2 Corinthians 5:17, if you are a new creation, why do you still feel like the same you? That question is not a lack of faith, that question is the doorway into what 2 Corinthians 5:17 actually means, because most people read that verse and hear one thing, a fresh start, a clean slate, God hit the reset button on your life. And that is true as far as it goes, but it is not what Paul is saying and if you miss what Paul is actually saying, you will spend years trying to feel new instead of learning who you already are. Consider the letter, sit where Paul sat, read the words the way they were first written, look at the beginning of this letter, because 2 Corinthians 5:17 did not drop out of the sky, it written by a man to a church in a specific moment and that moment matters.
The year is around 55 to 57 AD, Paul is somewhere in Macedonia, probably on the move and he is writing to a church he planted, a church he loves and a church that has turned on him. Between the first letter to the Corinthians and this one, something deeply painful happened, Paul visited Corinth and the visit went badly, he stood in front of people he had poured his life into and someone in that room publicly humiliated him. No one knows the exact details, scripture does not tell you, but you know what it did to him, he left hurt, he wrote what he calls a severe letter filled with tears, which no longer exists.
So now, by the time Paul sits down to write what you call 2 Corinthians, some in the church have repented, but others are still attacking him. There are teachers in Corinth calling themselves super apostles, acting as though they are more qualified then Paul, questioning his credentials, saying he is weak in person and only impressive on paper. So, this letter is not a theology lecture written in a quiet study, it is the most personal letter Paul ever wrote, it is a man defending his ministry and his heart to people he loves. Right in the middle of that defense in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul writes something so big that it stops the argument cold. Paul stops defending himself, he starts describing what God has done and that is where 2 Corinthians 5:17 lives, not in a textbook, in the middle of a wounded man telling a fractured church about the God who reconciles.
The year is around 55 to 57 AD, Paul is somewhere in Macedonia, probably on the move and he is writing to a church he planted, a church he loves and a church that has turned on him. Between the first letter to the Corinthians and this one, something deeply painful happened, Paul visited Corinth and the visit went badly, he stood in front of people he had poured his life into and someone in that room publicly humiliated him. No one knows the exact details, scripture does not tell you, but you know what it did to him, he left hurt, he wrote what he calls a severe letter filled with tears, which no longer exists.
So now, by the time Paul sits down to write what you call 2 Corinthians, some in the church have repented, but others are still attacking him. There are teachers in Corinth calling themselves super apostles, acting as though they are more qualified then Paul, questioning his credentials, saying he is weak in person and only impressive on paper. So, this letter is not a theology lecture written in a quiet study, it is the most personal letter Paul ever wrote, it is a man defending his ministry and his heart to people he loves. Right in the middle of that defense in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul writes something so big that it stops the argument cold. Paul stops defending himself, he starts describing what God has done and that is where 2 Corinthians 5:17 lives, not in a textbook, in the middle of a wounded man telling a fractured church about the God who reconciles.
