II Corinthians 5:16-21 is part of a larger segment, 5:11-6:13, that has the theme of the ministry of reconciliation. Paul was in Corinth from Winter of 50 AD to Summer of 51 AD, so Acts 18:1-17. He wrote this part of II Corinthians in the Fall of 55 AD. Timothy is with Paul. Titus and two others bring the letter. Titus has just arrived with good news. Many scholars construe 2:14-7:4 as a rhetorical unit, Paul’s defense of his ministry, of which 5:11-6:10 is a key part as he explains his ministry of reconciliation.
II Corinthians 5: 16-17 speak of the new creation. 16 From now on, (referring to the death of Jesus) therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view (according to the flesh). His point is that Christians need to look at the world differently due to the cross. The transformation of the world that occurred in the cross brings a new perspective to the world and to the Christian. The present is different from the past due to the cross. Paul reminds them that we know Christno longer in that way, that is, from the perspective of that of the Pharisee. What Paul says here is true of all four gospels as well, in that they know Jesus only in reference to his office as the Christ.[1] He will stress that the process of arriving at the gospels as we now have them was that of reflecting on the living presence of Christ in the community and in the world. Therefore, the point is not simply to preserve the past. In that sense, the rules and interests of the historian do not matter.[2] Paul is saying that according to the flesh here means he knew Jesus as the founder of a sect that despised all that was holy and was guilty of serious apostasy from God. To know Christ in this way is not to know Christ at all.[3] Paul may contrast his present knowledge of Christ as Lord with his pre-conversion experience of Jesus as an enemy, which was knowing him from a human point of view. He may also suggest that those who did know Jesus personally cannot claim foremost importance. His point would be that his rejection of Jesus and the earliest Christian community was looking at both from a human point of view. Following Rudolf Bultmann, we can interpret this sentence as a condition contrary-to-fact. Bultmann understands this verse thus: Even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, we no longer know him in this way. The verse would then function as the extreme case in Paul’s mini-argument.[4]Only in the transition through the death of his individual existence as man is Jesus the Son. His human individuality has the definitiveness, not as its particularity endures, but only as he offers it up for the sake of God and in the service of the coming of the reign of God. For that reason, Paul could write here that he no longer knew or judged any one according to the flesh, that is, in accord to what they are in themselves. By accepting the death of his existence, Jesus made room for that of others. Others in their individual particularity can share in the filial relation to God and the inheritance of the reign of God only through the death of Jesus and through acceptance of their own death for the sake of God and the reign of God.[5] 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, (suggesting intimacy between believers and Christ) there is a new creation. This surely means that one is “already” a new creation.[6] As they no longer look at Christ from the standpoint of fleshly human existence, they must not look at themselves or each other from simply a fleshly and human point of view. Therefore, everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! Converts would have found life in Christ to be a constant source of daily blessings, as the body of believers provided help and support to the community. The old things no longer attract them, and new things have taken place through Christ. Being a new creation finds fulfillment in vocation, in the investment of the believer in the new clothing or armor of God. Such a person is at peace with God and neighbor and a new view of self.[7]
II Corinthians 5: 18-19 discuss the reconciliation that has brought forth the new creation. In fact, in verses 18-20, note the repetition of “reconciliation.” Writers and speakers will use this technique to provide emphasis on the importance of the word. In this case, any thinking about this passage must stay close to how it affects our understanding of reconciliation. Paul is singing a song of reconciliation. Simple words, repeated frequently. At the very heart of the Christian faith is reconciliation -- the reconciliation of people to God and people one to another. Paul drives this home through simplicity and repetition. Paul drew upon the notion of reconciliation from the political sphere. It refers to dispute resolution. One could speak of diplomatic reconciliation of warring nations or the reconciliation of an estranged husband and wife. 18 All this is from God, who reconciled (καταλλάξαντος) at a specific moment in the past us to himself through Christ. The cross is that action of God in Christ. This reconciliation reveals the infinite love of God. Paul understands that humans are the offenders who broke the commandments of God, so any reconciling initiative should come from humanity, the offending party. Surprisingly, God has reached out and restored the relationship between the human and the divine, restoring the relationship so God's new creation could fully realize itself. Paul's explanation clarifies God's intention to achieve a reconciliation that spans the entire world. God reconciles all humanity and forgives the sins of everyone. All people need do is accept it. Therefore, God has given us the ministry of reconciliation (καταλλαγῆς). In view of what Christ has done for sinners, the charge from God to those in Christ is to preach and teach about this universal reconciliation. 19 That is, (in a passage that some scholars think of as a pre-Pauline saying. Paul offers a definition of the ministry of reconciliation) in Christ God was reconciling (καταλλάσσων) in an ongoing process the world to himself. The Protestant theology of the Enlightenment stressed that God did not need reconciliation with the world, but rather, the world needed reconciliation with God. The merit of such a theology was that it reinstated the Pauline orientation of reconciliation statements to the world, to us who need reconciliation. The reconciliation of the world by Christ is the outworking of the love of God in the face of the opposition of humans who are hostile to God, a love of God that we see operative through Jesus Christ.[8] God effected reconciliation by not counting (λογιζόμενος) their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message (λόγον) or account of reconciliation (καταλλαγῆς) to us. In this time, people used the word “reconciliation” frequently in Greek to signify a change in relationship between individuals or groups of people, often a change that involved a financial transaction. Paul is likely playing on this common understanding, as he elsewhere describes how the faithful were “bought” with a “price” by the death of Christ (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23). Paul moves on to explain the monumental implications of the Christian experience. The need for reconciliation within the community and the need for reconciliation between Paul and his companions on the one hand with the congregation on the other, lead him to emphasize this aspect of his ministry. The primary actor is God, but Paul emphasizes the role the servants of Christ play in this reconciliation. In essence, God needs witnesses to what God has done. The passage stresses that reconciliation has already occurred. Thus, messengers such as Paul and his associates do not bring about such reconciliation. God has reached out and restored the relationship between human and divine. God reconciles humanity and forgives the sins of everyone. All people need to do accept it. The Christian charge from God is to preach and teach this universal reconciliation. The reconciliation of the world has taken place in the death of Christ, even though the Spirit completes it in believers. The missionary message of the apostles unfolds and brings home to all people significance of this reconciliation. The proclamation is itself part of the making of reconciliation. Thus, only in the form of anticipation can we speak of reconciliation as completed. I grant that such a view is against Barth, who is not quite as aware of the movement from anticipation to actualization.[9]
In II Corinthians 5:20-6:2 Paul offers an appeal for reconciliation with God.
II Corinthians 5: 20-21 reveal the resulting ministry that this reconciliation demands. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors (πρεσβεύομεν), in that they come at the calling, authority, and service, for Christ, since God is making the appeal from God through us. An ambassador is part of the diplomatic core. Even today, if an ambassador offers a personal opinion he or she faces dismissal. The point of the diplomatic process is to make peace between enemies. Here, the role of an envoy commission is to make peace, but the other side has to agree.[10] Paul challenges Christians to offer a ministry of reconciliation, resolving disputes between individuals and communities. We do this, using practices that show unity, love, mercy, forgiveness and a self-giving grace that the world could not even dream of apart from Christ. This is a message that the highly polarized and fractured Christian community in Corinth needed to hear, and that we need to hear as well. Today, we struggle with many of the same issues that afflicted the Corinthians. They had doctrinal disputes. They had disputes regarding church discipline regarding sexuality. They had differences regarding vision. They wrestled with problems regarding economic class, role of women, and strong personalities. II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 is part of a larger section, 5:11-6:13, that has the theme of the ministry of reconciliation. Paul was in Corinth from Winter of 50 AD to Summer of 51 AD, so Acts 18:1-17. He wrote this part of II Corinthians in the Fall of 55 AD. Timothy is with Paul. Titus and two others bring the letter. Titus has just arrived with good news. Many scholars construe 2:14-7:4 as a rhetorical unit, with Paul defending his ministry, of which 5:11-6:10 is a key part as he explains his ministry of reconciliation.
In II Corinthians 5:20b-6:2, a segment that began in verse 20a, Paul offers an appeal for reconciliation with God.
20bPaul will emphasize that we, providing the agency by which others know Christ, with the priority given to the action of God to which faith is the response, entreat you on behalf of Christ, to experience reconciliation with God. Reconciliation is a relationship God has initiated and to which human beings must respond by accepting the offer. 21 In what some scholars think of a Jewish-Christian formula, Paul says that for our sake he made him to be, or to bear the burden of, sin who knew no sin, (Hebrews 4:15, 5:7-9, I Peter 1:19, 3:18, dependent on Isaiah 53:9), thereby becoming the sin offering for humanity offered by God so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. We have in verses 18-21 the notion that atonement is the work of God. Reconciling here means the conversion of the world to God that took place in the form of an exchange or substitution that God has proposed between the world and God present and active in the person of Jesus Christ. It means that in being present and active in the world in Christ, God takes part in its history. God does not affirm or participate in its culpable nature, of course. However, God does take up the situation of the world into the divine nature. For God to make humanity the righteousness of God, humanity becomes covenant-partners with God. The conversion of the world to God has taken place in this exchange. In Christ, the weakness and godlessness of the world become a lie. God removes them as an obstacle. In Christ, we see the peace of the world with God, the turning of humanity toward God, and the friendship of humanity with God. This becomes the truth of the new human situation.[11] The great and inconceivable thing is that Christ acts as judge in our place by accepting responsibility for what we do in this place. It ceases to be our sin.[12] The participation in the obedient suffering and death of Christ in 5:17 is the means whereby believers have reconciliation to God through Christ in verse 18. This train of thought helps us to understand the concluding statement that God made Christ to be sin for us in verse 21. Taken alone, this verse suggests a simple exchange of places. In the context of the preceding argument, however, Paul integrates the thought into that of the inclusive significance and effect of the death of Jesus Christ.[13] Such a statement makes little sense apart from a reference to the situation of the condemnation and execution of Jesus, in which political authorities made Jesus the sinner and he came under the curse of the law. For God, by means of the human judges, not only made Jesus to be sin but also had him bear in our place, and not merely in that of his Jewish judges or the Jewish people, the penalty that is the proper penalty of sin. The reason for this is that the proper penalty of sin follows from its inner nature, death as the consequence of separation from God.[14] God has gone to great lengths to reconcile humanity with God. Clearly, an exchange has taken place. God made Christ sin in exchange for God making humanity righteous. To paraphrase, God put the sinless Christ in the place of sinners, so that Christ had to bear the judgment of sin instead of them, expressing the theological thought of representation.[15] He suffered for all and triumphed for all.[16] Perhaps Theodoret of Cyrus, a fifth-century bishop, best captured the spirit of this paradox when he wrote, “Christ was called what we are in order to call us to be what he is.” The Protestant theology of the Enlightenment did not take into sufficient account the fundamental significance of the death of Christ for the Pauline thought of the reconciling of the world by God.[17] It seems that the covenant righteousness of God is at issue. Here, Paul finds in those whom God are reconciled to God through the death of Christ a proof of the righteousness of God. The issue is no longer merely the relation of God to Israel, or the divine covenant righteousness to the chosen people. Paul extends to the Gentiles the thought of the covenant righteousness that the saving action of God demonstrates. Involved in divine righteousness is the relation of God to the whole creation. The vocabulary of covenant righteousness in Paul moves forward materially along the lines of the approach of Jesus in terms of the goodness of God as Creator that in the coming of the reign of God shows itself to be a pardoning turning toward humanity.[18] In this situation of condemnation and execution, Jesus, whom through the resurrection God showed to be innocent, bore death as the consequence of our sin, thereby effecting representation in the concrete form of a change of place between the innocent and the guilty. The innocent suffered the penalty of death, which, as the harmful result of sin, is the fate of those in whose place Christ died. The vicarious penal suffering that is vicarious suffering of the wrath of God at sin rests on the fellowship that the Son accepted with all of us as sinners and with our fate as such. This link is the basis on which the death of Jesus can count as expiation for us. Without this vicarious penal suffering, the expiatory function of the death of Jesus is unintelligible, unless we try to understand his death as an equivalent offered to God along the lines of the satisfaction theory of Anselm, which has no basis in the biblical data.[19]
The cross represents a dramatic turn in the relationship of God with the world. The new perspective the cross gives us is that God has taken sin seriously – and has borne responsibility for that sin in the cross. As destructive as sin is, God has accepted the punishment for sin in the cross. We do not have to wonder about whether God is so angry at the human race that the anger would lead God to destroy it. Rather, God loves the world enough to receive the punishment for our sinfulness and to open the way of salvation for us. In terms of our lives, the cross means that we do not have to bear the burden of the past. Rather, we become open to the new possibilities for the future. Becoming a new person, becoming part of a new creation, is what living one’s life in Christ means. Thus, although God has already acted to reconcile humanity with God and with each other, God has given the church the responsibility of telling others what God has done. Another way to view this is that we re-orient our lives away from an anxious focus upon ourselves and toward reconciling life with God and with others. We live in a world torn apart by behavior destructive of self and others. The church itself participates in that division of the world. We need to re-focus our energy upon the reconciling work of God. God has already brought about that reconciliation in Christ. We now have a decision to make. Will we become part of the reconciling work of God in the world?
The practice of peace and reconciliation is among the most vital and artistic of all human actions.[20]Reconciliation runs counter to some themes in popular culture. In pop culture, the sentiment expressed in the prayer above is not always visible. Popular movies have a revenge motif. Carrie (you are not going to make fun of me); Unforgiven (revenge western style); Ransom (Mel Gibson will make someone pay); Cape Fear (bad guy goes to jail, bad guy gets out of jail, bad guy gets revenge with your family); First Wives Club (divorcees who know how to get even); Taken (don't mess with Liam Neeson); just about any Charles Bronson movie.
Paul also hints at a sad reality. As much as Christians can joyfully point back to the reconciliation accomplished in the cross, reconciliation remains a promise and hope that will need to find its fulfillment in the future. Reconciliation is the eschatological goal of the work of God. Our present as part of our temporal experience will not be one of reconciliation and peace. Only sporadically are we at peace with and reconciled with ourselves, let alone with family, friends, communities, and nations. Sometimes, even Christians need to recognize that separation or divorce is the best solution in this world. Reconciliation is the work of God. Human beings cannot make reconciliation happen. To assume this would be to assume that a human being has the power to force the terms of agreement between opposing parties. It may well be a mark of love and maturity to recognize that the best solution in this world is to go separate ways. Paul himself had to part ways with his mentor Barnabas. Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet and move on if a town rejected them.
We need to sing a song of reconciliation today, because we are hurting from division -- as individuals, as a church, as a nation and as a world. We sing the song if both sides can show reasonable respect for the worth and dignity of the other. If we believe the other has bad intentions, reconciliation is not on the table. Reconciliation happens when we speak open and honest words that, in turn, lead to new and peaceful relationships. We can resolve disputes when we offer and accept forgiveness based on the work that God has done in Christ. Reconciliation happens when we show each other love, mercy and a self-giving grace. We can do this work in our personal relationships, among groups in our congregation, in our increasingly diverse communities, and in the world around us. Reconciliation is a song that should be inescapable in the Christian church, impossible to avoid or ignore. So let us sing it together, keeping it simple and repeating it as frequently as we can.
The song means we will need to remember. We will take time to reflect upon our lives and its events, especially times of separation and alienation. We will need to reassess, taking time to see our lives. We need to reflect upon who we have become. Have we been content with too little? We need to reflect upon reconciling. We need to make peace with the imperfections within us as well as with the people, culture, nation, and world with which our lives so deeply intertwine. We need to reflect upon reuniting. Granted, such reunion may not be possible. Some divisions may not heal this side of the return of Christ. However, if the possibility is still there, we may need to re-establish a broken relationship and re-discover peace with those around us. We cannot be at peace with everyone. We cannot control them. We can do our part to be at pace with others. Joy Williams sums it up well in her hit song,
“Is the face that I see in the mirror the one I want others to see
Do I show in the way that I walk in my life
the love that you’ve given to me?”
Robert Benton's Academy Award-winning 1984 film Places in the Heart stars Sally Field, John Malkovich, Lindsay Crouse, Danny Glover, Ed Harris, and Amy Madigan. The film is a semi-autobiographical story during the depression in Waxahachie, TX. Fields plays a young woman, widowed within the first few minutes of the film, struggling against evil forces in everyday life of central Texas during the 1930s. Forces work to take away the only thing her husband has left her and her two small children - a small cotton farm in Texas. Lynchings, brutality, infidelity, racism, greed, duplicity all of these are woven into the lives of those who make up the tapestry of Benton's story.
[1] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2 [56.1] 57.
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [59.3] 320.
[3] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3 [69.3] 200.
[4] (Rudolf Bultmann, The Second Letter to the Corinthians [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985], 155-56)
[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 433-4.
[6] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [59.3] 321.
[7] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3 [71.3] 530, 661.
[8] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 407.
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 412-3, 454-5.
[10] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 428.
[11] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [57.3] 73-78.
[12] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [59.2] 236.
[13] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 420.
[14] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 425-6.
[15] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 420.
[16] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 427.
[17] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 407.
[18] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume I, 434-5.
[19] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 427.
[20] The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions. --Thich Nhat Hanh.
This goes well with Christ the Reconciler.You might want to mention South Africa, Mandela and Tutu reconciliation council that prevented a blood bath of revenge.-Lyn Eastman
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