For the love of the Christ constrains us, having judged this that one died for all, then all have died;
Paul has just spoken of the judgment seat and of persuading men. Now he names the power behind it all. Three questions follow. Whose love is meant? What does that love make a person conclude? And what does that conclusion say about the human race?
The phrase could mean our love for Christ. Commentators read it the other way. The ESV says the love of Christ "controls" us; the older translation these writers used says it "constrains" us. One writer draws out that word by setting it against the chain Paul wore as a prisoner.
With Paul the love of Christ was not a constraint from chains outside, as when he was chained to a soldier. It was a constant hold of Christ on the heart, saying, "I am led captive by Christ; that love of His binds me like a chain and makes me go as a captive wherever He wants." It was not Paul's love but Christ's.
The verse does not say that love made Paul feel something. It says love brought him to a verdict: "we have concluded this". Love and thinking belong together here, because Christ showed that love in a death, and Paul had to read that death rightly.
Christ expressed that love in His death, and it pressed on Paul in two ways. It moved his affections toward God and His saints, and it also guided his judgment. Because that love held him, he could judge rightly what that death meant.
The reasoning runs backwards from the cross to the condition it met. If Christ had to go into death for people, that tells you where those people already were.
He had judged this: if one died for all, then the all died, or were dead. Christ's death for all is the proof that it was all over with mankind. If He went down in grace to the grave, it was just because men were already there, and there was no other way to deliver them. This is how Christ is known here: not as a living Messiah reigning over the living, but as One who died for all, because all were under death. So this is a question about all mankind, not about Israel only.
It is easy to read the verse as though the cross created the death it speaks of.
Christ's death for all does not put all there, it proves that all are there, and if that is true, then that is our condition — DEAD.
Commentators differ over the second half of the verse. Some read it as believers having died with Christ. Others say it describes the state of all mankind. One writer gives his reasons for the second reading.
If all had died through Adam, then Christ's descending into death for them all is how we know love. The apostle judged that if one died for all, it was because death was the condition of all. What makes this the undeniable sense to me is that he speaks of "those who live" as a portion taken out of them. If it were the saints dying with Christ, they would be the same people.
If all are dead, who then are "those who live"? The same writer answers.
There is life in Him risen, and this not in Him only, but for those who believe. He is our life. And this is the meaning of "those who live": not just those alive on earth (though that is implied, of course) but living by His life, in contrast with "all dead".
This kind of constraint does not work like pressure. It gives the heart an Object outside itself to live for.
If His deathless love has constrained us to apply the truth of the cross to ourselves, we shall also be drawn to find in Him an Object outside ourselves. He so commands us and so absorbs us that we cannot help living to Him... We shall not love because we ought; we shall not serve because we should. There is no legal, servile bondage here. We shall love, we shall serve, we shall live to Him because we cannot help it.
The verse also puts a question to the reader.
In the light of this Scripture we may well challenge our hearts as to the motive that drives us in all our service. Is it the love of Christ that constrains us, or is it the love of self? Are we living to ourselves, or are we living "to Him"?
- Love, not duty — the power at work is Christ's love for us. It is His hold on the heart, not a chain from outside.
- Love that thinks — that love does more than stir feeling. It guides the judgment, so that a person reads Christ's death correctly.
- The verdict — His death for all does not put men under death. It proves they were already there. This is a question about all mankind, not about one nation.
- The exception — "those who live" are not just people who are alive. They live by His risen life, a company taken out of the "all dead".
- The result — those held by that love serve because they cannot help it. The question left is simple: self, or Christ?
and he died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them and has been raised.
Paul has just said that One died for all. Now he shows the aim of that death. It reaches everyone, and it gives those who live a new direction for their lives.
The verse holds two truths at once, and there is a way to lose each one. One writer sets the two mistakes side by side:
Some narrow the "all" for whom He died down to the elect, and they lose the first truth. Others see the special blessing, and also the responsibility, of the saints — those who live — and they lose the second. He died for all. He was raised again so that those who believe would be justified, and they had life in Him as a result. The purpose was that they should live no longer to themselves, as they once did in their sinful folly, but to their Saviour who died and rose.
The phrase does not simply mean people who are still breathing:
So there is life in Him as risen, and not for Him alone, but for those who believe. He is our life. That is what "those who live" means. It is not just those alive on earth, though of course that is included. It means those living by His life, in contrast with "all dead."
The small word "to" carries the weight of the verse. One writer unpacks it by describing the way an unconverted person weighs everything:
What is the significance of this little preposition "to"? We have been brought to God. In our unconverted days we did live to ourselves, and in the nature of things we could not do anything else. Dominated by sin as we were, we had "self" as the great end and object of our existence. Think of it. Of course it was so! How did we judge everything in our unconverted days? Like this: Does it please me? Does it suit my taste? Do I like that? Will it advance my interests a little? Will it make a big man of me?
Paul mentions only the death when he speaks of all. For those who live, he adds the resurrection — "rose again" in older translations:
The whole subject is the power of life in Christ as triumphant over death. So when he applies it, he does not say merely "who died for them," as when he speaks of all, but "rose again" also. It is the power and fulness of a new thing for those taken out of death through Christ's going down into it.
Living to Christ is not a duty forced on the believer. It is a response that His love draws out:
When a person knows the constraining love of Christ, it frees him from being taken up with self. That love "surpasses knowledge," and its pull makes the Christian Christ-centred. Every one of us, from the youngest to the oldest, is tested here. Is it self or Christ? … We shall not love because we ought; we shall not serve because we should. There is no legal, servile bondage here. We shall love, we shall serve, we shall live to Him because we cannot help it.
Christ's claim on us reaches ordinary things — a plan, a thing we buy, an hour of work:
We are His, for He has redeemed us with His own precious blood, and so He claims us for His own. What a searching, practical test this supplies! Do I plan this or that? Is it then for Christ? Do I desire anything? Is it for Christ? Am I busy in service? Is it for Christ? Can I look round my home and say of everything I see, It is for Christ? So "for Christ" gives us a principle for the whole of our daily lives. It should rule everything, guiding us in all our works and ways. It makes nothing of self and nothing of man, but everything of Christ.
- Death — for all. The reach of the death is as wide as the human race; narrowing it to believers loses one half of the verse.
- Life — for those who live. "Those who live" are not simply everyone alive. They live by Christ's own life, in contrast with a world that is dead.
- Self — dethroned. To live "to yourself" is to make self the point of your existence. You judge everything by whether it pleases you and advances you.
- Christ — risen, and now the object. Paul adds the resurrection only where believers are in view. Their life is a new life that came up out of death.
- Love — the constraint. Duty does not turn a life around; Christ's love does. It frees us from self, and it shows in one question: is this for Christ?
So that *we* henceforth know no one according to flesh; but if even we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know [him thus] no longer.
Paul has just written that one died for all. Now he draws the result, and the verse opens with "therefore." The death of Christ has scrapped the whole scale by which he once sized people up, and it has changed the way he knows Christ Himself.
The first word links this verse back to what Paul has just said. The surprise is where the change has taken place.
Verse 16 grows out of this, as the first word, "Wherefore," shows. Christ is no longer among us in the life of this world, and we now live in connection with Him, so a new order of things has come in. Even Christ Himself is known by us in a new way. Paul had not been among those who knew Christ "according to flesh" while He was on earth. But even if he had been, he would know Him that way no longer. We also know no one according to the flesh. That is not because people are no longer in the old condition; most of them are. It is because of the inward change worked in ourselves.
The phrase points to a set of hopes: a Messiah alive on earth, come to bless people here.
A living Messiah, and all the hopes tied to His coming here on earth, have passed away for the Christian. This does not mean the Messiah will never return. But the sphere and character of our own relations are different: they rest on death and resurrection, and they are seen on high… The One we know as our centre of union, the object of our souls, is Christ risen and glorified.
What ended is a condition, not a Person. And it ended because God passed sentence on it.
Even Christ has not taken up again the life He laid down. He has not gone back to His former state on earth. That is over. The Christ we know is One who is in resurrection in the glory of God. A far higher condition, you say. It certainly is. But the former one has passed away, and it passed away in the very thing that confirmed God's sentence on it.
If the old way of sizing up a person is gone, something must replace it.
The apostles had already died with Christ, and they gloried only in His cross. So they had lost their natural fellowship with flesh. Risen with Him, they see natural things with changed eyes… People are known, then, as "of God" or "of the world," as "within" or "without," as brothers loved in Christ, or as strangers, if not enemies, to the truth of God… and the only standard of comparison is Christ.
Some stretch the verse into a refusal of ordinary family ties. It does not reach that far.
Once we grasp what it means that no one, not even Christ, is known any more according to the flesh, we will see that this in no way touches our natural relationships. God's will placed us in those relationships towards one another. In fact, the letters that bring out our full place in the risen Christ are the very ones that fully recognise those relationships.
What the verse does end is the pulling of rank on the basis of blood. One writer notices a telling silence in the New Testament letters themselves.
Is it not significant that James, the author of the Epistle that bears his name, does not claim that he is the brother of our Lord? He had certainly learned the lesson that "even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard Him thus no longer."
We lose nothing by this. The disciples themselves show why.
His disciples spent those few years in His company, and it was a wonderful experience. Yet they had not received the Holy Spirit, so at the time they understood very little. Only later, when they had lost His presence among them but gained the presence of the Holy Spirit, did they truly grasp what they had seen and heard.
- Cause. The "therefore" reaches back to the death of Christ for all. That death, not a change in people, ended the old way of knowing.
- Christ. What has passed is a condition, not a Person. He has not gone back to His former state on earth, and the Christ we know is in resurrection glory.
- Us. The alteration is inside the believer; most people are still in the old condition, but we no longer read them by it.
- Others. New categories replace the flesh: of God or of the world, within or without. Christ is the only standard.
- Limits. This does not dissolve family ties. It only dissolves the claim that blood gives standing, as James shows.
So if any one [be] in Christ, [there is] a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new
The verse turns on two small words: "in Christ." Paul is not describing a person who has improved. He is describing a whole new order of things that starts when someone is joined to the risen Christ. That raises an obvious question: why does the old life so often still look and feel the same?
Every human being stands on one of two grounds, and where you stand is decided by which head you belong to.
Everyone is either in Adam or in Christ. Someone who is not a believer is still under Adam as his head. He is in the flesh, and that is where he stands before God... An unbeliever is linked with Adam, shares fallen Adam's life and nature, and belongs to the creation that God placed Adam over. Where he stands before God, he is in Adam.
The wording matters. One writer draws attention to how Paul says it.
The first mention of new creation in the New Testament is in 2 Corinthians 5:17, where we find that everyone "in Christ" is brought into it. It is "new creation" in this verse rather than "a new creature," and Paul's language here is very forceful and emphatic. He leaves out the verb altogether and exclaims, "So then, if anyone in Christ — new creation!" like a man exulting in a glorious fact.
It would be easy to read the verse as a warm way of saying "your sins are gone." One writer presses that it claims something larger.
Paul does not say, "If anyone is in Christ he is pardoned — his sins are forgiven — his debts are paid." All of that is true. But the words of the verse go much further. It declares that a man in Christ is a new creation altogether. The old nature is not pardoned. It is set aside, along with everything that belongs to it. God brings in a new creation, and not a shred of the old is in it.
Two events stand behind the verse: one ended the old, one began the new.
The cross of Christ was God's judgment that ended the first man. The resurrection of Christ — Christ as the risen Man — was God's new beginning, in line with His eternal purposes... He glorified God about the sins and the sin of Adam and his race, the first man who was held responsible. Now, risen and glorified, He Himself is the Beginning.
If the new has come, why do a Christian's home, job and family look unchanged? One writer answers that these relationships will end, but we are still in them for now.
As we walk through the world with our responsibilities, we deal with the old order. We have parents, children, husbands, wives, masters, servants, and so on. We are to live in these relationships to the glory of God. But this will all come to an end... in the meantime we are in them, and we are to walk in them so as to please God. The life of Jesus is to come out in us down here; we are to walk as He walked. But in the life of Christ, as made alive together with Him, we are apart from everything belonging to the old.
One writer adds a careful limit. The verse does not mean the flesh — the old sinful nature — can no longer stir in a believer.
The cross ended the old man in God's judgment. The believer has put him off and is done with him. Even so, we still have the flesh to trouble us. We are not in it, but we cannot say it is not in us. We feel its presence keenly. If we are not watchful, it will soon lead us into sin.
- New position. Everyone stands either in Adam or in Christ. There is no third ground. The verse speaks only of those in Christ.
- New order. Read the phrase as "new creation," not just "a new creature." Paul exclaims over a whole new sphere, not a repaired person.
- New basis. The cross ended the first man in God's judgment. The resurrection of Christ was God's new beginning, and the new creation comes from Him.
- New scope. This goes beyond pardon. God does not forgive the old nature and keep it. He sets it aside, and what replaces it has nothing of the old in it.
- New walk. We still live inside old relationships and still carry the flesh. So walk as Christ walked, knowing God has finished with the old.
and all things [are] of the God who has reconciled us to himself by [Jesus] Christ, and given to us the ministry of that reconciliation
Everything in God's new order comes from Him, and it reaches us through the death of His Son. The verse holds two gifts: a finished reconciliation, and a ministry given to those who have received it.
The verse opens, "All this is from God" — older translations read, "all things are of God." That shuts the door on any human share in the new creation.
This is a work of God in which man can have no share. There is no human material to enter into it. All of that had already gone in death before this work was done… It is a work absolutely and entirely of God. It is a new creation, and its character is that "all things are of God." The great thought in the passage is that everything of man has disappeared from view, and only what is of God is now seen.
This is not the first creation repeated. There, too, all was of God — but of God as Maker.
In the old creation, all things were "of God," it is true; but they were of God who created them. But in the new, all things are "of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ." All these will bear witness to redemption. There we will trace the blood of the Lamb of God, and not simply the power of the hand of God.
The verse says God reconciled us to Himself. Commentators press this direction hard, because the reverse is never written.
The testimony of Scripture is as clear as possible. It never speaks of God being reconciled to us. "If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom. 5:10). It does not say that God was reconciled to us. The death of Christ was essential to the reconciliation. But man was the enemy of God, and man needed to be reconciled.
So the first move was God's, and it was never a change in His heart.
God never needed to be reconciled. It was we ourselves, in whom there was enmity, who needed to be reconciled… The very God we had sinned against took the first step on His own side. He put all our offences away. He has now placed us before His face, justified and reconciled through our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Reconciler. We are the reconciled.
Reconciliation is not only a fact about God's side. The person reconciled feels the difference.
The simplest thought in reconciliation is this: where there was distance there is now nearness. Here is the wonderful effect in the soul. A person was once very aware of moral distance from God. Now he can come to God knowing that the distance is gone, and be at home in His presence.
The verse says God reconciled us "through Christ." Writers place the work at one point, and the ministry at another.
Only death could reconcile to God those whom sin had made His enemies. Their condition is mortal because of sin. So the work of reconciliation was complete at the cross. There the suffering Redeemer bowed His sacred head and said, "It is finished," in the act of death. The ministry of reconciliation began when the Lord's first apostles, in the power of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, preached forgiveness and acceptance in His Name — first at Jerusalem, and to the very men who had murdered Christ.
The same God who reconciled also gives the ministry — and not to one group of Christians only.
It is not the apostle alone who could say this, nor only some class among Christians: "He has given us the ministry of reconciliation." He has brought us to Himself and made Himself known to us. By that very fact He has also given us power to make known to others what fills our own souls, and to bring others to Him. We have received the reconciliation. What we received is not for ourselves alone. We received it to minister with it.
The message is grace, so the messenger must carry grace.
It was God who first reconciled him to Himself by Jesus Christ, and then gave him the ministry of reconciliation. It was the ministry of reconciliation. The one who carried it was not to clothe himself with the repulsiveness of God in judgment. He was to clothe himself with the attractiveness of God in grace.
- Source. "All this is from God" — in the new creation God uses nothing of man, and only what is of God is seen.
- Direction. God is the Reconciler and we are the reconciled; Scripture never says God was reconciled to us.
- Basis. The reconciliation comes "through Christ" — finished at the cross, when He said, "It is finished."
- Result. Where there was moral distance there is now nearness — a person can be at home in God's presence.
- Gift. The One who reconciled also gives the ministry. We do not keep what we received; we pass it on, in the attractiveness of grace, not the repulsiveness of judgment.