New Year is a New Opportunity to be a New Creature. 2 Cor 5:16-21
Intro:
Theological Significance. In this letter we learn of the importance of restoring relationships in ministry. An important lesson on dealing with opponents and appealing to God for confirmation of one’s ministry is contained herein
I. New Creature. vv. 16-17.
1. Knowledge of earthly Jesus
Rather he is conceding a knowledge of the earthly Jesus as real—to himself as to his opponents who made a lot of such privilege.807 Paul grants that such knowledge would be limited to an appreciation of him as Jewish Messiah, and yet he qualifies such a concession by inferring that it would place a roadblock in the way of faith in him as Lord of all creation
2. Eshatology - The New Creature’s destiny has been changed.
The accent falls on a person (τις) entering the new order in Christ, thus making the καινὴ κτίσις, “new creation,” an eschatological term for God’s age of salvation,812 based on Isa 51:9–10; 54:9–10; cf. 42:9; 43:18–19 rather than the rabbinic teaching of “new creature.”813 Paul is talking of a “new act of creation,” not an individual’s renovation as a proselyte or a forgiven sinner in the Day of Atonement service. There is even an ontological dimension to Paul’s thought,814 suggesting that with Christ’s coming, a new chapter in cosmic relations to God opened and reversed the catastrophic effect of Adam’s fall, which began the old creation.815 To conclude: ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις, “in Christ, there is a new creation,” in this context relates to the new eschatological situation that has emerged from Christ’s advent (unlike the sense of Gal 6:14–15).816
4. The old order of the world and flesh is broken.
τὰ ἀρχαῖα, “the old order,” means the old world of sin and death, but also the realm of the σάρξ, “flesh.” It has “gone” in the sense that its regime is broken, though its power remains (Gal 5:16–21, 24) to be neutralized in Christ. γέγονεν καινά, lit., “it has become new,” picks up the original Pauline description of καινὴ διαθήκη, “new covenant,” in chap. 3 and fastens the arrival of the newness in Christ to the apostle’s ministry as a servant of that new dispensation.818
5. Believers are citizen of New Heaven.
He, along with all who share his “status” as “in Christ,” inhabits a new world. A new eon has been inaugurated by the cross and resurrection of Jesus
The Spirit is our “first installment” (5:5) of the powers of the new age, but the end is not yet. Meanwhile Paul walks “by faith” (5:7) and anticipates the resurrection in the future. The same tension between present possession and future hope is found in his mention of reconciliation.
He and his followers share a glory more illustrious than Moses (3:18)
6. Fear of Eschatology
and a type of eschatological thinking that saw the future already contained in the present and denied a future hope of resurrection (4:16–5:10; its slogan is “we walk by sight,” which Paul counters).
a. Christian Life Dedicated to God
This paradigm is that God’s love, demonstrated in Christ’s death and resurrection, compels a Christian to live a life dedicated wholly to God.
b. Love Fellow Christians
In turn, this motive touches other Christians, for it calls us to reflect God’s love by exhibiting total dedication to fellow Christians.
c. Christian Behavior is Shows God’s Power.
the Christian is vulnerable to persecution. But it is in just such a demeanor that the Christian allows God’s power to be seen.
d. Self-Seeking Ministry
Moreover, the one who dies to himself should—by that token—not be accused by others of a self-seeking ministry. Needless to say, this was not so in the case of Paul (as it has not been in the case of many saints down through church history).
e. Christian Boast in Gospel.
Regardless of the opinion of others, Paul holds to his position of “boasting in the gospel.”
Paul wishes his critics, as well as his supporters, to see his life-in-weakness as a result of God’s work. “Fear of the Lord” and “living for Jesus” go hand in hand.
“Death to self and life for God” is the motto of Paul in this passage. T. W. Manson’s words ring true:
The death of Christ is something in which all his followers have a share; and equally they share in his risen life, which means that they can no longer live their old selfish life but must live for him who inaugurated the new life for them by dying and rising again.749
The death and resurrection of Jesus make it possible to communicate the new life to those who have died (5:14d) and are now living (5:15a).744
II. PeaceMaker. vv. 18-19.
The aorist-tense participial verb form τοῦ καταλλάξαντος (ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῷ), “who reconciled (us to himself),” is descriptive of God’s past action, located in the mediation of Christ (διὰ Χριστοῦ). The initiative of God, who is always spoken of as the one originating reconciliation,823 and the part played by his Son are the allied themes, both historical and eschatological.824 The next verse continues the theme, but with a different emphasis marked by a periphrastic verb.
1. God Reconcile the World through Jesus,
(3) “God was reconciling the world in (= through) Christ,” i.e., by his agency;830
Oneness believer thinks it was God in Jesus and used Jesus as the locus to hold the Divine God which is false.
The upshot is that “reconciling” stands apart from the sentence “God was in Christ”; but this is a dubious expedient.
Our option is for (3), with most commentators and giving weight to the thought as chiefly soteriological, not incarnational, as is sometimes maintained when “God was in Christ” is kept separate (see Bruce).
2. Knowledge of God’s Reconciliation.
(2) The other reality is the knowledge of God’s reconciliation, which is expressed by his recital of a piece of traditional teaching in vv 18–21, on which he has supplied interpretative comment.
III. Ambassador Of Christ. vv. 20-21.
1. God will be present when we proclaim the message of reconciliation.
Not simply is it [the case] that Paul heard God’s call and answered it (Gal 1:15, 16): nor that he discovered the secret of his life’s work in preaching (1 Cor 9:16). Rather, he came to see that in the proclamation of this message God was himself present … The daring claim to be acting and speaking for God would be audacious enough. Paul’s wording goes beyond that as he reverses the roles and insists that when he speaks the kerygma God himself is the chief actor and it is his voice that men and women hear and his authority that is brought to bear upon people’s lives.841
2. Evangelism Call
The call “be reconciled to God” is the “language of evangelism”
3. Soteriological
the literary structure of the section suggests a carefully prepared piece of soteriological credo, that is, a specimen of confessional statement expressing in summary form what the first Christians believed about God’s redemptive work in Christ
4. Justificatiion:
Paul wanted to make it clear that the “reconciliation of the world” was achieved by what God did in not holding trespasses against humankind—it is noteworthy that the line says “against them,” whereas elsewhere in the paragraph the language is first-person plural (we, us)—and so he cleared them of guilt. It is the idiom of justification that Paul inserts, perhaps to safeguard the teaching against false understanding.
Christians are spoken of as “already justified” by the past act of God’s setting the world right with himself (Rom 4:25; 5:1; 8:30, 33).
5. Christians becomes the Righteousness of God
“Righteousness of God” in v 21 may be suspected since, while it is undeniable that Paul’s salvation-teaching centered precisely on this phrase, it is normally (as in Romans) used of the power of God that introduced a new age of grace and forgiveness for the world. But in v 21 in our text the thought of Christians “becoming the righteousness of God in him [Christ]” is not paralleled elsewhere in Paul—the nearest he comes to it is 1 Cor 1:30, but with a significant difference: “our righteousness” stands in some uneasy tension with the divine righteousness. In other words, the anthropological application in 2 Cor 5:21 of the term sits awkwardly with the apostle’s attested usage in other places.
1) The cross and resurrection of Jesus. Paul’s earlier discussion had centered on a reminder that is singularly lacking in 5:18–21. The explicit mention of the cross and resurrection of Jesus is made in vv 14–15: “one has died for all … [H]e died for all that those who are living might no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised.”