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<< 2 Corinthians 5:16   2 Corinthians 5:18 >>


2 Corinthians 5:16-17

If a person truly believes, he will repent, and the consequence is reconciliation with God. Our relationship to Him changes; it is entirely new. Our point of view, our world view, changes. We no longer look at life in the same way. Now we view everything from the perspective of God, His Word, and His Kingdom. We no longer look upon people as we did before.

Before our reconciliation we had a superficial view of Christ. Now we view Him as the Eternal Creator, Lord, Savior, and High Priest who lives in us by His Spirit and with whom we are now in fellowship. This has a tremendous impact on how we conduct our lives.

We understand that God is creating a new race beginning with Christ, the second Adam. A man in Christ is a new creation, not merely improved or reformed, but remade. Reconciliation is not just politely ignoring hostilities. It is the total removal of hostilities so there can be a relationship, a fellowship, between God and man that will produce sanctification leading to holiness and complete and total at-one-ment with the great God.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Separation and Oneness With God



2 Corinthians 5:14-19

God always planned for our justification by faith. As for all who lived faithfully before Christ's human life, death, and resurrection, it is applied retroactively (Romans 4). Since God knew Adam and Eve would misuse the freedom of choice He gave them, leading to sin, He made provision for their justification (and ours) through the blood of Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world (Hebrews 9:26; I Peter 3:19-21; Revelation 13:8).

Martin G. Collins
Are You Justified?



2 Corinthians 5:17

Christians are to be in union with Christ. This explains why it is so important to study the Bible, to meditate on it, to spend time trying to understand it, to communicate with one another with the Word and with the Father. What are we doing as we absorb God's Word? God's Word is part of His mind, His personality, His character. It is the way He thinks.

We cannot be in union with someone we do not know or who we have no relationship with. We cannot be in union with someone we never think about.

The more we think about Him, the more we carry His word in our mind. The more experiences that we have with Him, the deeper, stronger, sharper, clearer, and more real the union becomes. It all pivots around the Word of God. Jesus says, "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63).

They are an invisible force and power because, if we believe His words, they begin to work in our lives because we use them. They begin to produce what God intends them to produce. As we use them, we become more one with Him because we are becoming like Him. Our lives begin to be operated by His mind expressed in His Word. The more we use them, the more we become like Him.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Image and Likeness of God (Part Four)



2 Corinthians 5:17

Each Christian is a new lump of clay—being molded and shaped by a Master Potter! We are already physical and mortal, so He must be forming, creating something else in the image of God!

God's creative efforts did not end in Genesis 1. He merely reached a stage, a platform, from which springs the most important aspect of the creation. The new creation is the creation of a new order, a Family in His image—and not just physically, but also spiritually. He also wants our minds and hearts to be in His image.

Ephesians 4:13 says that we to grow to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

John W. Ritenbaugh




2 Corinthians 5:17-20

In verse 18, Paul explains that he, and by implication other Christians, have a "ministry of reconciliation" to serve as "ambassadors for Christ" (verse 20). It is, the apostle continues in verse 20, as if God is "pleading through us" to "be reconciled to God." Jesus Christ brings this reconciliation about, and the new man is the result.

Charles Whitaker
Choosing the New Man (Part Two)



2 Corinthians 5:17-20

Though they live in a foreign nation, ambassadors take no part of their host nation's political or military institutions, yet the ambassador is expected to adhere to the laws of the foreign land. An American ambassador to China knows well that his host government is seriously opposed to his own. He does not serve the Chinese government, enter into its politics, try to eradicate the evils of its system, vote in its elections, join its army, or advocate for its causes. Yet he subjects himself to Chinese laws that concern him while there, endeavoring to behave in a way that will best represent the interests of the U.S. government.

In the same way, Christian's are ambassadors of the Kingdom of God. We are called to become part of a totally different society, and while living in this world, we must represent God and abide by His laws and standards, which supersede those of men when they conflict. Like the worldly ambassador, a Christian should not involve himself in the affairs of an opposing government but must abide by its rules as best he can. He must live as a citizen of heaven and an ambassador for Jesus Christ first and foremost.

Martin G. Collins
Would Jesus Christ Vote? (Part Three)



2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Of keen interest in this context is the term “new” in verse 17. Paul had his choice of either of two words, kainos or neos, but he chose the one best suited to God's purpose here. He chose kainos, indicating newness in the sense of fresh existence. Neos means newness in the sense of renovation, for example, repairing something that already exists. In this context, God is describing a transformation in the inner man from carnality to spiritual thought and conduct. The new creation is not merely a repair job of the old, existing, carnal nature. It is a complete change to a nature, a heart, that had not been there before conversion.

The apostle nudges our thoughts to a parallel incident, when God created Adam in Genesis 1. Adam was an entity who did not exist before God acted. In this creation described in II Corinthians 5, though, God is not exercising His divine powers by creating an entirely new person, but He is fashioning a new heart, a new nature, that will produce righteousness, in contrast to the old nature that produced self-centered sin.

One by one, God is calling people out of Satan's worldly system and creating a Family Kingdom described in multiple locations throughout His Word. We have all borne the physical and character image of the sinner Adam; we are now being created in the spiritual image of the holy, righteous, and sinless Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 15:48-49). But know this: The new creation does not end with the spiritual creation of the sons of God. It carries on to include even a New Heaven and a New Earth.

The new creation begun by God with repentant and converted human beings is just the beginning of a massive creation that will surely follow because God has willed it as part of His plan (Isaiah 55:11). His Word provides an idea of what it entails, alerting God's children of the new creation that has begun in them and will expand indefinitely.

Isaiah 42:9 reads, “Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”Isaiah 65:17 adds, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.” The prophet chose to use the Hebrew word hadas (“new”; Strong's 2319) that, as kainos in New Testament Greek, indicates “that which did not exist before.”

Isaiah 9:7 clinches the never-ending expansion of God's purpose:

Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Isaiah 66:22-23 contains even more exciting news:

“For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me,” says the LORD, “so shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath toanother, all flesh shall come before Me,” says the LORD.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Do Angels Live Forever?



2 Corinthians 5:14-17

Though not directly stated, Paul essentially describes what happened to Abraham at his calling and must happen to us. Abraham's mind—and therefore his life—was so arrested and redirected by God's revelation of Himself that he responded dramatically, despite the realization that he could no longer live as he had for 70 years. He had to make changes, and some of them would be considerable and costly.

He could no longer live completely for himself. He no longer perceived people as he had all his life. He especially could no longer perceive his new God and Savior as He formerly had. A new man was being created from within, so he had to make a clean and permanent break from his old life. His life now had a new Object toward which he must walk. His life had a new direction, a new relationship, new desires, and new requirements to fulfill.

We must never forget that Abraham was a special case; he is the prototype who set a vivid, overall example for all his spiritual children to follow to some degree. There were bumps along the way; at times, he fell short of the ideal. Yet, on the whole, he did nothing less than set a superb example for all of us.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Christian Fight (Part Six)



2 Corinthians 5:14-18

Paul uses very strong language here. Not one part of this system will be carried over into the World Tomorrow! The whole thing is unclean, something that contaminates and defiles, rendering unholy those who are touched by it (Haggai 2:10-14). The world is most dangerous to a Christian when it is not persecuting them. It seems friendly, tolerant, even producing good, but God says even then it is still unclean. It is God's judgment that counts.

John W. Ritenbaugh
This Is Not God's World


 
<< 2 Corinthians 5:16   2 Corinthians 5:18 >>



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