God.” The main thing he preached about was this: That there were two parties to the original enmity, God and man; that the man did not have to do anything to reconcile God; that the man was the only fellow out of it; that God is already reconciled, and the man must bring himself to bear upon reconciling himself. When he got through I said, “Do you know that you have made a dreadful mistake? God’s reconciliation is in Christ, and so long as man rejects Christ, God is not reconciled to that man; the wrath of God is on him,” It was Christ that appeased the wrath of God by dying for the sinner, but it does not follow that because Christ died nearly 1900 years ago the law has nothing against us. It has nothing against us only when we accept Christ.
The reconciliation of God to us is not out of Christ, but in Christ, but we get in touch with that reconciliation when we accept Christ.
What then should be the conduct of a preacher who has this ministry of reconciliation? 2Co 6:3-10 constitute a lesson to a preacher: “Giving no occasion of stumbling in anything, that our ministration be not blamed; but in everything commending ourselves, as ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, in pureness, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”
Now comes another point in the argument since a man who is a new creature ‘is to live not unto himself but unto Jesus Christ, how does it affect his past relations with men and things? 2Co 6:14-17 answer: “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity, or what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols, for we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, And touch no unclean thing. What follows from being a new creature? A man must draw a line of demarcation between himself and every evil tiling and evil association. The argument is tremendous.
We now come to the second and most important part of the whole letter his discussion of repentance. What precedes repentance? Godly sorrow, or contrition. “Godly sorrow worketh repentance.” What does repentance mean? A change of mind toward God on account of sin. How is repentance distinguished from worldly sorrow? Worldly sorrow has a different origin; it is remorse. How is repentance evidenced? Look at verse 11: “For behold, this selfsame thing, that ye were made sorry after a Godly sort, what earnest care it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging.” They had partaken of the sin of that fornicator, and were not disturbed until Paul wrote this letter which brought about Godly sorrow in their hearts, and led them to repent. Their repentance was evidenced by its fruits. They cleared themselves of the offense by excluding that man, and what is true of Godly sorrow and repentance there is true of repentance on the part of the sinner. There is no other mill that grinds out that kind of grist. John the Baptist said, “Bring forth fruits meet for repentance. Don’t oppress the poor, but be content with your wage.” If a man is a Christian let him prove it by a Christian life.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the meaning of “fear of the Lord” in 2Co 5:11 ?
2. What is the meaning of “constrain” in 2Co 5:14 ?
3. What is the force of “therefore” in 2Co 5:17 , and what the two reasons given in this passage why a man is a new creature?
4. What is the meaning and application of “old things . . . they are become new” in 2Co 5:17 ? Illustrate.
5. What bearing has 2Co 5:17 on the evidence of salvation?
6. What is the preacher’s duty relative to his text when he goes to preach, and what is an illustration of a violation of this rule given by the author?
7. What, according to the author’s estimate, is the most important part of this letter, and why?
8. What does the word “reconciliation” imply?
9. What does it mean?
10. Who is the author of our reconciliation in salvation?
11. What is the meritorious ground of reconciliation?
12. What is the method of this reconciliation?
13. What is the strongest passage in the Word of God on imputation, and the prophetic teaching on this subject?
14. What is the blessing of reconciliation? Illustrate
15. What is the ministry of the reconciliation?
16. What is the authority conferred upon the preacher? Illustrate,
17. What, then, the preacher’s evident duty?
18. What reconciles God to man, and what reconciles men to God?
19. What is the time of reconciliation, and why? Illustrate.
20. What illustration of a misconception, of reconciliation, and how did the author correct this misconception?
21. What should be the conduct of a preacher who has this reconciliation?
22. How does the “new creation” affect a man’s past relations with men and things?
23. What is the second most important part of this letter?
24. What precedes repentance?
25. What does repentance mean?
26. How is repentance distinguished from worldly sorrow?
27. How is repentance evidenced, and particularly in this case?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Ver. 17. Is a new creature ] Either a new man or no man in Christ. Get into him therefore with all speed; for till this be done, though thou shouldest spend thy time in gathering up pearls and jewels, thou art an undone creature.
All things are become new ] The substance of the soul is the same, the qualities and operations altered. In regeneration our natures are translated, not destroyed, no, not our constitution and complexion. As the melancholy man doth not cease to be so after conversion, only the humour is sanctified to a fitness for godly sorrow, holy meditation, &c., so of other humours.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
17. ] So that (additional inference from what has gone before: hardly as Meyer, from 2Co 5:16 only : the death of 2Co 5:15 , as well as the new knowledge of 2Co 5:16 , going to make up the ) if any man is in Christ (far better than ‘whoever is in Christ.’ See note on Phi 4:8 . ‘ In Christ ,’ i.e. in union with Him: Christ being ‘the element in which by faith we live and move,’ as Meyer), he is a new creature ( , ‘ creation ,’ the act, implying here the result of the act. See ref. and Col 3:10-11 ; Eph 2:10 ; Eph 4:23 .
‘He has received,’ ‘passed into,’ ‘a new life,’ Joh 3:3 ): the old things (of his former life ‘all the old selfish and impure motives, views, and prejudices,’ De Wette) have passed away (there does not appear to be any allusion, as in Chrys., Theophyl., to the passing away of Judaism, but only to the new birth , the antiquation of the former unconverted state, with all that belonged to it); behold (a reminiscence of Isa 43:18-19 , , ), they have become new (see var. readd.). The arrangement of the sentence followed by the Vulg., al., ‘Si qua ergo in Christo nova creatura, vetera transierunt,’ is inadmissible, because the second member would be a mere reassertion of the first.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
2Co 5:17-19 . IN CHRIST ALL IS NEW, AS FROM GOD WHO RECONCILED THE WORLD TO HIMSELF IN CHRIST.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
2Co 5:17 . . . .: so that (a consequence of the higher view of Christ explained in the last verse) if any man (note the universality of the doctrine which he expounds) be in Christ, there is a new creation . To be is a very different thing from claiming to be “of Christ,” sc. , of the Christ-party (1Co 1:12 , chap. 2Co 10:7 ); this indeed is exactly the distinction which St. Paul has had in mind in the last verse. The expression “a new creation” was a common Rabbinical description of a converted proselyte (see Wetstein in loc. ); but its meaning was enriched in the religion of the Incarnation ( cf. Joh 3:3 , Rom 6:4 , Eph 2:10 ; Eph 4:23 , Col 3:10 , etc.). The Vulgate “si qua ergo in Christo nova creatura,” which takes with , is plainly a mistake. . . .: the old things have passed away; behold, they are become new, sc. , not only the ancient customs of Jewish ritual observance, but the old ways of conceiving of the Messiah who was to come; more generally, the old thoughts of God and of sin and salvation nave received fresh colouring they are “become new” ( cf. Heb 8:13 ). The words of Isa 43:18-19 offer a close verbal parallel: ( cf. Isa 65:17 , Rev 21:4-5 ), but the parallel is rather in words than in sense. The thought of the new interpretation of life offered in the Incarnation carries us a step beyond the prophets of the Old Covenant. St. Paul’s words show how completely he regarded “the Death of Christ as a new epoch in the history of the human race. Had he foreseen distinctly that a new era would be dated from that time; that a new society, philosophy, literature, moral code, would grow up from it over continents of which he knew not the existence; he could not have more strongly expressed his sense of the greatness of the event than in what is here said” (Stanley).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
2 Corinthians
AN IMPOSSIBILITY MADE POSSIBLE
Jer 13:23
Put these three texts together. The first is a despairing question to which experience gives only too sad and decisive a negative answer. It is the answer of many people who tell us that character must be eternal, and of many a baffled man who says, ‘It is of no use-I have tried and can do nothing.’ The second text is the grand Christian answer, full of confidence. It was spoken by one who had no superficial estimate of the evil, but who had known in himself the power of Christ to revolutionise a life, and make a man love all he had hated, and hate all he had loved, and fling away all he had treasured. The last text predicts the completion of the renovating process lying far ahead, but as certain as sunrise.
I. The unchangeableness of character, especially of faults.
Now we do not need to assert that a man has no power of self-improvement or reformation. The exhortations of the prophet to repentance and to cleansing imply that he has. If he has not, then it is no blame to him that he does not mend. Experience shows that we have a very considerable power of such a kind. It is a pity that some Christian teachers speak in exaggerated terms about the impossibility of such self-improvement.
But it is very difficult.
Note the great antagonist as set forth here-Habit, that solemn and mystical power. We do not know all the ways in which it operates, but one chief way is through physical cravings set up. It is strange how much easier a second time is than a first, especially in regard to evil acts. The hedge once broken down, it is very easy to get through it again. If one drop of water has percolated through the dyke, there will be a roaring torrent soon. There is all the difference between once and never; there is small difference between once and twice. By habit we come to do things mechanically and without effort, and we all like that. One solitary footfall across the snow soon becomes a beaten way. As in the banyan-tree, each branch becomes a root. All life is held together by cords of custom which enable us to reserve conscious effort and intelligence for greater moments. Habit tends to weigh upon us with a pressure ‘heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.’ But also it is the ally of good.
The change to good is further made difficult because liking too often goes with evil, and good is only won by effort. It is a proof of man’s corruption that if left alone, evil in some form or other springs spontaneously, and that the opposite good is hard to win. Uncultivated soil bears thistles and weeds. Anything can roll downhill. It is always the least trouble to go on as we have been going.
Further, the change is made difficult because custom blinds judgment and conscience. People accustomed to a vitiated atmosphere are not aware of its foulness.
How long it takes a nation, for instance, to awake to consciousness of some national crime, even when the nation is ‘Christian’! And how men get perfectly sophisticated as to their own sins, and have all manner of euphemisms for them!
Further, how hard it is to put energy into a will that has been enfeebled by long compliance. Like prisoners brought out of the Bastille.
So if we put all these reasons together, no wonder that such reformation is rare.
I do not dwell on the point that it must necessarily be confined within very narrow limits. I appeal to experience. You have tried to cure some trivial habit. You know what a task that has been-how often you thought that you had conquered, and then found that all had to be done over again. How much more is this the case in this greater work! Often the efforts to break off evil habits have the same effect as the struggles of cattle mired in a bog, who sink the deeper for plunging. The sad cry of many a foiled wrestler with his own evil is, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ We do not wish to exaggerate, but simply to put it that experience shows that for men in general, custom and inclination and indolence and the lack of adequate motive weigh so heavily that a thorough abandonment of evil, much more a hearty practice of good, are not to be looked for when once a character has been formed. So you young people, take care. And all of us listen to-
II. The great hope for individual renewal.
‘If any man be in Christ he is a new creature,’ or as the words might be rendered, ‘there is a new creation,’ and not only is he renewed, but all things are become new. He is a new Adam in a new world.
Now a let us beware of exaggeration about this matter. There are often things said about the effects of conversion which are very far in advance of reality, and give a handle to caricature. The great law of continuity runs on through the change of conversion. Take a man who has been the slave of some sin. The evil will not cease to tempt, nor will the effects of the past on character be annihilated. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,’ remains true. In many ways there will be permanent consequences. There will remain the scars of old wounds; old sores will be ready to burst forth afresh. The great outlines of character do remain.
b What is the condition of renewal?
‘If any man be in Christ’-how distinctly that implies something more than human in Paul’s conception of Christ. It implies personal union with Him, so that He is the very element or atmosphere in which we live. And that union is brought about by faith in Him.
c How does such a state of union with Christ make a man over again?
It gives a new aim and centre for our lives. Then we live not unto ourselves; then everything is different and looks so, for the centre is shifted. That union introduces a constant reference to Him and contemplation of His death for us, it leads to self-abnegation.
It puts all life under the influence of a new love. ‘The love of Christ constraineth.’ As is a man’s love, so is his life. The mightiest devolution is to excite a new love, by which old loves and tastes are expelled. ‘A new affection’ has ‘expulsive power,’ as the new sap rising in the springtime pushes off the lingering withered leaves. So union with Him meets the difficulty arising from inclination still hankering after evil. It lifts life into a higher level where the noxious creatures that were proper to the swamps cannot live. The new love gives a new and mighty motive for obedience.
That union breaks the terrible chain that binds us to the past. ‘All died.’ The past is broken as much as if we were dead. It is broken by the great act of forgiveness. Sin holds men by making them feel as if what has been must be-an awful entail of evil. In Christ we die to former self.
That union brings a new divine power to work in us. ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’
It sets us in a new world which yet is the old. All things are changed if we are changed. They are the same old things, but seen in a new light, used for new purposes, disclosing new relations and powers. Earth becomes a school and discipline for heaven. The world is different to a blind man when cured, or to a deaf one,-there are new sights for the one, new sounds for the other.
All this is true in the measure in which we live in union with Christ.
So no man need despair, nor think, ‘I cannot mend now.’ You may have tried and been defeated a thousand times. But still victory is possible, not without effort and sore conflict, but still possible. There is hope for all, and hope for ME.
III. The completion in a perfectly renewed creation.
It is like some exotic that does not show its true beauty in our greenhouses. The life of a Christian on earth is a prophecy by both its greatness and its smallness, by both its glory and its shame, by both its brightness and its spots. It cannot be that there is always to be this disproportion between aspiration and performance, between willing and doing. Here the most perfect career is like a half-lighted street, with long gaps between the lamps.
The surroundings here are uncongenial to the new creatures. ‘Foxes have holes’-all creatures are fitted for their environment; only man, and eminently renewed man, wanders as a pilgrim, not in his home. The present frame of things is for discipline. The schooling over, we burn the rod. So we look for an external order in full correspondence with the new nature.
And Christ throned ‘makes all things new.’ How far the old is renewed we cannot tell, and we need not ask. Enough that there shall be a universe in perfect harmony with the completely renewed nature, that we shall find a home where all things will serve and help and gladden and further us, where the outward will no more distract and clog the spirit.
Brethren, let that mighty love constrain you; and look to Christ to renew you. Whatever your old self may have been, you may bury it deep in His grave, and rise with Him to newness of life. Then you may walk in this old world, new creatures in Christ Jesus, looking for the blessed hope of entire renewal into the perfect likeness of Him, the perfect man, in a perfect world, where all old sorrows and sins have passed away and He has made all things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours- and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor ‘the cup of blessing’ ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and the old will be one.
Begin with trusting to Him to help you to change a deeper blackness than that of the Ethiopian’s skin, and to erase firier spots than stain the tawny leopard’s hide, and He will make you a new man, and set you in His own time in a ‘new heaven and earth, where dwelleth righteousness.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
if. App-118.
any man. Greek. tis. App-123.
he is. Supply the ellipsis by there is.
a new creature = a new creation.
new. Greek. kainos. See Mat 9:17.
old = the ancient.
behold. App-133.
all things. Texts read “they”.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
17.] So that (additional inference from what has gone before: hardly as Meyer, from 2Co 5:16 only: the death of 2Co 5:15, as well as the new knowledge of 2Co 5:16, going to make up the ) if any man is in Christ (far better than whoever is in Christ. See note on Php 4:8. In Christ, i.e. in union with Him: Christ being the element in which by faith we live and move, as Meyer), he is a new creature (, creation,-the act, implying here the result of the act. See ref. and Col 3:10-11; Eph 2:10; Eph 4:23.
He has received, passed into, a new life, Joh 3:3): the old things (of his former life-all the old selfish and impure motives, views, and prejudices,-De Wette) have passed away (there does not appear to be any allusion, as in Chrys., Theophyl., to the passing away of Judaism, but only to the new birth, the antiquation of the former unconverted state, with all that belonged to it); behold (a reminiscence of Isa 43:18-19- , , ), they have become new (see var. readd.). The arrangement of the sentence followed by the Vulg., al., Si qua ergo in Christo nova creatura, vetera transierunt, is inadmissible, because the second member would be a mere reassertion of the first.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
2Co 5:17. , if any one be in Christ) so as to live in Christ. If any one of those who now hear us, etc. Observe the mutual relation, we in Christ in this passage, and God in Christ, 2Co 5:19; Christ, therefore, is the Mediator and Reconciler between us and God.- , a new creature) Not only is the Christian himself something new; but as he knows Christ Himself, not according to the flesh, but according to the power of His life and resurrection, so he contemplates and estimates himself and all things according to that new condition. Concerning this subject, see Gal 6:15; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10.- , old things) This term implies some degree of contempt. See Gregor. Thaum. Paneg. cum annot., p. 122, 240.-, are passed away) Spontaneously, like snow in early spring.-, behold) used to point out something before us.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
2Co 5:17
2Co 5:17
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature:-If any man, Jew or Gentile, has died to sin and been raised in Christ, he is a new creature-neither Jew nor Gentile. He has new ends, new purposes; his whole soul, mind, and body are consecrated to the new life in Christ. We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:4; Rom 6:11). For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. (Gal 3:27). If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. (Col 3:1). Thus before God and man, we take upon ourselves a solemn obligation, to consecrate, devote, and sanctify ourselves to the service of God. The soul, mind, and body with all their faculties and opportunities are buried out of self and raised in Christ Jesus, that we henceforth be his servants to do his will.
the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.-He has new ends, new aims, new purposes; his whole soul, mind, and body are consecrated to a new life in Christ. [He must abide in Christ, grow in the Christian graces in him. Hence, Paul says: Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. (Rom 13:14). In Christ he finds redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:14), and all spiritual blessings (Eph 1:3).]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
In Christ a New Creation
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation (R. V.marg.).2Co 5:17.
1. The word wherefore, with which the text begins, shows us that the words stand in close connexion with what precedes them, and that, in order to understand their meaning, we must know what is the argument that leads up to them. The Apostle has been dealing with one of his favourite themesthe death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and he has been arguing, as he often does, that that death upon the cross was not an end in itself, but the necessary step towards the resurrection, and that the new life which was manifested in that wonderful victory over the grave, was to be imparted to all who, through faith in Him, partook in the same experience. But, to the mind of St. Paul, this did not only mean that literal death was to be succeeded by a literal resurrection; it meant that, here and now, in the life men live in the flesh, the whole drama of the cross and of the open grave was destined to be re-enacted, and that a death to sin might mean for any man who sought it a resurrection to righteousness. For the Apostle one great effect of the resurrection of Christ was that it set free in the world a new and hitherto undreamed-of power, the power whereby, if belief made a man one with Christ, the greatest marvel might be accomplished, and all that mans past be forgotten in a new and wonderfully altered present. And so he reaches the words we have here to consider, in which he terms such a change nothing less than a new creation.
2. A word on the translation. In the Authorized Version we read If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; and the Revisers have retained this rendering. But they give the literal translation in their marginthere is a new creation. That is, if any man is in Christ, a new creation is the result; a creation not less perfect or majestic than that which the prophet announces, Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; or than that which Christ Himself proclaims, when it is said that He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. Thus in the case of the man that is in Christ Jesus, there is a new creation,a new creation within, a new creation without,a new creation already in part accomplished, but waiting its blessed consummation when the great Creator returns in glory to complete His handiwork within and without, in soul and in body, in heaven and in earth.
First then let us see what is meant by being in Christ; then let us look at the new creation which the man in Christ discovers within him, and finally at the new creation which he finds all around him.
I
In Christ
No words of Scripture, if we except these: God manifest in the flesh, hold within themselves a deeper mystery than this simple formula of the Christian life, in Christ. Indeed, Gods taking upon Himself humanity, and yet remaining God, is hardly more inexplicable to human thought than mans becoming a partaker of the divine nature, and yet remaining man. Both are of those secret things which belong wholly unto God. Yet, great as is the mystery of these words, they are the key to the whole system of doctrinal mysteries. Like the famous Rosetta stone, itself a partial hieroglyph, and thereby furnishing the long-sought clue to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, these words, by their very mystery, unlock all mysteries of the Divine life, letting us into secrets that were hidden from ages and from generations.
The words in Christ or in Jesus Christ occur fifty-five times in the New Testament. Fifty-four of these occasions are in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul; the fifty-fifth is in a benediction in the First Epistle of St. Peter, which is clearly influenced by St. Pauls custom. These figures are not to be dismissed as mere statistics. If a straw shows which way the wind blows, statistics of this kind may show the channels of thought in which the Apostles mind most often ran. They show the Apostle as the founder of Christianity as a working, worshipping religion, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. If we can follow St. Paul in his use of a phrase which recurs whenever he is dealing with the heart of his faith, the idea which was in his mind will take shape in ours, and we shall have a clue to what the Apostle meant when he went about Asia and Europe founding Churches in Christ.
1. The phrase is more fully explained in other parts of the Apostles writings to be such union with Christ as to involve our being crucified with Him, dead, buried, risen, ascended with Him. But what does all this mean? To understand these mystical terms fully, one would need to pass through the experience of which they are the expression. But something may be said by way of indicating the direction in which to look for the explanation.
It is necessary, in order to the new life of heavenly devotion, that the affections be shifted from earth to heaven, from self to God. How is it to be done? It is easy to say, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; but how can I do it? I cannot force myself to love anybody. I cannot even force myself to love a good man. How then can I get to love God, who seems so far away, so impalpable that I cannot grasp Him, so much offended that I dare not approach Him, and so completely out of the sphere of my ordinary life that all human ways of winning my love are impossible on account of the infinite distance between Him and me?
Now, it is perfectly true that under these conditions it is impossible that there should be awakened in any human heart love enough to God to counterbalance the earthly affection. But see how it is all met in Christ. Christ is God manifest in the flesh, so that He can and does come close enough to make it possible for Him to win our affection. And this He does by the beauty of His character, by the tenderness of His heart, by the constancy of His love, by His giving up everything for us, and, above all, by His agony and death for us, to take away our sin, to rescue us from death, to redeem our lives from destruction and to crown us with loving-kindness and tender merciesthus it is that He draws His people to Him with the bonds of an affection which easily becomes paramount and supreme. Those who yield themselves to it are drawn to Him so closely that, spiritually, they are one with Him, just as the true wife is one with the husband whom she loves with all her heart, so thoroughly one with him that what the husband suffers she suffersshe is sick with him, she is pained with him, she is in agony with him, and if he die she dies with himnot literally, of course, but spiritually and really, how really let her altered life after the great crisis only too truthfully tell; and oh, how much of her heart goes after him to the heaven where he is gone!
If a man is in Christ, he must have regeneration; for how can the Head be alive, and the members dead? If a man is in Christ, he must be justified; for how can God approve the Head, and condemn the members? If a man is in Christ, he must have sanctification; for how can the spotlessly Holy remain in vital connexion with one that is unholy? If a man is in Christ, he must have redemption; for how can the Son of God be in glory, while that which He has made a part of His body lies abandoned in the grave of eternal death?1 [Note: A. J. Gordon, In Christ, 10.]
2. Thus we get a profound insight into the Divine method of salvation. God does not work upon the soul by itself; bringing to bear upon it, while yet in its alienation and isolation from Him, such discipline as shall gradually render it fit to be reunited to Him. He begins rather by reuniting it to Himself, that through this union He may communicate to it that Divine life and energy without which all discipline were utterly futile. The method of grace is precisely the reverse of the method of legalism. The latter is holiness in order to union with God; the former, union with God in order to holiness. Hence, the Incarnation, as the starting-point and prime condition of reconciliation to God; since there can be, to use Hookers admirable statement, no union of God with man, without that mean between both which is both. And hence the necessity of incorporation with Christ, that what became possible through the Incarnation may become actual and experimental in the individual soul through faith.
I wish a greater Knowledge than to attain
The knowledge of my self; a greater Gain
Than to augment my self; a greater Treasure
Than to enjoy my self; a greater Pleasure
Than to content my self; how slight and vain
Is all Self-knowledge, Pleasure, Treasure, Gain;
Unless my better Knowledge could retrieve
My Christ; unless my better Gain to thrive
In Christ; unless my better wealth grow rich
In Christ; unless my better Pleasure pitch
On Christ; or else my Knowledge will proclaim
To my own heart, how ignorant I am:
Or else my Gain, so ill improved, will shame
My trade, and shew how much declined I am:
Or else my Treasure will but blot my name
With Bankrupt, and divulge how poor I am:
Or else my Pleasures that so much inflame
My thoughts, will blab how full of sores I am:
Lord, keep me from my self, tis best for me,
Never to own my self, if not in Thee.1 [Note: Francis Quarles.]
3. If, then, we are Christs, we enter spiritually into the fellowship of his sufferings, so that we are crucified with Him, dead with Him, buried with Him, and rise with Him, finding it a second nature thereafter to set our affections on things above. That is what the Apostle means when, after speaking of the Risen Christ, he says: If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. His agnosticism is gone; his guilt and condemnation are gone; his bondage to lust and passion is gone; his heart is set on higher things; God is now the centre of his life, and not only is he himself a new creature, but there is around him a new creation. Earth is much smaller than it used to be, and the infinities of the great universe of God begin to open out to his spirit, even as they began to open out to the intellect of the astronomers after they followed Copernicus to the new centre he had found in the sun.
Nothing is more striking than the breadth of application which this principle of union with Christ has in the gospel. Christianity obliterates no natural relationships, destroys no human obligations, makes void no moral or spiritual laws. But it lifts all these up into a new sphere, and puts upon them this seal and signature of the gospelin Christ. So that while all things continue as they were from the beginning, all, by their readjustment to this Divine character and Person, become virtually new. Life is still of God, but it has this new dependency in Christ. Of him are ye in Christ Jesus. The obligation to labour remains unchanged, but a new motive and a new sanctity are given to it by its relation to Christ: Forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. The marriage relation is stamped with this new signet, Only in the Lord. Filial obedience is exalted into direct connexion with the Son of God: Children obey your parents in the Lord. Daily life becomes a good conversation in Christ. Joy and sorrow, triumph and suffering, are all in Christ. Even truth, as though needing a fresh baptism, is viewed henceforth as it is in Jesus. Death remains, but it is robbed of its sting and crowned with a beatitude, because in Christ, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.
In Christ! How mighty the expression! How singular, yet how exact the description! In Christ, then out of the world. In Christ, then out of self! In Christ, then no more in the flesh, no more in sin, no more in vanity, no more in darkness, no more in the crooked paths of the god of this world.1 [Note: Horatius Bonar.]
4. But if we are to see how much St. Paul meant by being in Christ, we must get at his meaning by an induction rather than a description.
(1) The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). Here in Christ Jesus is a sphere of freedom; and it is freedom of a well-known and recognizable type. It is the freedom by which a higher law and a more developed life-system superseded a lower and less developed one.
It used to be the proud boast of our countrymen that no slave could breathe under the British flag. By setting foot on British soil he ceased to be a slave. The law of freedom superseded the laws of slavery as by a higher right. What our fathers claimed for British rule in the sphere of personal freedom St. Paul claimed for the person of Christ in the sphere of spiritual freedom. No man, however bound in bondage of sin by lusts, passions, habits, superstitions, worldliness, or selfishness could come into Christ without finding his bonds fall from him. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus would set him free from the law of sin and death. When Eliza, the slave-mother in Uncle Toms Cabin, finds that she is sold to a new owner who is going to separate her from her child, she makes a desperate effort to escape. She has been sold in Kentucky: if she can get into Ohio she will be under other laws, and her child will be her own. She slips away from the inn where the sale has been transacted down to the river bank. But there is no boat to take her across! She hides in terror till she hears the hounds baying on her track. Then, with the courage of despair, she leaps out on the floating ice floes in the river; she passes from one to another, her child in her arms, her feet cut and bleeding, till she is almost across the river; then as she nears the other shore a stranger who has watched her flight reaches out a hand and she lands in safetya free woman. The laws that bound her do not run here. They have ceased to have any authority over her.1 [Note: D. Macfadyen, Truth in Religion, 246.]
(2) Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus. Salute Urbanus our fellow-worker in Christ (Rom 16:3; Rom 16:9). In Christ is a sphere of work as well as a sphere of freedom. The nature of the work is tolerably clear from the connexion in which the words occur. Aquila and Priscilla had a church in their house, where they and others constantly endeavoured to justify the ways of God to men; and brought men to the knowledge of God through Christ. To be in Christ was to be a fellow-worker with St. Paul in this great endeavour. In Christ they found a solution of the problem of mans relation to the unseen world. They found the good news of God which lifted away the uncertainties that hung like a mist over mans destiny; and they felt the news so great that they must make it known. They became fellow-workers in the endeavour to bring men into a life which was to be a conscious fellowship with God.
Love is more often the child of service than its parent. Out of the experience of difficulties overcome, of the hearts of men answering to the word of Christ, and the minds of men responding to His Spirit, comes the confidence which is the renewal of faith. It is an old recipe for dealing with scepticism to send it to teach in a slum or a ragged-school. The worth of the spiritual element in life is never so manifest as when we come to know the meaning of life stripped bare of that element. It is then we know what it is to be fellow-workers in Christ.1 [Note: D. Macfadyen.]
(3) Sometimes one gets a flash of insight into St. Pauls mind through a single casual phrase, as when he says, I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not; or, minds corrupted from simplicity toward Christ. The life of humanity as St. Paul sees it in Christ is a clean, sweet, ordered, simple life. Of late much has been said and written of the simple life. But the simple life is not life in a cottage or life in a flat, but life in Christ. And it is that wherever it is lived.
The talk about the simple life is a natural revolt against the complications of a cumbrous civilization which is at some points becoming too heavy for the shoulders that have to carry it. Our churches are like the Italian condottieri in the days when defensive armour had reached its highest point of development, and before guns had been introduced to make armour useless. They were so smothered in armour that when a man fell from his horse he could not rise. He might expire on the ground unless some friend came to release him. With us it is the elaborate organization of life, and the increasing demands of ecclesiastical dominion that are destroying the spontaneity of nature in the souls life.2 [Note: D. Macfadyen.]
(4) But the climax of St. Pauls way of interpreting the Christian life is reached in the phrase in this texta new creation in Christ. Men who live in this sphere of spiritual freedom, work in this atmosphere, and admit the force of this dynamic, undergo a new spiritual creation. The fact has its physical analogy with which every one is familiar. We may have known someone condemned to exile by the doctors. He was told that he could not live in this climate, but if he would go to South Africa or New Zealand or Australia, breathe a drier atmosphere, live in the open air, he might indefinitely prolong his life. He went, and we lost sight of him for a time, but in ten or fifteen years he came back, broad-shouldered, sun-browned, vigorous, hearty, strong. When we saw him we said instinctively, My friend, you are a new man, one would hardly have known you. And the phrase is true enough. The body has been rebuilt, new elements built into it, new energies stored in it, years of hope and service have now become possible for it which were once impossible.
On an early morning of February, his wife awoke, to hear that the light they had waited for more than they that watch for the morning, had risen indeed. She asked, What have you seen? He replied, The Gospel. It came to him at last, after all his thought and study, not as something reasoned out, but as an inspirationa revelation from the mind of God Himself. The full meaning of his answer he embodied at once in a sermon on Christ the Form of the Soul, from the text, Until Christ be formed in you. The very title of this sermon expresses his spiritually illuminated conception of Christ as the indwelling, formative life of the soul, the new creating power of righteousness for humanity. And this conception was soon after more adequately set forth in his book, God in Christ. That he regarded this as a crisis in his spiritual life is evident from his not infrequent reference to it among his Christian friends. He regarded this experience as a personal discovery of Christ, and of God as represented in Him. To those about him he seemed a new man, or rather, the same man with a heavenly investiture. Or, as he himself explained it: I seemed to pass a boundary. I had never been very legal in my Christian life, but now I passed from those partial seeings, glimpses, and doubts, into a clearer knowledge of God and into His inspirations, which I have never wholly lost. The change was into faitha sense of the freeness of God, and the ease of approach to Him.1 [Note: T. T. Munger, Horace Bushnell, 114.]
II
A New Creation Within
1. It is the great characteristic of the New Testament that it demands a new creation. This is its specific message. Other systems that seek to change character and society insist on education, amelioration, reformation or revolution. The New Testament has little to say about any of these, but demands the new creaturea new creation. Nothing is sufficient except a definite change in the spirit of the mana change that is so complete and radical that it must be spoken of as a creation, an act of supernatural Divine grace, which makes the creature new, and all life new with it.
A new creation! Then, from the very root of being, upward throughout all its branches, a marvellous change has taken place a change which nothing can fitly describe, save the creating of all things out of nothing at the beginning, or the new-creating of this corrupted world into a glorious earth and heaven, when the Lord returns to take possession of it as His Kingdom for ever. A new creation!then old feelings, old habits, old tastes, old hopes, old joys, old sorrows, old haunts, old companionships, all are gone! Old things have passed away, all things have become new. Christ in us, and we in Christ,how thorough and profound the change must have been! Christ formed in us, nay, in us the hope of glory; and we created in Christ unto good works after the very likeness of incarnate Godheadhow inconceivably glorious the renewal, the transfiguration wrought in us; for nothing short of transfiguration is it, considered even in its general and most common aspect.
When Jenny Lind, the famous vocalist, suddenly discovered her powers as a singer, it perfectly transformed her whole outlook upon life. She has described the day of the discovery thus: I got up that morning one creature, I went to bed another creature. I had found my power. On that day, remarks her biographer, she woke to herself, she became artistically alive: she felt the inspiration and won the sway which she now felt it was hers to have and to hold. It was a step out into a new world of dominion.
Patrick Daley was one of the first to profess conversion in connexion with Mr. Moodys recent evangelistic services in Boston. He had been a staunch Roman Catholic by persuasion, but a desperate drunkard by practice. With an overpowering desire to be saved from his evil habit, he so far broke through the prejudices of his religion as to go and listen to the great evangelist. There he heard with astonishment and delight that the chief of sinners and the most hopeless of drunkards might find immediate forgiveness and deliverance through surrender to Jesus Christ. He went into the inquiry-room, and trustingly accepted the Saviour, and entered into great peace and joy in believing. Several weeks after his conversion, he approached me at the close of a meeting with his story and his question.
You see, your reverence, I know a good thing when I get it; and when I found salvation, I could not keep it to myself. Peter Murphy lived in the upper story of the same tenement with me. Murphy was a worse drunkard than me, if such a thing could be; and we had gone on many a spree together. Well, when I got saved and washed clean in the blood of Christ, I was so happy I did not know what to do with myself. So I went up to Murphy, and told him what I had got. Poor Peter! he was just getting over a spree, and was pretty sick and sore, and just ready to do anything I told him. So I got him to sign the pledge, and then told him that Jesus alone could help him keep it. Then I got him on his knees, and made him pray and surrender to the Lord, as I had done. You never see such a change in a man as there was in him for the next week. I kept watch of him, and prayed for him, and helped him on the best I could, and, sure, he was a different man. Well, come Sunday morning, Joe Healey called round to pay his usual visit. This was the worst yet; for Healey used to come to see Murphy as regular as Sunday, always bringing a bottle of whisky with him, and these two would spree it all day, till they turned the whole house into a bedlam. Well, I saw Healey coming last Sunday morning, and I was afraid it would be all up with poor Murphy if he got with him. So when I went to the door to let him in, and he said, Good morning, Pat; is Murphy in? I said, No; Murphy is out. He does not live here any longer; and in this way I sent Healey off, and saved Murphy from temptation.
Here was the burden of Patrick Daleys question; for he continued: Did I tell a lie? What I meant was that the old Murphy did not live there any more. For you know Mr. Moody told us that when a man is converted he is a new creature; old things have passed away. And I believe that Murphy is a new creature, and that the old Murphy does not live any more in that attic. That is what I meant. Did I tell a lie?
Candid reader, what should I say? In the light of Pauls great saying, Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, can it be denied that Patrick Daley was right?1 [Note: A. J. Gordon: A Biography, 97.]
2. No such change is possible, men say. Character is not made in a day. All this talk about being born againabout becoming a new manis misleading and mischievous. Yes, it may be, if you do not understand it. Perfection of Christian character is not reached in a day. The telephone was not perfected in a day; but the idea, the essential telephone, was born in a minute. So with the Christian character. Complete realization, says President Harris, lies in the future, but the type itself, in the principle and power of it, is already actual. Because the type now exists, its complete attainment is to be expected. I regard this as one of the most important considerations for Christian ethics as well as one of the most unique features of the Christian religion. It explains and combines the statements of Scripture that man is to be saved in the future and yet is saved in the present; that he will have and that he now has eternal life.
In the life of every man has there been a day when the neavens opened of their own accord, and it is almost always from that very instant that dates his true spiritual personality. It is doubtless at that instant that are formed the invisible, eternal features that we reveal, though we know it not, to angels and to souls. But with most men it is chance alone that has caused the heavens to open; and they have not chosen the face whereby the angels know them in the infinite, nor have they understood how to ennoble and purify its featureswhich do indeed but owe their being to an accidental joy or sadness, an accidental thought or fear. Our veritable birth dates from the day when, for the first time, we feel at the deepest of us that there is something grave and unexpected in life. Some there are who realize suddenly that they are not alone under the sky. To others it will be brusquely revealed, while shedding a tear or giving a kiss, that the source of all that is good and holy from the universe up to God is hidden behind a night, full of too distant stars; a third will see a Divine hand stretched forth between his joy and his misfortune; and yet another will have understood that it is the dead who are in the right. One will have had pity, another will have admired or been afraid. Often does it need almost nothing, a word, a gesture, a little thing that is not even a thought. Before, I loved thee as a brother, John, says one of Shakespeares heroes, admiring the others action, but now, I do respect thee as my soul. On that day it is probable that a being will have come into the world. We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God. But most of us are content to wait till an event charged with almost irresistible radiance intrudes itself violently upon our darkness, and enlightens us, in our despite. We await I know not what happy coincidence, when it may so come about that the eyes of our soul shall be open at the very moment that something extraordinary takes place. But in everything that happens is there light; and the greatness of the greatest of men has but consisted in that they had trained their eyes to be open to every ray of this light.1 [Note: M. Maeterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, 172.]
3. Is not a great deal of moral effort to-day spasmodic and almost fruitless because men do not take themselves in hand with thoroughness? To try to do something right here and there, while the bias of life is left in the wrong direction is a miserable piece of work; patching a rotten garment with bits of virtue; washing a hand when the whole body needs to be plunged in the cleansing fountain. We have known persons who found that their course of conduct was disastrous to them, and under compulsion they have changed it, but they are what they were though their habits have changed; the old spirit still remains, the spirit that seeks its own advantage always. That was the motive in the old habits; they have simply seen that other habits are necessary to serve their purpose. So they are not new creatures though they have new clothes. If a time came when the old habits would serve them again, they would take them on. They remind one of a fable in which the cat is transformed into a princess, but a mouse crosses her path, and in an instant the princess is a cat once more.
Christ did not come into this world to patch up an old religion, merely to mend a hole here, and beautify a spot there, and add a touch to this part or that; He came to make all things new. And when He saves a sinner, He does not propose merely to mend him up a little here and there, to cover over some bad spots in him, and to close up rents in his character by strong patches of the new cloth of grace. Gospel work is not patchwork. Christ does not sew on pieces; He weaves a new garment without seam throughout.1 [Note: J. R. Miller.]
4. This new creation involves certain facts which are worth considering.
(1) It means that we have a new standing before God.If I am a new creation in Christ, then I stand before God, not in myself but in Christ. God sees no longer me, but only Him in whom I amHim who represents me, Christ Jesus, my substitute and surety. In believing, I have become so identified with the Son of His love that the favour with which He regards Him passes over to me, and rests, like the sunshine of the new heavens, upon me. In Christ, and through Christ, I have acquired a new standing before the Father. I am accepted in the beloved. My old standing, namely that of distance, and disfavour, and condemnation, is wholly removed, and I am brought into one of nearness and acceptance and pardon; I am made to occupy a new footing, just as if my old one had never been. Old guilt, heavy as the mountain, vanishes; old dread, gloomy as midnight, passes off; old suspicion, dark as hell, gives place to the joyful confidence arising from forgiveness and reconciliation, and the complete blotting out of sin. All things are made new. I have changed my standing before God; and that simply in consequence of that oneness between me and Christ which has been established through my believing the record given concerning Him. I come to Him on a new footing, for I am in Christ, and in me there has been a new creation.
(2) It points to a new relationship to God.If we are new creatures, then we no longer bear the same relationship to God. Our old connexion has been dissolved, and a new one established. We were aliens once, we are now sons; and as sons we have the privilege of closest fellowship. Every vestige of estrangement between us is gone. At every point, instead of barriers rising up to separate and repel, there are links, knitting us together in happiest, closest union. Enmity is gone on our part, displeasure on His. He calls us sons; we call Him Father. Paternal love comes down on His part, filial love goes up on ours. The most entire mutual confidence has been established between us. No more strangers and foreigners, we are become fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, every cloud being withdrawn that could cast a single shadow upon the simple gladness of our happy intercourse. There has been truly a new creation; old things have passed away, all things have become new. Our new relationship is for eternity. He is eternally our Father; and we are eternally His sons.
(3) It means that we have entered upon a new way of life.For when mens hearts are stirred by the higher love, when the spirit is possessed by the Divine impulse, when Christ has come in, man feels that the saving power has gripped him; and though a long battle may still have to be fought to subdue the whole life to the central spirit, yet that spirit having possessed the centre, there is promise of final triumph. Now this is just the difference between morality and religion, between what that man meant by character and what he meant by Christ; the one is the feeling that we are trying to win goodness, the other is the feeling that the good God has laid hold on us; in the one we have a sense of struggling to hold on to virtue, in the other we have the consciousness of being sustained in the struggle by One that is mighty. This is the need of the individual, and this is certainly the need of the Church.
5. To put it the other way, this new creation is necessary
(1) In order to get rid of sin.Many people talk as if it were an easy thing to get rid of that mysterious quality in our being which we distinguish as sin. They talk of turning over a new leaf. It is an easy thing to turn over a new leaf, but it is far more difficult to get free from sin.
I was reading a medical book the other daywhich books, I find, open a very suggestive field to the theologian; for there is a wonderful analogy between physical and moral maladies. The subject was the sterilizing of the hands. The writer showed how impossible it was to cleanse the hands from bacteria. You wash your hands and they are worse when you have finished than before you commenced. The water has liberated the bacteria until now your hands literally swarm with these forms of life. Then the writer goes on to show that you may attempt to cleanse them with benzine or with alcohol, but when you have done your utmost the hands are still surgically infected. Before I read that book, it seemed one of the easiest things in the world to wash my hands, but now I know that it is physically impossible by any process so to cleanse the hands as to be free from the contamination of vermin and death. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, says the sacred writer, and purify your hearts ye doubleminded. Is that an easy task?1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]
(2) In order to have peace of conscience.Many of our great philosophers tell us that human nature can never attain content with itself. They tell us that our activity contradicts our ideal, that our carnal self is opposed to our rational self, and that our impulse dominates duty. So in the very nature of things a man cannot be at peace in himself. Thus one of the philosophersSchopenhauerasks this question, Was there ever a man who was at peace with himself?
(3) In order to obtain spiritual knowledge.We have not brought into our life the knowledge of God; that is the secret of our discontent. We want the miracle of creation working in nature. There was a time when nature stood great and material, but there came a day (if you like to express it so) when the Spirit breathed upon its rugged greatness, and all was changed.
Botanists tell us that there was a time when all the flowers were green and rough; but there came a day when they received a spiritual touch, and in place of the full monotony of green they blossomed pink and blue, crimson and gold. That is the touch we want. Scientists tell us that there was a time when the birds did not sing (for these gentlemen inform us that music is very recent). All the birds were there, yet they had no melody nor song; but there came a strange moment for the world of birds, and they responded to the touch of the Spirit and became the songsters of morning entering the realm of music. It is a touch like that we want! There was a time, so thinkers say, when man existed in a certain shape they call the almost-man. One day the Spirit breathed upon the almost-man and he stood up as the man we know in Milton and Shakespeare, St. Paul and St. John. That is the touch we want. As these great scientists tell us, there was special breath which caused the green flowers to be decked with radiant glory, the silent birds to break out in the sweet minstrelsy of song, and the almost-man to arise to dignity, intelligence and spirituality; that is the great change which many people need. They have the material form, but they want the touch of the Spirit, which makes life higher, grander and nobler.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]
III
The New Creation Without
Change the man and you change his world. The new self will make all around it as good as new, though no actual change should pass on it; for, to a very wonderful extent, a man creates his own world. We project the hue of our own spirits on things outside. A bright and cheerful temper sees all things on their sunny side. A weary, uneasy mind drapes the very earth in gloom. Lift from a man his load of inward anxiety and you change the aspect of the universe to that man; for, if to the pure all things are pure, it is no less true that to the happy all things are happy. Especially is the world revolutionized and made new to a man by a noble and joyous passion. Any great enthusiasm which lifts a man above his average self for the time makes him like a new man, and transfigures the universe in his eyes. Even common natures know how the one pure, imaginative passion of youthful love, which to most people is the solitary enthusiasm of their life, works a temporary enchantment. All poetry and art, fastening on this as the commonest form of noble passion, have worked this vein and made us familiar with the transforming virtue of young love betwixt youth and maiden to turn the prose of life to poetry, to make the vulgar heroic, and the common-place romantic. The ideal lover moves in a world of his own. To him old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. Now, this power of human nature, when exalted through high and noble emotion, to make its own world, will be realized in its profoundest form when the soul is re-created by the free Spirit of God. Let God lift us above our old selves, and inspire us with no earthly, but with the pure flame of a celestial, devotion; let Him breathe into our hearts the noblest, freest of all enthusiasms, the enthusiasm for Himself; and to us all things will become new. We shall seem to ourselves to have entered another world, where we breathe lighter air, see an intenser sunlight, and move to the impulses of a more generous spirit.
Science entirely fascinated him; his first plunge into real scientific work opened to him a new life, gave him the first sense of power and of capacity. Now he read Mr. Darwins books, and it is impossible to overrate the extraordinary effect they had on the young mans mind. Something of the feeling which Keats describes in the sonnet On looking into Chapmans Homer seems to have been his:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacificand all his men
Lookd at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.1 [Note: The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, 8.]
It is a new world into which a man is led forth when Christ is formed in him; when his life is joined, by the bonds of a living fellowship, with the life of the Son of Man. There is a new creation; the morning stars are singing together and the sons of God are shouting for joy. No one ever knows how beautiful this world is, how fair its fields, how glorious its skies, till he has looked upon it with eyes anointed by a great affection. Under the spell of such a revelation all tasks are sweet, all burdens light. Into this liberty of the glory of the sons of God may some of you who labour and are heavy-laden be led by Him who is the Way and the Truth and the Life!1 [Note: W. Gladden, Where does the Sky Begin, 201.]
1. Christ is new.Consider the difference between what Christ is to St. Paul now and what He was to him in the old persecuting days. In those old days Jesus of Nazareth was to him a mere atom of humanity, a single individual out of countless multitudes who had lived and suffered and died upon the earth; and not even that any longer, for He was blotted out by death, nothing remaining of Him but the mere empty name of a dead impostor, made use of by some superstitious people to attempt to overturn the time-honoured fabric of the Hebrew faith. What is He now? Atom of humanity? No: the very God. He is the sun in the heavens, the centre of all light, and life, and love, and power.
From the moment that the light above the brightness of the sun shone upon the spirit of St. Paul, he ceased to identify Christ with the flesh He had worn on earth, and now identified Him with the God over all whom in that flesh He had revealed. And in making the Christ whom he had despised the centre of his life, round which it all revolved, His will its law, His glory its aim, His smile its light, His love its motive powerif he was reproached by others with being eccentric, he was content to be able to say: Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God.
New creatures; the Creator still the Same
For ever and for ever: therefore we
Win hope from Gods unsearchable decree
And glorify His still unchanging Name.
We too are still the same: and still our claim,
Our trust, our stay, is Jesus, none but He:
He still the Same regards us, and still we
Mount toward Him in old loves accustomed flame.
We know Thy wounded Hands: and Thou dost know
Our praying hands, our hands that clasp and cling
To hold Thee fast and not to let Thee go.
All else be new then, Lord, as Thou hast said:
Since it is Thou, we dare not be afraid,
Our King of old and still our Self-same King.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 27.]
2. God is new.Man has seen God in Christ as man never saw God before. It is fashionable for intellectual men, or ratherfor the fashion of this worlds thought changesa few years ago it used to be in good intellectual form for men to say, We may believe that God exists, but we cannot know anything of God. That passing fashion of thought, however, was fatally illogical, because the very words which were in vogue in some quarters about God, such as, He is the unknown and unknowable Power, really affirmed something, of which we have some latent idea, about the unknown God. And we may have real though finite knowledge of infinite things. I can know what light is by a single ray in my eye, although I cannot contain in my eye the infinite flood of light which fills all space. And I may know God by a single beam of truth in my soul, although I cannot know God in His infinitude of being. To us who are capable, then of receiving truth from God because we are made in the image of God, Jesus Christ brought a new revelation of the essential and eternal character of God. And what was that revelation? Not an image of Deity for the Holy Place of the Temple, in which was no likeness of God. Not a map of the Divine attributes, as they are found in the books of the Schoolmen. Not a form of God which we may look upon and worship as a picture of Divinity in our imaginations. Jesus is never depicted pointing His disciples to the sky, as we do, when we say to our children, God is there, Heaven is up above. You cannot find in the teaching of Jesus one word about Gods nature which is addressed to these bodily senses. But when Philip said, Shew us the Father,poor bewildered disciple, finding the truth he had been learning too great for him, and thinking, If I could only know the Father, if I could only see God as I see man,then Jesus said, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. That was His revelation, His new, world-changing revelation of God. Himself, His Person, His character, His conductyou know that; such is God. The one word which declares God is Christ. Christlikeness is what God is.
3. Man is new.As man is discovered to us in Christ, he is found to be a new creature. Man is in Christ another man. It will make a vast difference with us whether we habitually look upon man as created in Christ, or without Christ. You go down the street, and pass some one who is to you only another of the multitude of human beings of whom there seem sometimes to be already many more than there is any use for on this earth. You do not know that man, and do not want to know him. He may be only some worthless creature who hives, with other miserables, in some tenement house which was built by the devil of greed, and has been rented to demons of vice and squalor. Only some Board of Health, or the police, have occasion to know the habitats of so much swarming and festering humanity! Or the man you meet may be respectable and honest enough, for all you know, only he exists, and must live his life, whatever it may be, in some one of those worlds which lie below the one into which you were born, and, probably enough, his name is not to be found written in your book of life. You owe him, you will admit, equal rights, liberty to make contracts, a certain humanity, and, if he should ever happen to come to your church, a seat in somebody elses pew. Something like that, in spirit, was the old-world view of man before the birth of Christ. That is the view of him which you might take, had you not been baptized into the name of Christ, in whom our whole common humanity exists, redeemed and capable of a great salvation. But what thought Jesus Christ of humanity as He came from the Father, and met that publican in Jericho? As He went to God what said the Lord Jesus to that thief upon a cross? As Jesus revelation of God was vivifying, and is potential with blessing for the whole world, so also His revelation of man is wonderfully ennobling and transfiguring. Jesus brought out, perfected, and showed in His own Divine Person, the true image of humanity. Man is made to become Christlike. Man may be saved to Christlikeness.1 [Note: Newman Smyth.]
4. Life is new.Examine the average life which is being led in a society (we will say) like our own; what is there about it that is noble or exalted? To get along comfortably; to make money; perhaps, in some cases, to make a great deal of money; to keep trouble at a distance, if possible; and to surround oneself with everything that is pleasant and agreeable; does not thisor something like thisseem to be the condition of hundreds and hundreds of the ordinary men and women with whom we are acquainted? They are respectable! They are blameless! They are kind! No one can lay any grave fault to their charge. But to say that there is anything lofty or noble or aspiring about them would be a simple misuse of language. But let Christ enter the life, and all this is changed. The commonest act is ennobled by being done for Him. Let Christ into all life; and the presentno matter what it isreaches out and fastens itself on to the distant eternity, and becomes the germ of a never-ending existence.
Old sorrows that sat at the hearts sealed gate
Like sentinels grim and sad,
While out in the night damp, weary and late,
The King, with a gift divinely great,
Waited to make me glad:
Old fears that hung like a changing cloud
Over a sunless day,
Old burdens that kept the spirit bowed,
Old wrongs that rankled and clamoured loud
They have passed like a dream away.
In the world without and the world within
He maketh the old things new;
The touch of sorrow, the stain of sin,
Have fled from the gate where the King came in,
From the chill nights damp and dew.
Anew in the heavens the sweet stars shine,
On earth new blossoms spring;
The old life lost in the Life Divine,
Thy will be mine, my will is Thine,
Is the new song the hearts sing.
5. And the whole universe is new.For when the great change takes place, even the face of nature has a different look: there is a new glory in the heavens and a new beauty on the earth; the light that never was on sea or land begins to dawn.
The revolution in science which is associated with the name of Copernicus, was a similar shifting of the centre from earth to heaven; and the result of it was a new creation, a universe totally different from what had been known, or even imagined, before. Up to this time, it had been taken for granted that the earth was the centre of the universe, and on that false assumption there had been built up a vast science of astronomy (which, be it remembered, the scientific men of the time accepted as correct), a science which was no mere guess-work, for it was based on observations which had been most carefully made and diligently recorded for centuries. The intricacies of that old Ptolemaic system of the universe seem absurd enough to us now; but all its spheres, and cycles, and epicycles, and deferents had a strong foundation on exceedingly patient and careful observations of the motions of the heavenly bodies as taken from the earth. As taken from the earththere lay the whole fallacy. But one might ask, Where else can you take them from? Erect the highest Eiffel Tower on the top of the loftiest mountain, and still you take your observations from the earth. To which Copernicus replied: Nevertheless, so long as you take your observations from the earth, you are all wrong; for it is not the centre. The true centre is the sun, and though you cannot put your observatory in the sun, you can go there by faith; you can take your station there mentally even if you cannot bodily, and then out of old chaos will at once come new order.
At the great spring Drmenon the tribe and the growing earth were renovated together: the earth arises fresh from her dead seeds, the tribe from its dead ancestors; and the whole process, charged as it is with the emotion of pressing human desire, projects its anthropomorphic god or daemon. A vegetation-spirit we call him, very inadequately; he is a divine Kouros, a Year-Daemon, a spirit that in the first stage is living, then dies with each year, then thirdly rises again from the dead, raising the whole dead world with himthe Greeks called him in this phase the Third One, or the Saviour. The renovation ceremonies were accompanied by a casting off of the old year, the old garments, and everything that is polluted by the infection of death. And not only of death; but clearly, I think, in spite of the protests of some Hellenists, of guilt or sin also. For the life of the Year-Daemon, as it seems to be reflected in Tragedy, is generally a story of Pride and Punishment. Each Year arrives, waxes great, commits the sin of Hubris, and then is slain. The death is deserved; but the slaying is a sin: hence comes the next Year as Avenger, or as the Wronged One re-risen: they all pay retribution for their injustice one to another according to the ordinance of time. It is this range of ideas, half suppressed during the classical period, but evidently still current among the ruder and less Hellenized peoples, which supplied St. Paul with some of his most famous and deep-reaching metaphors. Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. As he was raised from the dead we may walk with him in newness of life. And this renovation must be preceded by a casting out and killing of the old polluted lifethe old man in us must first be crucified.1 [Note: Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 46.]
Midway down the Simplon pass the traveller pauses to read upon a stone by the wayside the single word, Italia. The Alpine pines cling to the mountain-sides between whose steeps the rough way winds. The snows cover the peaks, and the brooks are frozen to the precipices. The traveller wraps his cloak about him against the frost that reigns undisputed upon those ancient thrones of ice-bound rock. But at the point where that stone with the word Italia stands, he passes a boundary-line. From there the way begins into another world. Soon every step makes plainer how great has been the change from Switzerland to Italy. The brooks, unbound, leap laughing over the cliffs. The snows have melted from the path. The air grows warm and fragrant. The regiments of hardy pine no longer struggle in broken lines up the mountain-side. The leaves of the olive trees glisten in the sunshine. The vines follow the wayside. The sky seems near and kind. And below, embosomed in verdure, Lake Maggiore expands before him. As he rests at evening time he knows that the entrance into a new world was marked by the word Italia upon that stone at the summit of the pass. Humanity has crossed a boundary-line between two eras. Up to Bethlehem was one way, growing bleaker, and more barren, and colder, as man hastened on. Down from Bethlehem has been another and a happier time. The one civilization was as Switzerland shut in among its icy Alps; the other is as Lombardys fruitful plain.2 [Note: N. Smyth, Christian Facts and Forces, 4.]
O all-surpassing Splendour!one alone
Of earthly race hath seen that vision fair;
The present God, the rainbow round the throne,
And the elect, descending through the air,
His Tabernacle,He their glorious light;
For in His presence there can be no night.
All New,a higher world then had been made
In the past-workings of omnipotence,
Wills without sin,Earths precious stones displayed
Tell faintly some Divine magnificence.
Of that regenerate sphere, the pure abode
For sons and daughters of the Immortal God.1 [Note: W. J. Irons.]
In Christ a New Creation
Literature
Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 10; iv. 274.
Dewey (O.), Works, 759.
Farrar (F. W.), Truths to Live By, 290.
Figgis (J. N.), Antichrist and Other Sermons, 16.
Gibson (J. M.), The Glory of Life, 35.
Gladden (W.), Where does the Sky Begin, 187.
Gordon (A. J.), In Christ, 91.
Grimley (H. N.), Tremadoc Sermons, 243.
Jerdan (C.), Manna for Young Pilgrims, 46.
Martin (G. C.), in Great Texts of the New Testament, 127.
Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 210.
Moore (A. L.), in Keble College Sermons, 197.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, v. 164.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 881; xx. (1874), No. 1183; xxii. (1876), No. 1328.
Westcott (B. F.), The Historic Faith, 129.
Williams (F. R.), The Christ Within, 104.
Wordsworth (J.), Sermons Preached in Salisbury Cathedral Church, 97.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxv. 346 (G. Matheson); lii. 187 (T. V. Tymms); lxix. 262 (W. L. Watkinson).
Clergymans Magazine, 3rd. Ser., viii. 93 (G. Calthrop); xiv. 12 (W. Burrows).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
be: 2Co 5:19, 2Co 5:21, 2Co 12:2, Isa 45:17, Isa 45:24, Isa 45:25, Joh 14:20, Joh 15:2, Joh 15:5, Joh 17:23, Rom 8:1, Rom 8:9, Rom 16:7, Rom 16:11, 1Co 1:30, Gal 3:28, Gal 5:6, Eph 1:3, Eph 1:4, Phi 4:21
he is: or, let him be
a new: Psa 51:10, Eze 11:19, Eze 18:31, Eze 36:26, Mat 12:33, Joh 3:3, Joh 3:5, Gal 6:15, Eph 2:10
old: 2Co 5:16, Isa 43:18, Isa 43:19, Isa 65:17, Isa 65:18, Mat 9:16, Mat 9:17, Mat 24:35, Rom 6:4-6, Rom 7:6, Rom 8:9, Rom 8:10, 1Co 13:11, Eph 2:15, Eph 4:22-24, Phi 3:7-9, Col 3:1-10, Heb 8:9-13, 2Pe 3:10-13, Rev 21:1-5
Reciprocal: Deu 30:6 – will circumcise Psa 45:13 – all glorious Psa 102:18 – the people Isa 43:7 – for I Isa 55:13 – of the thorn Mat 5:20 – exceed Luk 5:38 – General Joh 3:6 – born of the flesh Joh 13:10 – but Rom 12:2 – be ye 2Co 3:18 – are Eph 1:19 – exceeding Eph 2:13 – in Eph 4:24 – new Phi 3:9 – in Col 2:11 – by Col 3:10 – the new 1Ti 2:4 – will Heb 8:13 – ready Heb 11:1 – the evidence Heb 11:25 – Choosing Jam 2:18 – and I will 1Pe 5:14 – in 1Jo 2:5 – hereby 1Jo 5:20 – and we Rev 21:5 – Behold
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A NEW CREATION
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
2Co 5:17
Had you asked St. Paul to define a Christian he would have answered, a man in Christ. Had you further asked what he meant by being in Christ I think he would have said, united to Christ. Christs own mystic words to His disciples in the upper room, I am the Vine, ye are the branches.
I. A new life.He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life (Joh 3:36). Therefore if any man be in union with Christ, he is a new creature.
II. A new hope.The believer has a living hope because his hope is fixed on a Living Saviour and rests on the Living Promise of the Living God. He has a hope of experiencing Gods goodness and help and strength in this world, and a hope of a fuller, richer, better, higher life with Christ and like Christ beyond the gates of death.
III. A new work.Work out your own salvation, says St. Paul. Not, work for it, but, from it. In other words, work out the new life Christ has given you. You cannot work out a salvation you have not received. Especially note Tit 3:8. It seems a new discovery to many people that religion should be linked to business. Yet it is the common teaching of the New Testament. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works. So you will be able to say, I do this, I give this, for Christs sake. If you ask Him, God will show you what things you ought to do, and give you grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.
Rev. F. Harper.
Illustrations
(1) Sir Monier Williams, a great authority on all Oriental religions, has said that the doctrine of Life in Christ is the one thing which distinguishes Christianity from every other historic religion in the world. No one can realise the uniqueness of Christianity till he has grasped the truth of the believers living union with Christ.
(2) George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, records his vivid experiences when he first found the way of life. I had now come up in spirit, he said, past the naming sword, into the paradise of God. All things are now new to me, even the outward world is more beautiful since love for Christ and His truth have been kindled in my heart. Even the sun shines more brightly, the air is more soft, the flowers more fragrant, the mountains more majestic, the sea more sublime.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
2Co 5:17. New creature. Adam was the first man in the first or material creation, and Christ is the first one in the second or spiritual creation (1Co 15:45). When a man obeys the Gospel and comes into Christ, he is renewed spiritually and becomes a part of the new creation. Old things are passed away denotes that such a man is to follow a new kind of life, not one of sin (Rom 6:4).
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
2Co 5:17. Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they[1] are become new. This verse simply generalizes the preceding statements, stripping them of all reference to himself and those written to, and extending them to all who are in Christ.
[1] The words all things, in the received text, are wanting in all the principal authorities; and though it is true (as Meyer says), that owing to the next verse beginning with the same words, they might very easily have dropped out (and this would decide us in their favour, if the want of them involved anything unnatural), yet, since they are not required for anything in the sense, the authorities seem to demand their exclusion.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
As if the apostle had said, “If any one amongst you pretend to be a Christian indeed, ingrafted into Christ, by baptism and regeneration, and is a member of his body; he is by regeneration made a new man, all the faculties of his soul are renewed: his principles, affections, and practices, are all new: Old things are passed, or passing away daily, the old carnal inclinations of mind are wearing off, the old will is changed, the old life is reformed; and in a word, whatever was old and carnal, is now beome new and spiritual.” Behold all things are become new: new affections, new inclinations, new dispositions, a new course, and a new conversation. Nothing is new physically; he is the same person, he has the same faculties: but all things are new qualitatively; he is renewed in the spirit of his mind.
Learn hence, 1. That all such as call themselves the disciples of Christ, and own themselves to be his followers, are and ought to be new creatures. This implies a real and inward, a thorough and prevailing change, both in heart and life; not a civil change, barely from profaneness to sobriety; not a sudden change, only under some great affliction or awakening providence; not a change from one sect or party of professors to another; but the change of the new creature consists in a new mind, a new will, a new judgment, new affections; in a new conversation, not in a new form and profession; the change of the new creature introduces the life of God, and produces the nearest likeness to God.
Learn, 2. That this new creation, wrought in a man by the word and Spirit God, is an indubitable evidence of his interest in Christ, and title to salvation; for where the new creature is, there all the saving graces of the Spirit are, as a pledge and an earnest of glory and happpiness.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Verse 17 Christians are spiritual and should be judged by spiritual standards. They should not be rejected because they are Gentiles or accepted because they are Jews. Fleshly desires are laid aside at baptism and a new life begun.
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
2Co 5:17. Therefore Since all Christs true disciples do thus live to him, and not to themselves, and only know him in a spiritual manner; if any man be in Christ By living faith and the indwelling of his Spirit; if any man have an interest in and union with him; he is a new creature , there is a new creation, in the soul of that man. His understanding is enlightened, his judgment corrected, and he has new ideas and conceptions of things. His conscience is informed, awakened, and purged from guilt by the blood of Jesus, Heb 9:14. His will is subjected to the will of God, his affections drawn from earth to heaven, and his dispositions, words, and actions, his cares, labours, and pursuits, are all changed. Old things are passed away All old principles and practices; behold The present, visible, undeniable change! all things are become new He has new life, namely, a spiritual and divine life; new spiritual senses, new faculties, new desires and designs, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, passions and appetites. His whole tenor of action and conversation is new, and he lives as it were in a new world. God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, angels, men, sinners, saints, and the whole creation heaven, earth, and all therein, appear in a new light, and stand related to him in a new manner, since he was created anew in Christ Jesus.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. [By his spiritual participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul had become a regenerated man, and as such he refused to judge or look upon men after that carnal, superficial, unregenerate method which estimates them according to outward appearances, and not according to their inward spiritual life. In asserting this great principle he is reminded that before his conversion he had known and judged Christ after this carnal fashion. The allusion suggests that if he made a woeful mistake in thus doing, his enemies were even now following in his footsteps in thus judging him, a minister and servant of Jesus Christ. Christian men, being spiritual beings, are to be judged as such. The old standards of the law can not be applied to them; they are not to be accepted because they are children of Abraham, nor rejected because they are Gentiles. To them all things are become new, and they must judge and be judged by the new environment into which the providence of God has brought them.]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
5:17 {11} Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a {o} new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
(11) An exhortation for every man who is renewed with the Spirit of Christ to meditate on heavenly things, and not earthly.
(o) As a thing made new by God, for though a man is not newly created when God gives him the spirit of regeneration, but only his qualities are changed, yet nonetheless it pleased the Holy Spirit to speak so, to teach us that we must attribute all things to the glory of God. Not that we are as rocks or stones, but because God creates in us both the will to will well, and the power to do well.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection (2Co 5:14-15) had had another effect besides altering Paul’s viewpoint (2Co 5:16). 2Co 5:16-17 each begin with the same Greek word, hoste: "therefore" or "so." Whenever a person experiences conversion, as Paul did, he or she really becomes a new person. It is not just his or her viewpoint that should change and can change, but many other things also change. Certain old conditions and relationships no longer exist (Gr. parelthen, aorist tense), and others take their place and continue (Gr. gegonen, perfect tense).
Obviously there is both continuity and discontinuity that takes place at conversion (justification). Paul was not denying the continuity. We still have the same physical features, basic personality, genetic constitution, parents, susceptibility to temptation (1Co 10:14), sinful environment (Gal 1:4), etc. These things do not change. He was stressing the elements of discontinuity: perspectives, prejudices, misconceptions, enslavements, etc. (cf. Gal 2:20). God adds many new things at conversion including new spiritual life, the Holy Spirit, forgiveness, the righteousness of Christ, as well as new viewpoints (2Co 5:16).
The Christian is a new creature (a new man, Romans 6) in this sense. Before conversion we did not possess the life-giving Holy Spirit who now lives within us (Rom 8:9). We had only our sinful human nature. Now we have both our sinful human nature and the indwelling Holy Spirit. This addition makes us an essentially new person since the Holy Spirit’s effects on the believer are so far-reaching. We also possess many other riches of divine grace that contribute to our distinctiveness as believers. Lewis Sperry Chafer listed 33 things that the Christian receives at the moment of justification. [Note: Systematic Theology, 3:234-65. See Robert A Pyne and Matthew L. Blackmon, "A Critique of the ’Exchanged Life,’" Bibliotheca Sacra 163:650 (April-June 2006):131-57.]