What is he talking about here? Paul is talking about is the same thing that I said was so important back in Genesis 3. When Adam and Eve sinned, their perspective changed. They were moved away from God and they then began to look at the things of life, the events of life, and circumstances of life from a different point of view—a different perspective than they had been before.
Our relationship with God has changed and now all things are new. For us to look at things (to look at life) as we did before is going to be vanity, self-defeating—it will end in death. Now you look at things from the prospect of being in the Kingdom of God, being a king, being a priest, and being God.
What kind of a change does that make with the way that you conduct your life? Do you still look at things the same way as you did before? No. It used to be that Saturday was a play day, Saturday was a workday, or Saturday was a day when you did your own thing. It is not that way now.
It used to be that you looked upon Christmas as maybe one of the high times of the year and Easter too. Now, thumbs down on them. Now we look to God's holy days. Our perspective has changed.
Why have we done this? Because we believe that God is creating Himself in us; we are a new creation. The Captain—the Leader of our salvation, the One who is going on before us—Jesus Christ, is the second Adam. We have made the choice because our perspective has changed to follow Him.
This is why I said there is a contrast in Romans 5 between what happened more or less automatically (because Adam sinned), but does not happen automatically because of what Jesus did. We are an integral part of the process; we have to make the choices to follow, and our choices will never change unless our perspective changes. The perspective changes because we have been reconciled to God. We have been allowed, if I can make this illustration, to come back into the Garden of Eden and take from the Tree of Life.
That is how atonement is accomplished. It is not a simple legal process.
In verses 16 and 17, Paul is saying that as a result of this, we no longer look at things the way we did before. "From now on, we regard no one according to the flesh." Before, we always regarded everybody according to the flesh. Now, we regard no one according to the flesh. You see, conversion means a change of perspective has taken place. One set of conditions is passing out of the way.
That is the way conversion is. The "old" passes away. The "new" comes into its place. A process is talking place. A transformation is gradually taking place in our lives. And, as Paul describes it here, we no longer look at things according to the flesh. Now we look at things according to the Spirit. That is, a converted person does. So, a transformation is talking place—from a worldly point of view to a spiritual one. And the first step—in the context of II Corinthians 5—is to be reconciled to God.
