What does it mean that all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17)?

This is a work of God in which man can have no share. There is no human material to enter into it, for that had all gone in death before this work was wrought. Justification has here no place, for it is a living man, not a dead man, who needs to be justified. The whole question of responsibility as children of Adam is at an end, for Christ having gone into death for the very purpose of meeting our responsibility, and having settled that question for all that are His, has been raised from the dead in a new character of life (in resurrection), to which responsibility does not belong. He is in a sphere into which responsibility never shall enter, and we are there in Him. It is a work absolutely and entirely of God, a new creation, the character of which is that "all things are of God." (2 Cor. 5:18) The old things are passed away, gone in death never to return; the things that we have now are all new — new, not in the sense of being fresh merely, but as never having existed before. The great thought in the passage is that all that is of man has entirely disappeared from view, and what is of God alone is now seen. The day is coming when this will be true actually, when all within and around will be characterised by being of God, but in the meantime this is true of believers, of all who are in Christ, "if any man be in Christ there is a new creation."

This great truth is doctrinally unfolded in 2 Cor. 5, where we read, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (ver. 17) The apostle does not say, "If any man be in Christ he is pardoned — his sins are forgiven — his debts paid." All this is divinely true; but the statement just quoted goes very much farther. It declares that a man in Christ is a new creation altogether. It is not the old nature pardoned, but completely set aside, with all its belongings, and a new creation introduced in which there is not a single shred of the old. "All things are become new; and all things are of God."

In reconciliation everything is in the life of Christ: "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." This is what is true in Christ. It is not exactly what is true as we view one another in this room; here we have to know one another after the flesh. In our pathway of responsibility through the world we have to do with the old order: we have parents, children, husbands, wives, masters, servants, etc., and we have to walk in these relationships to the glory of God. But this will all come to an end. It will come to an end at death, or the coming of Christ, when He will take us up in glory; but 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 quickened together with Him, we are apart from all belonging to the old. There is nothing of Adam or of the flesh in our life in Christ. Personal identity, of course, abides to eternity, but that has nothing to do with the order of man. When I speak of the old or new it is a matter of relationships, nature and affections. All these new things are of God. This does not merely mean that He made them. He made the old also, but they became corrupted. But the old was not of Him in this sense; the new is of His nature. They are of God, in the sense that they are of Him morally and spiritually. They are in Christ and of His order.

The first mention of new creation in the New Testament is in 2 Corinthians 5:17, where we find that every one "in Christ" is brought into it. It is "new creation" in this verse rather than "a new creature," and the language of Paul here appears to be very vigorous and emphatic. He omits the verb altogether, and exclaims, "So that, if anyone in Christ — new creation!" as one who exults in this glorious fact. Nothing short of this is involved in our being in Christ Jesus.

But, as we have read, if any man is in Christ there is a new creation. There is little doubt that "in Christ" in this scripture goes farther than the same expression in Romans, where, though the life we possess in Christ is that of the new creation, the new creation itself is not revealed, for the reason that we are not there said to be risen with Christ. This truth is unfolded in the Colossians; and it is in this epistle that Christ is said to be "the Beginning, the First-born from the dead." (Col. 1:18.) That is, as the cross of Christ was the judicial end of the first man, so the resurrection of Christ - Christ as the risen Man - was God's new beginning according to His eternal counsels. He was ever the object of His counsels; and having glorified God concerning the sins and sin of Adam and his race, the first and responsible man, He in His own person, in His resurrection and glorified condition, is the Beginning; the beginning, because God has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the First-born among many brethren. As another scripture says, He is the beginning of the creation of God (Rev. 3:14); that is, of God's new creation.

And this meaning is clearly proved by what follows in Corinthians — "wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh." This is the simple and necessary result (for faith, not for sight): if all have died, they are in the flesh no longer; we walk amid a world where men are either alive in Christ or but as it were dead men. But not only so: "yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." Even Christ has not taken up again the life which He laid down. He has not returned (that is,) to His former state upon earth. That is over; and the Christ we know is One who is in resurrection in the glory of God. An immeasurably higher condition, you say. Surely it is; but the former one is passed away, and passed away in that which affirmed God's sentence upon it. Where, then, are we who live? In Christ; and "if any man be in Christ, it is new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

Undoubtedly "new things have come," or taken place, is the reading preferred by many; but there is a very slight difference in the meaning between this and what we read in the A.V., "all things are become new." (Compare Rev. 21:5.) A moment's glance will perceive that everything flows from verse 15: Christ "died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again." Those who live are those who live out of death, Christ's death for them proving that they were in that state. Like those in John 5:24, all such have passed out of death into life. This being the case, they have entered upon a new sphere and a new order of things, the scene of their new and risen life, and where Christ, as risen and glorified, is the centre of all the glory, and the beginning of the creation of God. As conversant in that new circle of timings they know no man after the flesh, for if they did it would be to return to the old life and the old order; and even more, Christ would not be henceforward known in the condition of flesh and blood, but as the glorified Man of God's pleasure. The apostle then presents the blessed consequence of this marvellous change. If any man be in Christ, as all such are in Christ and not in Adam, there is a new creation - old things have passed away; behold, if we adopt the alternative reading, new things have come. This is Christianity, and it cannot be too much pressed; for it is God's thought for all His people that, risen with Christ, they should seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at God's right hand. Into the midst of these new things we shall one day, it may be very soon, be actually introduced; in the meantime, through the activity of faith, which gives reality to things hoped for, in the power of the Holy Ghost, it is our privilege to expatiate at large amid the new things which have already come.

Therefore if any one is in Christ, he belongs to this new creation, he is of the new creation. He belongs no more at all to the former; the old things have passed away; all things are I become new. The system is not the fruit of human nature and of sin, like all that surrounds us here below, according to the flesh. Already, looked at as a system existing morally before God, in this new creation, all things are of God. All that is found in it is of God, of Him who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ. We live in an order of things, a world, a new creation, entirely of God. We are there in peace, because God, who is its centre and its source, has reconciled us to Himself. We enjoy it, because we are new creatures in Christ; and everything in this new world is of Him, and corresponds with that new nature. He had also committed to the apostle a ministry of reconciliation, according to the order of things into which he had been himself introduced. Being reconciled, and knowing it by the revelation of God who had accomplished it for him, he proclaimed a reconciliation, the effect of which he was enjoying .

The man in Christ belongs to a sphere where "old things have passed away" and where "all things have become new." This is truly Christianity according to the thought of God. All in Christianity proper is new; the revelation of God is entirely new; a new life has been manifested; new relationships have been formed; new associations now exist; a new man has been created; everything is heavenly in origin and character, and all our thoughts, desires, feelings, joys and affections, are altogether new. How good for us when we live in the light and power of these things; when we view the old order of things in which we once lived as gone forever from the sight of God, and gone forever for us also. It is true that we have to live still in old creation relationships and circumstances, but we can bring into them the light and character of the things that are heavenly and new.

Nothing can be more explicit, nothing more conclusive than the last quoted passage from 2 Corinthians 5. “Old things,” of whatever kind, “are passed away.” They are not recognized as having any existence in the new creation wherein “all things are of God.” The old foundation has been completely removed and new foundations laid in redemption. Nor is there so much as a single particle of the old material worked up into the new. “All things are become new”, “All things are of God.” The old creation “bottles” have been flung aside and redemption-bottles set in their stead. The old creation “garment” has been cast away and the new, the spotless robe of redemption, substituted. In this fair robe, man's hand never wove a thread nor set a stitch. How do we know? How can we speak with such confidence and authority? For the best of all reasons, because the divinely authoritative and therefore absolutely conclusive voice of Holy Scripture declares that in the new creation, “All things are of God.” The Lord be praised that it is so! It is this that makes all so secure, that places all so entirely beyond the reach of the enemy's power. He cannot touch anything or anyone in the new creation.