Thank you for listening to First Day.

Paul continues in chapter five informing the Corinthians the outcomes that they should expect following their decision to die to self and live in Christ. These are the results of righteousness. Up front let me tell you that this chapter is one of the heaviest, most theologically and doctrinally dense chapters in the New Testament. Some of the commentary here may seem to you incomplete—and it probably it—because the themes and teachings here are fleshed out further in Romans. In fact, I’m starting to think that 2 Corinthians 5 should be required reading before tackling Paul’s magnum opus.

We sacrifice and are afflicted and face hardship and privation for the sake of the gospel; we experience these things in our physical bodies: hunger, pain, and emotional stress, to identify just a few. The Christian who allows his or herself to die with Christ on the cross to live in Christ will find that their faithfulness will yield the blessing of a new spiritual body. This is in keeping with Paul’s earlier teaching on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians. “…our earthly tent” may also refer to our lives in general, with Paul concerned with how we live them: Upon what do we focus? What are our priorities? 

We long for that spiritual body given at resurrection just like we long to live in God’s kingdom. Either way, we will be “clothed” in Christ. When that time and state of being finally comes, we will find God to be our refuge, and God’s hand will cover us. Remember Psalm 116 from last episode. As Paul has already explained to the Corinthians, the only way for a person to gain immortality is to die to self and be made alive in Christ. From this perspective, being unclothed means to be mortal and to be clothed is to be immortal, clothed in the glory and majesty of God. We know that this will be the outcome of our faith because God has given to us His Spirit in Christ Jesus. 

Is Paul speaking specifically here—that this is about our physical bodies—or this Paul speaking generally about to kind of life that we live: our own, worldly one or Christ’s? As with most bibly things, even though most Christians want it either/or, it is probably both/and. Consider verse six: would you rather be here or in God’s kingdom? Would I rather be in the kingdom than be here where I must struggle against my pride every day? Duh… In verse eight Paul tells us his preference, that he’d prefer to be with God, but “whether we are home or away, we make it our aim to be pleasing to him.” This really leads us to verse ten. We may long to be in God’s kingdom, like Paul, but the fact is we are still here. Let us spend a minute here in verse ten.

What Paul says to the Corinthians here is one of the most often ignored teachings in the whole of scripture. In our kneejerk reaction to what we perceive to be dogma in the Roman Catholic Church—what has come to be called “works righteousness”—we Protestants long ago decided that salvation was through faith alone. Some of you listening are going, “Yes,” and some of you are going, “No,” but most of you are going, “Where is he going with this?” Well, this is where: We Christians don’t tend to like to dive into the deep end of our common faith. I guess it’s called the comfort zone for a reason. To put this as succinctly as possible, Paul says here that we are to be judged not on what we believe but whether we have faith—which is belief in action. We must act on what we believe, and these actions declare what we believe. And Paul tells us in verse eleven that this is why he does what he does. “What we are in plain to God, and I hope it is plain to your consciences.”

Paul has not written this letter to provide the Corinthians with evidence for his apostolic authority. Instead, he has written to them to provide them with an example for, or better, a counter argument to, those Christians who wear their belief on their sleeves—those who do what they do to set themselves apart—perhaps even to those who try to do the ministry of Christ commonsensically or as the world would do ministry. These Christians live for themselves, whereas in verse fifteen we hear Paul declare the necessity of the death-to-self: “…so that those who live should no longer live for themselves…” Why we do what we do is as important and necessary as what we choose to do. This message is in line with what he had already written to the Galatians: that we no longer live but that Christ lives in us. 

To me, verse fifteen is the standout. “And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised.” Much of Paul’s soon to be written letter to the Romans is dedicated to explaining what the apostle means here, and I can’t wait to get there: Jesus died so that we might be able to live for something greater than ourselves. 

In certain Christian traditions’ parlance this passage about being “born again”, the central verse being, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passes away, and see, the new has come!” In Galatians 6:15, the only other place where uses this term “new creation”, he writes, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, what counts is the new creation.” (NIV) His message then was that only Christ matters to him and should be the only thing with which the Galatians are to concern themselves. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (14) This is a message tailormade for the Corinthians, and Paul writes this in the verse immediately preceding his statement about the new creation. So, what is his meaning here in Corinthians?

What we learn in verse 19 is that “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them…” In Christ, what it means to be human is made new—and this transformation happens for the whole world. So, for whom did Jesus die and who did He take into Himself? He did for everyone. 

Paul states that through the cross he no longer lives to the world—his faith and desires and thoughts and actions are meaningless—and through that same cross the world no longer lives to Paul—the desires and works of world are pointless. Jesus’ death changed the world and freed the world from the power of Adam’s sin—freed us all from the power of pride. Subsequently, how we respond to God’s act on the cross matters and gives gravitas to verses 10b and 11:

Considering all this, verse 17 is likely not about an individual person’s conversion experience when he or she accepts Jesus as Savior. Rather, it is about the unilateral act of God’s mercy executed on Christ’s cross for all people, everywhere and for all time, expunging the sin—and subsequent death and estrangement from God—that we inherited from Adam. So, we no longer have the convivence of knowing “anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way,” because we have been made new by the cross and perspective has been changed. We can now be judged for what we have “done in the body,” because God changed us and “has committed the message of reconciliation to us.”

God wants everyone in the world to live in a way that is befitting the new creation that has its genesis because Jesus Christ’s work on the cross. Jesus’ reconciling work on the cross freed the world from the penalty of Adam’s sin; this was the act of God’s great mercy. Verse twenty-one is repeated from Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…” (NIV) so this is not a novel teaching: “He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” (Galatians 3:14, NIV) but, rather, one that is central to the Corinthians ending their old lives and moving forward into a new one. 

Let me do the super-Readers’ Digest summary of 2 Corinthians 5: 

Christ took upon Himself the sin of the world and brought all of us into a place where we can have a relationship with God; Jesus became “sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” We become that righteousness when we choose to live life in a new way—in the same way that Jesus does. In this—whether we have taken up that new life or not—we will be judged. Because God made Him to be sin to change us and make us responsible for sharing “the message of reconciliation”. Phew.

Thank you for listening to First Day. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or would like a one-on-one conversation about this.