Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV)
As a kid, when summer rolled around, my buddies and I played golf from sunup to sundown. We were loose with the rules, too. Nothing egregious. More often than not, we called them “practice rounds.”
One of the things we occasionally did was “start over!” Since #2 ran alongside the clubhouse, if all four of us bogeyed the first hole, we would walk back to the first tee and “begin again.”
A purist would never dream of doing such a thing. All I can say in our defense is that we were nine- and ten-year-olds, out there having the time of our lives.
What about “real life?” Can someone truly begin again? Is it possible to truly start over? Or, as Nicodemus said to him [Jesus], “How can a man be born when he is old?”
When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” he is not suggesting that the original creation (the one your mom gave birth to many years ago) has ceased to exist; instead, he is announcing what happens to someone as they enter the kingdom of heaven.
When Paul then says, “…The old has passed away; behold, the new has come,” he is saying far more than many suspect. Paul is not merely saying that we, as individuals, receive new life in Christ; he is saying, “The new age has arrived with Jesus’ resurrection.”
Paul’s claim boggles the mind. He asserts, with the resurrection of Jesus, that the world “began again.” Yep! As much as our minds might tilt at such a claim, it is nevertheless true.
As one scholar expressed it, “The resurrection transfers believers into the sphere of the coming age, even while they remain within the present world.”
When anyone is born again, they enter the “age to come” that has already arrived. When Paul writes, “… Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:20), he is metaphorically saying, “the harvest of the new creation began with Christ’s resurrection.”
This was a Cosmic mulligan! The “Last Adam” [Jesus]started the whole world over and is populating it with men and women from every tribe, language, people, and nation— and of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end (Isaiah 9:7; Rev. 5:9-10).
- S. Lewis captured this reality in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. After Aslan rises from the dead, wherever he goes, the snow melts, signaling that Spring has arrived and is spreading, while Winter is receding—the new creation appears in the middle of the old.
As one author puts it, “The future has begun in the middle of history with Jesus’ resurrection.” We could say that, with Christ’s triumph over death, God launched a new “In the beginning” when the Second Adam exited the tomb.
Paraphrasing N. T. Wright, “Our task in the present is to live as resurrection people in between the original Easter and the final day… as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.”
That first Easter morning is the decisive turning point in redemptive history! With Messiah’s triumph over the grave, the future has entered the present. Followers of the Messiah now live in the “overlap of the ages!”
As the author of Hebrews says, “…we have tasted of the powers of the age to come….” Let us live in such a way that friends and family would want to taste it too.
Prayer: As Paul prayed, “Having your eyes enlightened, that you may know the hope to which he has called you.”