we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know _Him so_ no
more. Wherefore if any man _is_ in Christ, _he_ is a new creature
[or, _there is_ a new creation]: the old things are passed away;
behold, they are become new."--2 COR. v. 16, 17 (R.V.).
The inferences which are here drawn depend upon what has just been
said of Christ's death for all and the death of all in that death of
His. In that death, as inclusive of ours, the old life died, and with
it died all its distinctions. All that men were, apart from Christ,
all that constituted the "appearance" (πρόσωπον, ver. 12) of their
life, all that marked them off from each other as such and such
outwardly, ceased to have significance the moment Christ's death was
understood as Paul here understands it. He dates his inference with
ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ("henceforth"). This does not mean from the time at which
he writes, but from the time at which he saw that One had died for
all, and so all died. Here, as in other places, he divides his life
into "now" and "then," the Christian and the pre-Christian stage (Rom.
v. 9; Eph. ii. 11-13). The transition from one to the other was
revolutionary, and one of its most startling results is that which he
here describes. "Then," the distinctions between men, the
"appearances" in which they boasted, had been important in his eyes;
"now," they have ceased to be, _He_[47] never asks whether a man is
Jew or Greek, rich or poor, bond or free, learned or unlearned; these
are classifications "after the flesh," and have died in Christ's death
_for all_. To recognise them any longer, to admit the legitimacy of
claims based upon them--such claims as his opponents in Corinth seem
to have been putting forth--would be to make Christ's death, in a
sense, of no effect. It would be to deny that when He died for all,
all died in Him; it would be to reanimate distinctions that should
have been annihilated in His death.
To this rule of knowing no one after the flesh Paul can admit no
exception. Not even Christ is excepted. "Even though we have known
Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more." This is a
difficult saying, and has been very variously interpreted. The English
reader inevitably supposes that Paul _had_ known Christ "after the
flesh," but had outgrown that kind of knowledge; and that he is
intimating these two facts. But it is quite possible to take the
words[48] as purely hypothetical: "Supposing us to have known even
Christ after the flesh--a case which in point of fact was never
ours--yet now we know Him so no more." Grammar does not favour this
last rendering, though it does not preclude it; and however the matter
may be settled, the bare supposition, as much as the fact, requires us
to give a definite meaning to the words about knowing Christ after the
flesh, and ceasing so to know Him.
Some have inferred from them that when Paul became a Christian, and
for some time after, his conception of Christ had resembled that of
the persons whom he is here controverting: his Christ had been to all
intents and purposes a Jewish Messiah, and he had only been able by
degrees to overcome, though he had at last overcome, the narrowness
and nationalism of his early years as a disciple. To know Christ after
the flesh would be to know Him in the character of a deliverer of the
Jews: His Jewish descent, His circumcision, His observance of the
Temple worship, His limitation of His ministry to the Holy Land, would
be matters of great significance; and Jewish descent might naturally
be supposed to establish a prerogative in relation to the Messiah for
Jews as opposed to Gentiles. Probably there were Christians whose
original conception of the Saviour was of this kind, and it is a fair
enough description to say that this amounts only to a knowing of
Christ after the flesh; but Paul can hardly have been one of them. His
Christian knowledge of Christ dates from his vision of the Risen Lord
on the way to Damascus, and in that appearance there was no room for
anything that could be called "flesh." It was an appearance of the
Lord of Glory. It determined all Paul's thoughts thenceforth. Nothing
is more remarkable in his Epistles than the strong sense that what he
calls his Gospel is one, unchanged, and unchangeable. It is not Yes
and No. Neither man nor angel may modify it by preaching another Jesus
than he preaches. He is quite unconscious of any such transformation
of his Christology as is indicated above; and in the absence of any
trace elsewhere of a change so important, it is impossible to read it
into the verse before us.
Another interpretation of the words would make "knowing Christ after the
flesh" refer to a knowledge at first hand of the facts and outward
conditions of Christ's life in this world: a knowledge which Paul had
in his early Christian days valued highly, but for which he no longer
cared. There were numbers of men alive then who had known Christ in this
sense. They had seen and heard Him in Galilee and Jerusalem; they had
much to tell about Him which would no doubt be very interesting to
believers; and more than likely some of them emphasised this distinction
of theirs, and were disposed to be pretentious on the strength of it.
Whether Paul had ever known Christ in this sense, it is impossible to
say. But it is certain that to such knowledge he would have assigned no
Christian importance whatever. And in doing so, he would have been
following the example of Christ Himself. "Then shall ye begin to say, We
have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our
streets. And He shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are."
But it is impossible to suppose that this is a matter on which Paul as a
Christian had ever needed to change his mind.
It is an interpretation in part akin to this which makes St. Paul here
decry all knowledge of the historical Christ in comparison with the
understanding of His death and resurrection. To know Christ after the
flesh is in this case to know Him as He is represented in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke; and Paul is supposed to say that, though narratives
like these once had an interest and value for him, they really have it
no longer: they are not essential to his Gospel, which is constituted
by the death and resurrection alone. These great events and their
consequences are all he is concerned with; to know Christ after the
Evangelists is merely to know Him after the flesh; and flesh, even
_His_ flesh, ought to have no significance since His death.
It is a little difficult to take this quite seriously, though it has a
serious side. St. Paul, no doubt, makes very few references to incidents
in the life of our Lord, or even to words which He spoke.[49] But he is
not singular in this. The Epistles of Peter and John are historically as
barren as his. They do not add a word to the Gospel story; there is no
new incident, no new trait in the picture of Jesus, no new oracle.
Indeed, the only genuine addition to the record is that one made by Paul
himself--"the word of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to
give than to receive." The truth seems to be that it is not natural for
an apostle, nor for any inspired man, to fall back on quotations, like a
preacher gravelled for lack of matter, or conscious of wanting
authority. Paul and his colleagues in apostleship had Christ living in
them, and recognised the spirit by which they spoke as the spirit of
their Master. So far as this was the case, it was certainly a matter of
indifference to them whether they were acquainted with this or that
incident in His life, with this or that syllable that He spoke on such
and such an occasion. One casual occurrence, one scene in Christ's
sufferings, one discourse which He delivered, would inevitably be known
with more exact and literal precision to one person than to another; and
there is no difficulty in believing that the casual advantage which any
individual might thus possess was regarded by St. Paul as a thing of no
Christian consequence. Similar differences exist still, and in principle
are to be disregarded. But it is another thing to say that all knowledge
of the historical Christ is irrelevant to Christianity, and yet another
to father such an opinion on St. Paul. The attempt to do so is due in
part, I believe, to a misinterpretation of κατὰ σάρκα. Paul has been
read as if what he disclaimed and decried were knowledge of Christ ἐν
σαρκί. But the two things are quite distinct. Christ lived _in the
flesh_; but the life that He lived in the flesh He lived _after the
spirit_, and when its spiritual import is regarded, it is safe to say
that no one ever knew Christ as He was _in the flesh_--the Christ of
Matthew, Mark, and Luke--better than Paul. No one had been initiated
into Christ's character, as that character is revealed in the story of
the Evangelists, more fully than he. No one ever knew the mind, the
temper, the new moral ideal of Christianity, better than Paul, and there
is no ultimate source for this knowledge but the historical Christ. Paul
could not in his work as an evangelist preach salvation through the
death and resurrection of an unknown person; the story which was the
common property of the Church, and with which her catechists everywhere
indoctrinated the new disciples, must have been as familiar to him, in
substance, as it is to us; and his evident knowledge and appreciation of
the character embodied in it forbids us to think of this acquaintance
with Christ as what he means by knowing Him after the flesh. He might
have had the Gospel narratives by heart, and counted them inestimably
precious, and yet have spoken exactly as he speaks here.
Nevertheless, this interpretation, though mistaken, has a certain truth
in it. There _is_ a historical knowledge of Christ which is a mere
irrelevance to Christianity, and it has sometimes a stress laid upon it
by its possessors which tempts one to speak of it in St. Paul's
scornful tone. Many so-called "Lives" of Christ abound in it. They aim
at a historical realism which, to speak the plain truth, has simply no
religious value. Knowledge of localities, customs, costumes, and so
forth, is interesting enough; but if it should be ever so full and ever
so exact, it is not the knowledge of Jesus Christ in any sense which
makes a Gospel. It is quite possible, nay it is more than possible, that
such knowledge may come between the soul and the Lord. It was so when
Jesus lived. There were people who knew so well what He was like that
they were blind to what He was. In St. Paul's phrase we may say that
they knew Him "after the flesh," and it kept them from knowing Him
truly. They asked, "Is not this the carpenter?" as if that were a piece
of undeniable insight; and they were not conscious that only men blind
to what He really was could ever have asked a question so absurd. It was
_not_ the carpenter who spoke with authority in the synagogues, and cast
out devils, and brought in the kingdom; it was the Son of Man, the Son
of God; and whether Paul meant it so or not, we may use his language in
this passage to express the conviction, that one may really know Christ,
to whom the whole outward aspect of His life, represented by "the
carpenter of Nazareth," is indifferent; nay, that one cannot know Him in
any real sense until these external things _are_ indifferent. Or to put
the same thing in other words, we may say that the knowledge of Christ
which constitutes the Christian is not the knowledge of what He was, but
of what he is; and if we know what He is, then all that is merely
outward in the history may pass away.
But if none of these interpretations answers exactly to the Apostle's
thought, where are we to seek the meaning of his words? All these, it
will be observed, assume that Paul knew Christ "after the flesh,"
subsequent to his conversion; that he shared, as a Christian, views
about Christ which he is now combating. As these interpretations,
however, are untenable, we must assume that the time when he thus knew
Christ was _before_ his conversion. He could look back to days when
his Messianic conceptions were carnal; when the Christ was to be
identified, for him, by tokens in the domain of "appearance," or
"flesh"; when He was to be a national, perhaps merely a political
deliverer, and the Saviour of the Jews in a sense which gave them an
advantage over the Gentiles. But these days were gone for ever.
"Henceforth"--from the very instant that the truth flashed on him, One
died _for all_, and so _all_ died--they belonged to a past which could
never be revived or recalled. One died for all: that means that Christ
is Universal Redeemer. That same One rose again: that means He is
Universal Lord. He has done the same infinite service for all, He
makes the same infinite claim upon all; there are no prerogatives for
any race, for any caste, for any individual men, in relation to Him.
In presence of His cross, there is no difference: in His death, and in
our death in Him, all carnal distinctions die; "henceforth we know no
man after the flesh." Even kinship to Jesus "after the flesh" does not
base any prerogative in the kingdom of God; even to have eaten and
drunk in His presence, and listened to His living voice, confers no
distinction there; He has not done more for His brethren and His
companions than He has done for us all. And not only the carnal
distinctions of men have vanished away; the carnal Jewish conception
of Christ has vanished with them.
The seventeenth verse seems a new inference from the same ground as
the fifteenth. Indeed, it connects so naturally with ver. 15 that one
critic has suggested that ver. 16 is spurious, and another that it was
a later insertion by the Apostle. Perhaps we may assume that St. Paul,
who had no fear of such critics before his eyes, was capable of
setting his sentences down just as they occurred to him, and did not
mind an occasional awkwardness. When he writes "Wherefore if any man
is in Christ, he is a new creature," he is indeed drawing an inference
from ver. 15, but he is at the same time generalising and carrying on
the thought of ver. 16. The idea of the new creature occurs in other
places in his writings (_e.g._, Eph. ii. 10; Gal. vi. 15), but both
here and in Gal. vi. 15 I prefer the rendering in the margin of the
Revised Version--"If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation:
the things passed away (when he died in Christ);[50] behold, they have
become new." We may say, if we please, that it is the new creature
which makes the new creation; the change in the soul which
revolutionises the world. Still, it is this universal change which the
Apostle, apparently, wishes to describe; and in the sudden note of
triumph with which he concludes--"Behold! all is become new"--we feel,
as it were, one throb of that glad surprise with which he had looked
out on the world after God had reconciled him to Himself by His Son.
The past was dead to him, as dead as Christ on His cross; all its
ideas, all its hopes, all its ambitions, were dead; _in Christ_, he
was another man in another universe.
This is the first passage in 2 Corinthians in which this Pauline
formula for a Christian--a man in Christ--is used.[51] It denotes the
most intimate possible union, a union in which the believer's faith
identifies him with Jesus in His death and resurrection, so that he
can say, "I live no longer, but Christ liveth in me." It is the
Apostle's profoundest word, not on the Gospel, but on the
appropriation of the Gospel; not on Christ, but on the Christian
religion.[52] It is mystical, as every true word must be which speaks
of the relation of the soul to the Saviour; but it is intelligible to
every one who knows what it is to trust and to love, and through trust
and love to lose self in another whose life is greater and better than
his own. And when we have seen, even for a moment, what it is to live
in self or in the world, and what to live in Christ, we can easily
believe that this union is equivalent to a re-creating and
transfiguring of all things.
It is impossible to point to all the applications of this truth: "all
things" is too wide a text. Every reader knows the things which bulked
most largely in his life before he knew Christ, and it is easy for him
to tell the difference due to being in the Lord. In a sense the new
creation is in process as long as we live; it is ideally that faith in
Christ means death in His death; ideally that with faith the old
passes and the new is there; the actual putting away of the old, the
actual production of the new, are the daily task of faith as it unites
the soul to Christ. We are _in_ Him the moment faith touches Him, but
we have to grow up _into_ Him in all things. Only as we do so does
the world change all around us, till the promise is fulfilled of new
heavens and a new earth.
But there is one application of these words, directly suggested by the
context, which we ought not to overlook: I mean their application to
men, and the old ways of estimating men. Those who are in Christ have
died to the whole order of life in which men are judged "after the
flesh." Perhaps the Christian Church has almost as much need as any
other society to lay this to heart. We are still too ready to put
stress upon distinctions which are quite in place in the world, but
are without ground in Christ. Even in a Christian congregation there
is a recognition of wealth, of learning, of social position, in some
countries of race, which is not Christian. I do not say these
distinctions are not real, but they are meaningless in relation to
Christ, and ought not to be made. To make them narrows and
impoverishes the soul. If we associate only with people of a certain
station, and because of their station, all our thoughts and feelings
are limited to a very small area of human life; but if distinctions of
station, of intelligence, of manners, are lost in the common relation
to Christ, then life is open to us in all its length and breadth; all
things are ours, because we are His. To be guided by worldly
distinctions is to know only a few people, and to know them by what is
superficial in their nature; but to see that such distinctions died in
Christ's death, and to look at men in relation to Him who is Redeemer
and Lord of all, is to know all our brethren, and to know them not on
the surface, but to the heart. People lament everywhere the want of a
truly social and brotherly feeling in the Church, and try all sorts of
well-meant devices to stimulate it, but nothing short of this goes to
the root of the matter. The social, in this universal sense, is
dependent upon the religious. Those who have died in Christ to the
world in which these separative distinctions reign will have no
difficulty in recognising each other as one in Him. Society is
transfigured for each of us when this union is accomplished; the old
things have passed, and all has become new.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] The "we" in the first clause of ver. 16 is emphatic.
[48] As Heinrici does.
[49] See the excellent section on Paul and the Historical Christ in
Sabatier's _The Apostle Paul_ (English Translation, pp. 76-85).
[50] Observe the aorist παρῆλθεν.
[51] Chap. ii. 14, 17, and chap. iii. 14, are more limited.
[52] Perhaps the use of ἐν Χριστῷ here may be determined by the wish
to express tacitly his opposition to those who claimed to be in a
special sense τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Paul's formula really asserts a much more
intimate relation to Christ than theirs.
XVI
_RECONCILIATION_
"But all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through
Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit,
that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not
reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us
the word of reconciliation. We are ambassadors therefore on behalf
of Christ, as though God were intreating by us: we beseech _you_
on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin
He made _to be_ sin on our behalf; that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him."--2 COR. v. 18-21 (R.V.).
"Est hic insignis locus, si quis alius est in toto Paulo: proinde
diligenter excutere singulas particulas convenit."--CALVIN.
"If any man be in Christ," Paul has said, "there is a new creation; he
is another man and lives in another world. But the new creation has the
same Author as the original one: it is all of God, who reconciled us to
Himself by Jesus Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation."
It is plain from these last words that "us" does not mean Christians in
general, but in the first instance Paul himself. He is a typical example
of what it is to be in Christ; he understands what his own words
mean--"the old things passed away; behold, they have become new"; he
understands also how this stupendous change has been brought about. "It
is due to God," he says, "who reconciled us to Himself through Christ."
The great interest of this passage is its bearing upon the Christian
doctrine of reconciliation, and before we go further it is necessary
to explain precisely what this word means. It presupposes a state of
estrangement. Now, a state of estrangement may be of two kinds: the
feeling of alienation and hostility may exist upon one side only, or
it may exist upon both. What, then, is the character of that state of
estrangement which subsists between God and man independently of the
Gospel, and which the Gospel, as a ministry of reconciliation, is
designed to overcome? Is it one-sided, or two-sided? Is there
something to be put away in man only, or something to be put away in
God as well, before reconciliation is effected?
These questions have been answered very confidently in different ways.
Many, especially in modern times, assert with passionate eagerness that
the estrangement is merely one-sided. Man is alienated from God by sin,
fear, and unbelief, and God reconciles him to Himself when He prevails
with him to lay aside these evil dispositions, and trust Him as his
Father and his Friend. "All things are of God, who reconciled us to
Himself through Christ," would mean in this case, "All things are of
God, who has won our friendship through His Son." That this describes in
part the effect of the Gospel, no one will deny. It is one of its
blessed results that fear and distrust of God are taken away, and that
we learn to trust and love Him. Nevertheless, this is not what the New
Testament means by reconciliation, though it is one of its fruits.
To St. Paul the estrangement which the Christian reconciliation has to
overcome is indubitably two-sided; there is something in God as well
as something in man which has to be dealt with before there can be
peace. Nay, the something on God's side is so incomparably more
serious that in comparison with it the something on man's side simply
passes out of view. It is God's earnest dealing with the obstacle on
His own side to peace with man which prevails on man to believe in the
seriousness of His love, and to lay aside distrust. It is God's
earnest dealing with the obstacle on His own side which constitutes
the reconciliation; the story of it is "the word of reconciliation";
when men receive it, they _receive_ (Rom. v. 10) the reconciliation.
"Reconciliation" in the New Testament sense is not something which _we
accomplish_ when we lay aside our enmity to God; it is something which
_God accomplished_ when in the death of Christ He put away everything
that on His side meant estrangement, so that He might come and preach
peace. To deny this is to take St. Paul's Gospel away root and branch.
He always conceives the Gospel as the revelation of God's wisdom and
love in view of a certain state of affairs as subsisting between God
and man. Now, what is the really serious element in this situation?
What is it that makes a Gospel necessary? What is it that the wisdom
and love of God undertake to deal with, and do deal with, in that
marvellous way which constitutes the Gospel? Is it man's distrust of
God? is it man's dislike, fear, antipathy, spiritual alienation? Not
if we accept the Apostle's teaching. The serious thing which makes the
Gospel necessary, and the putting away of which constitutes the
Gospel, is God's condemnation of the world and its sin; it is God's
wrath, "revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men" (Rom. i. 16-18). The putting away of this is
"reconciliation": the preaching of _this_ reconciliation is the
preaching of the Gospel.