NOTES for Co2 5:14-17
The apostle Paul makes it all sound so simple: “the old has passed away; everything is now new”... Yet we keep thinking about how gradually, little by little, ever so quietly—smoothly and painlessly—we might, so to speak, pass into the state of a “new creation.” Did everything really happen to Paul instantaneously and without difficulty? I do not think so: if we read his epistles carefully, it becomes clear that things were not simple for him either. Then why does he speak so categorically? Probably because of what matters most to him. What matters most is the new reality within me through Christ's victory, whereas the “old self” is, alas, still present—but it is not the old self we must look at; it is Christ.