It was less than a month ago, Ash Wednesday, that I wrote on 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2. The second reading for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, overlaps with the Ash Wednesday passage in a substantial manner. I wrote then that “Paul is, indeed, making an official offer, a guaranteed offer if you will, because he is an official representative of the one who effected this reconciliation: “We are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5: 20-21). While the language is passive, “be reconciled,” God has already created the conditions for reconciliation, actively, for he “reconciled us to himself through Christ.” The only task for the Corinthians, and us, is to accept this reconciliation. It can be done again, whenever the relationship is in danger of rupture, even if it has been done before, and before, and before that.”

A significant phrase, though, that appears in the second Sunday reading, is “new creation” (kaine ktisis), a phrase which also appears in Galatians 6:15. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul writes “whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” Paul attributes this “new creation” to God “who has reconciled us to himself through Christ” (2 Cor. 5:18). One of the things which reconciliation has accomplished, therefore, is “new creation” for “whoever is in Christ.” This seems like something which has occurred in the past. But what does this mean, especially since Paul asks us to “be reconciled to God,” which indicates a future action? It seems that we are both “new” creation” and “reconciled” and called to be “new creation” and “reconciled.” This is the perpetual tension in the Christian life between what we “are” and what we “ought to be”, or between the indicative and the imperative. It is strange, however, to think that “new creation” must be constantly remade, but this mystery at least has its telos: God who will never cease to make us new again and again. “The old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Keep the new things coming, Lord, keep them coming!

John W. Martens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.