17. A new creature («aw xrious). Or creation. Compare Gal. vi. 15. The word xricws is used in three senses in the New Testament. The act of creating, as Rom.i.20. The sum of created things, as Apoc. iti. 14; Mark xiii. 19. A created thing or creature, as Rom. viii. 89. The Rabbins used the word of a man converted from idolatry. “He who brings a foreigner and makes him a proselyte is as if he created him.”
Old things (ra dpyaia). Rev., correctly, the old things. See on 1 John ii. 7, and ADOC) xale0.
Passed away (rraphdJev). Lit., passed by. So Luke xviii 37; Mark vi. 48. As here, Jas. i. 10; Matt. v. 8; xxiv. 34, ete.
Behold. Asif contemplating a rapidly shifting scene. As in a flash, old things vanish, and all things become new.
Cu. V.; THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS, 321
18. And (ce). Better, Rev., but; as if anticipating a pos- sible failure to discern the primary agency of God in this moral transformation. All things—all that are involved in this mighty change—are from God.
Reconciled. God is the prime-mover in the work of recon- ciliation. See on Rom. v. 10, through Christ, as the medium.
19. God. Emphatic. It was God, as in ver. 18.
Was—reconciling (jv xatad\Aadoowr). These words are to be construed together; the participle with the finite verb mark- ing the process of reconciliation. The emphasis is on the fact that God was reconciling, not on the fact that God was in Christ. God was all through and behind the process of recon- ciliation. The primary reference of the statement is, no doubt, to God’s reconciling manifestation in the incarnation and death of Christ; yet, as a fact, it includes much more. God was en- gaged in reconciling the world from the very beginning, and that in Christ. See on John i. 4, 5, 9, 10.
Hath given to us (Séuevos év jyuiv). Lit., lodged in us.
20. We are ambassadors (mpecBevopev). Only here and Eph. vi. 10.
21. For. Omit. It is a later addition, in order to soften the abruptness of the following clauses.
Made to be sin (dpapriav érroincev). Compare a curse, Gal. iii. 13. Not a@ sin-offering, nor a sinner, but the repre- sentative of sin. On Him, representatively, fell the collective consequence of sin, in His enduring “the contradiction of sin- ners against Himself” (Heb. xii. 3), in His agony in the garden, and in His death on the cross.
Who knew no sin (tov pi) yvovta duapriav). Alluding to Christ’s own consciousness of sinlessness, not to God’s estimate of Him. The manner in which this reference is conveyed, it is almost impossible to explain to one unfamiliar with the dis- tinction between the Greek negative particles. The one used
Vou. III.—21
822 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. VI.
here implies the fact of sinlessness as present to the conscious- ness of the person concerning whom the fact is stated. Com- pare John viii. 46.