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.
how that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their offences; and putting in us the word of that reconciliation.
God Himself came in Christ, met a hostile world with grace, and handed the same message to His servants. That raises hard questions: how could trespasses go uncharged, and why must anyone still be told to be reconciled?
God did not send a messenger. He came Himself, in Christ, to where people were.
In Christ "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." Here I see God come into the world — God's side of things towards us — all the fullness of God, love and light, in bodily form. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses." He never said "Come to Me" until He had come to them. He did not wait in heaven and say, You get right and then come up here; but He came in sovereign grace where and when they were wrong.
To reconcile is to bring people back into right relations with God. "Not imputing" means not charging their sins to their account.
God was seeking in His Son to bring men back into right relations with Himself. The Lord Jesus did not charge people's trespasses to them. To the poor sinner of Luke 7 He said, "Your sins are forgiven." To the woman caught in sin, in John 8, He said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more." Peter bound the sin of Ananias and Sapphira on them. Paul charged the sin of Elymas the sorcerer to him, and handed others over to Satan. But the Lord Jesus, while He was here, did not charge the trespasses of sinners to them, even though He rebuked the proud Pharisees and scribes. Grace marked His mission.
Uncharged sins do not vanish. Someone still has to answer for them.
Adam was responsible for the guilt that has estranged man from God. We may say then that man was responsible to remedy this. But he could not: sin's enmity is too much for him. But God was in no way responsible to do so. In pure love and grace He laid the perfect foundation of reconciliation for all the world, by the gift of His own Son. The only way our trespasses could be "not imputed" to us was by the blessed sacrifice of Calvary, where they were imputed to Christ instead.
The offer was real. Man's answer to it proved something about human nature.
The blessed Saviour was "reconciling," acting toward this gracious end, during His life. He was rejected. If men had received Christ, the result would have proved that evil could be repaired. Now we know the truth is the opposite. But God first put the matter to man's responsibility, and then showed that repair was morally impossible.
Rejection did not cancel the offer.
The world murdered Him. But His coming announced a great amnesty on God's part, and that amnesty is still in force. It is still the time, the day of salvation, and God's ambassadors are still here proclaiming the fact.
The verse describes an attitude God took. It does not say the world is now reconciled.
Notice, first, there is no statement here of the world having been reconciled. The apostle is speaking about the attitude God took in Christ, when Christ came into the world. What Christ was doing when here, he says, we are doing as His representatives, "in His stead," now that He is no longer here. But that attitude is one of begging men to be reconciled — not telling them they are.
Three things flow from God's coming in Christ. The third is where the verse ends.
"Reconciling," "not imputing," and "committing to us the word of reconciliation." Without this last, the work of grace would have stayed incomplete in its application. For this same Jesus, who in His coming here below was reconciling and "not imputing," needed to be "made sin" for us, to die and go away. Once the work was finished, it still hung waiting to be applied. God crowned this glorious work of His grace by committing to man "the word of reconciliation."
The verse names "the world" as the object. No one can argue their way outside that.
No one under heaven can put himself outside the range of this most precious ministry. Before the reader can shut himself out from the application of all this grace to himself, he must prove that he does not belong to the world. This he cannot do, and so he must see that God is begging him to be reconciled.
- God came. He did not wait in heaven for people to improve. The fullness of God arrived in Christ, on our ground, in grace and not in judgment.
- God withheld. Jesus forgave sins and refused to condemn, while other servants of God did charge sin to the guilty.
- God paid. Christ took our trespasses to His own account at the cross. That is the only way they could stay off ours.
- God still asks. The verse states an attitude, not a finished result. Scripture never says the world has been reconciled. That is why God still pleads with people: be reconciled.
- God sends. He crowned the finished work by placing the word of reconciliation in human hands. Its object is the world, so no one can prove the message leaves them out.