2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.”
Where this sits
Paul is defending his ministry to a church that had been questioning him. His argument is that he no longer evaluates anyone by external appearance — including Christ, and including himself.
Reflection
The Greek of the first clause is compressed almost to the point of breaking: *if anyone in Christ — new creation.* There is no verb. It reads less like a sentence than an exclamation.
And “new creation” is not a modest phrase. Paul reaches for the word used of Genesis. He is not describing a person who has turned over a leaf or acquired better habits. He is describing an act of the same order as the one that made the world, applied to one individual life.
Which raises the obvious difficulty. If all things have become new, why does so much feel exactly as it was? The temper is still there. The old shame still knows your name.
The answer runs through the whole New Testament: the newness is real and it is a beginning. A newborn is entirely new and almost entirely undeveloped, and nobody thinks those two facts contradict each other. What Paul announces is a change of category, not the completion of a process. You are not an improved version of the old thing. You are a new thing that has a great deal of growing to do.
Read in context, this is also about how you see other people. Paul's point in the surrounding verses is that he has stopped assessing anyone by the old measures. If it is true of you, it is true of the person you have written off.
- Theme:
- Newness
- Book:
- 2 Corinthians