2 Corinthians 5:17

ὥστε εἴ τις κ. τ. λ.: so that (a consequence of the higher view of Christ explained in the last verse) if any man (note the universality of the doctrine which he expounds) be in Christ, there is a new creation. To be ἐν Χριστῷ is a very different thing from claiming to be ἐν Χριστοῦ “of Christ,” sc., of the Christ-party (1 Corinthians 1:12, chap. 2 Corinthians 10:7); this indeed is exactly the distinction which St. Paul has had in mind in the last verse. The expression “a new creation” was a common Rabbinical description of a converted proselyte (see Wetstein in loc.); but its meaning was enriched in the religion of the Incarnation (cf. John 3:3; Romans 6:4; Ephesians 2:10; Ephesians 4:23; Colossians 3:10, etc.). The Vulgate “si qua ergo in Christo nova creatura,” which takes τις with κτίσις, is plainly a mistake. τὰ ἀρχαῖα παρῆλθεν κ. τ. λ.: the old things have passed away; behold, they are become new, sc., not only the ancient customs of Jewish ritual observance, but the old ways of conceiving of the Messiah who was to come; more generally, the old thoughts of God and of sin and salvation nave received fresh colouring they are “become new” (cf. Hebrews 8:13). The words of Isaiah 43:18-19 offer a close verbal parallel: τὰ ἀρχαῖα μὴ συλλογίζεσθε · ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ποιῶ καινὰ (cf. Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:4-5), but the parallel is rather in words than in sense. The thought of the new interpretation of life offered in the Incarnation carries us a step beyond the prophets of the Old Covenant. St. Paul's words show how completely he regarded “the Death of Christ as a new epoch in the history of the human race. Had he foreseen distinctly that a new era would be dated from that time; that a new society, philosophy, literature, moral code, would grow up from it over continents of which he knew not the existence; he could not have more strongly expressed his sense of the greatness of the event than in what is here said” (Stanley).