If anyone is in Christ: new creation and the ministry of reconciliation

Second Corinthians is a letter from Paul, with Timothy named as co-sender (1:1), to the church he founded in Corinth about AD 50 to 51 (Acts 18). Corinth was a Roman colony and a prosperous port city, proud of its wealth and status. After Paul left, the church was troubled by divisions, moral disorder and rival teachers.

The relationship then worsened. Paul made a painful visit (2:1), wrote a severe letter 'with many tears' (2:4; 7:8), and sent Titus to learn how it was received. Second Corinthians was written after Titus met him in Macedonia with good news (7:5-7), most likely in AD 55 or 56. Newcomers whom Paul sarcastically calls 'super-apostles' (11:5; 12:11) had arrived, commended themselves with letters and fine speech, and questioned whether a man who was weak, poor and often imprisoned could be a true apostle. Because the tone changes sharply at chapter 10, some scholars think the letter joins two letters; others defend its unity. This class does not depend on the answer.

Chapter 5 belongs to the long defence of Paul's ministry (2:14 to 7:4). Just before it, Paul says he does not lose heart though his outer self is wasting away (4:16-18). The chapter division falls in the middle of that argument: why can a minister who is suffering and dying still be confident, and what drives him to keep preaching?

Second Corinthians is an occasional letter, written to meet a real situation, and in these chapters it is also a defence speech. A sentence in such a letter should first be read as part of the argument it serves. Here the argument concerns the character of apostolic ministry: it is carried out in weakness, driven by the love of Christ, and aimed at reconciling people to God. The doctrines in the chapter (resurrection body, judgment, new creation, atonement) are real teaching, but Paul introduces them to answer the question of why he does what he does.

The chapter also mixes two kinds of language. Verses 1 to 10 use metaphors of tents, houses and clothing, which should not be pressed into a detailed map of the afterlife. Verses 14 to 21 use compressed statements about Christ's death, close to early Christian confession, and each phrase should be read against its Old Testament background. Paul's habit of writing 'in Christ' for the sphere in which God's saving work reaches people is the key.

Verses 1 to 10 are among the most debated in Paul. Readers disagree on what the 'building from God' is: the resurrection body given at Christ's return, a heavenly body given at death, or the new humanity or heavenly temple in Christ. The class follows the common reading that it is the resurrection body and that being 'at home with the Lord' describes the believer's presence with Christ before that day.

Verses 1 to 5. Paul begins with what 'we know'. The body is a tent, a temporary shelter that can be taken down (Paul was himself a tentmaker, Acts 18:3). Against the tent stands 'a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands'. The Greek for 'not built by human hands' (acheiropoietos) is used in Mark 14:58 for the temple Jesus would raise, and it marks something made by God himself.

Paul says 'we groan', longing to be clothed with this dwelling. He does not wish to be 'unclothed', a state of nakedness that most likely means bodiless existence, but to be clothed so that 'our mortality may be swallowed up by life'. The language echoes 1 Corinthians 15:54, which quotes Isaiah 25:8. In verse 5 God has prepared this and given the Spirit as a 'pledge'. The Greek arrabon was a commercial term for a deposit that guaranteed full payment. The Spirit already given is the down payment on resurrection life.

Verses 6 to 10. Paul is 'always confident', yet while 'at home in the body' he is 'away from the Lord'. Verse 7 gives the rule: 'we walk by faith, not by sight.' In verse 8 he prefers to be 'away from the body and at home with the Lord', as in Philippians 1:23, where to depart and be with Christ is 'far better'. Most readers take this to mean that believers who die are with Christ before the resurrection. Verse 9 turns the longing into a goal: whether here or away, 'we aspire to please Him'.

Verse 10 gives the reason. 'We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.' The Greek word is bema, the raised platform where a Roman magistrate heard cases. Corinth had one, and Paul had stood before it when the proconsul Gallio heard the charges against him (Acts 18:12-17). Each person will receive 'his due for the things done in the body'. In 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 the believer's work is tested but the believer is saved. Most traditions read it as a judgment of what believers have done, not a reopening of their standing in Christ (Romans 8:1).

Verses 11 to 15. Because he knows the 'fear of the Lord', Paul tries to persuade people. His critics had called him out of his mind, and Paul answers that if so it is for God, and if sane it is for them. What drives him is 'Christ's love', and the verb sunecho means to hold in its grip or press from every side. The reason is a conviction: 'One died for all, therefore all died.' The one stands for the many. The purpose follows: that 'those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.'

Verses 16 and 17

To know someone 'according to the flesh' (kata sarka) is to judge by outward standing, such as status, rhetoric and visible success, which is just what Paul's opponents did. He adds that he once regarded Christ this way. This probably refers to his own earlier judgment, as a persecutor, that Jesus was a failed and cursed pretender to the messianic title. The cross and resurrection changed that. Verse 17 is a verbless cry in Greek, literally 'if anyone in Christ - new creation!' It can mean a new creature, and many scholars also hear a larger sense, since Galatians 6:15 speaks of a 'new creation' and Isaiah promised one (43:18-19; 65:17). To be in Christ is to be taken into the new world God has begun in his Son.

Verses 18 to 20. 'All this is from God.' The verb 'reconcile' (katallasso) belongs to the language of broken relationships made whole, and in Paul it is people who are brought back to God, not God who is appeased. God 'reconciled us to Himself through Christ', and was reconciling 'the world' in Christ, 'not counting men's trespasses against them'. This recalls Psalm 32:1-2. The reconciled are given the 'ministry' and 'message' of reconciliation. An ambassador (presbeuo) is an envoy who speaks with a king's authority. The appeal 'Be reconciled to God' is real, so the message must be received. The next verses (6:1-2) show he also presses it on the church.

Verse 21 closes the section. 'God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.' The phrase may mean that he was treated as a sinner or made a sin offering; the Greek Old Testament often uses the word 'sin' for the offering for sin (Leviticus 4), and Romans 8:3 has similar wording. Either way it recalls Isaiah 53, where the LORD lays the iniquity of us all on his servant (53:6) and the servant is an offering for guilt (53:10). Traditional Protestant readers take 'the righteousness of God' to be a righteous standing given to believers. N. T. Wright reads it as believers becoming a living sign of God's covenant faithfulness in the ministry of reconciliation. Both agree on the exchange: what is Christ's becomes the believer's because of what he took.

The first doctrine in the chapter is the hope of bodily resurrection. Paul does not describe the future as the soul's escape from the body but as being 'clothed' and having mortality 'swallowed up by life'. This agrees with 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8:23, and keeps the Old Testament conviction that God made the material world good and will renew it. The Spirit is the pledge of that renewal, so the Christian life is already marked by the future.

• The second is the atonement. The chapter says that Christ died 'for all', that his death counts as the death of those he represents, that God was reconciling the world in him, and that he was made 'sin' so that others might share the righteousness of God. Christians have read these lines as substitution, representation, sacrifice and victory, and the text holds these together without ranking them.
• The third is the new creation. Isaiah 65:17 promises new heavens and a new earth, and the New Testament sees that promise begun in the resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:20-23) and completed in Revelation 21:1-5. Paul's 'if anyone is in Christ' applies it now to persons.

The fourth is mission. Reconciliation is a commission as well as a doctrine: the love of Christ both saves and sends. Last, the passage holds accountability and assurance together, the judgment seat and the pledge of the Spirit, as parts of one hope.

The passage shows who Christ is and what he has done. He 'knew no sin', so he is truly human, able to stand in the place of humans, and uniquely holy. He 'died for all' and 'was raised again', so his death and resurrection are one saving event. He is the Lord before whose judgment seat all will appear (5:10), a role Romans 14:10 gives to God. And he is the one 'in' whom God was reconciling the world: the place where God and humanity meet and peace is made.

The passage fulfils the Old Testament in several ways. Verse 21 echoes Isaiah 53, where the servant bears the iniquity of others and is an offering for guilt. The sin offering of Leviticus 4 lies behind the language of one on whom sin is placed so that others may be clean. Paul does not quote Isaiah 53 here, so the connection is best called an echo, supported elsewhere in the New Testament (1 Peter 2:24; Romans 4:25). The new creation of verse 17 draws on Isaiah 43:18-19 and 65:17. Right after this chapter Paul quotes Isaiah 49:8 and says the promised time has arrived: 'now is the day of salvation' (6:2).

The New Testament says that Christ, by one offering, completes what the animal sacrifices pictured (Hebrews 9:11-14; 10:10-14), and Colossians 1:20 and Ephesians 2:16 use the same verb for the reconciliation his cross accomplished.