What does it mean that old things have passed away (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 Christ" is new creation, a contrast to being "in Adam" (1 Cor. 15:22) the head of the first creation. In new creation, "old things are passed away - all things are become new." He is not speaking of the experience of a believer, but of his new position. Some have been deeply frustrated in trying to apply this to daily experience, for manifestly our present body is still connected with Adam and the first creation, and the fleshly nature is still with us. But positionally we are now introduced permanently into this new creation by virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ, and this is henceforth our proper sphere of life - Christ Himself the Head, and therefore the Object to attract the heart. The circumstances into which I am introduced are those entirely new; and having a new nature as born of God, this is itself a vital connection with this blessed new creation.

Verse 16 springs out of this, as the first word, "Wherefore," bears witness. Because Christ is no longer among us in the life of this world, and because we also now live in connection with Him, a new order of things has come in. Even Christ Himself is known by us in a new way. Paul had not been amongst those who knew Christ "according to flesh" in the days of His flesh. But even if he had been, he would have known Him thus no longer. But also we know no man after the flesh. That is not because men are not in the old condition according to flesh; for the great mass of them are. It is because of the subjective change wrought in ourselves. The Christian learns to look at men in a new way, not because of what has been wrought in them but because of what has been wrought in himself.

What has been wrought is stated in verse 17 — a work of new creation in Christ. As newly created in Christ we find ourselves in a new world. We are not there yet as regards our bodies. That awaits the coming of the Lord. But we are there as regards our minds and spirits. Even today our spirits move amid things totally new, things utterly unknown in our unconverted days; also even the old things of this present creation, amongst which we move, are viewed by us in a new way.

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.

So that now, "If any one be in Christ, it is a new creation. The old things have passed. Behold, all things are become new." How simple and evident the result! We are the fruit of a new work of the Creator, which has brought us into new relationships, into a place which is eternal, a scene into which sin can no more enter, a paradise never to be blighted as the old one was. The apostle is not speaking here of our own condition as we know it by experience. He does not mean that there is no sin remaining in us, that we have got into any perfected condition which can set us beyond the need of self-judgment, beyond the need of discipline and correction. He is speaking entirely of what we are in Christ, something which faith knows and realizes, which we judge not by experience, but by the revelation of the Word itself. Alas, Christians as we are, it is not impossible that the full reality of this may decline for us in its power over our souls. All the same it remains true that there is no one in Christ who is not a subject of this new creation, who does not belong to the scene where all things are new, and where all things are of God.

Thus has He reconciled us to Himself, through Christ. He has brought us out of all the estrangement natural to us. There is no distance; there is nearness. There is no separation of our things from His. They are, so to speak, identical; and thus not the apostle alone could say, nor any class among Christians merely, that "He hath given us the ministry of reconciliation." By the very fact that He has brought us to Himself and made Himself known to us, He has given its the power also of making known to others that with which our own souls are filled and of bringing others to Him. We have received the reconciliation; and what we have received, we have received not for ourselves alone, but to minister with it. It is the work which Christ Himself began upon earth when God in Him assumed the attitude of perfect grace, not imputing men's trespasses to them, reconciling, therefore, the world to Himself. It is not a question of how far this might be effectual, of how far men, in fact, responded to it. It was His attitude. It was on God's part complete, and now, with that work accomplished which he speaks of directly as the basis of it all, and which always must have been the basis of it, a work foreseen by God before it was accomplished, but which is now accomplished, He is still reconciling men, but through others, who stand instead of Christ here, His authenticated ambassadors, by whom God beseeches men still. "We pray," says the apostle, "in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." That is, Christ is not here Himself to do this, but He has multiplied the hands which are to minister it. He has on every side the witnesses that are to speak for Him. The apostle and those with him, sent in the first place direct from Christ, fulfilled this character, of course, in the most complete and authoritative way, but we must not on that account overlook our own part in it, — a part which every Christian has. It is not, indeed, a mere question of something entrusted to us, but of hearts that know God's grace and know men's need of it, which must necessarily, therefore, speak of what they know. As we have already seen, he who believes speaks. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

In Christ is new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). There “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;” new nature, new life, new relationships, new affections. And all these things are of God. The man in Christ is of God, and everything connected with him. In Adam is old creation: old, fallen, sinful, defiled, dead, and lost. In Christ is new, and “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).

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 .

This statement of the apostle is made in connection with the believer's new place in Christ. "If any man be in Christ, [he is] a new creature," or more exactly, [there is] a new creation, a new sphere, outside of the old creation, where old things have passed away, for faith, and all things are become new.*

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.