2 Corinthians 5:17

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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV)

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB)

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life].

2 Corinthians 5:17 (AMP)

Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!

2 Corinthians 5:17 (AMPC)

Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMPC), Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!

2 Corinthians 5:17 (MSG)

Scripture quotations from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.

New Covenant Meaning

Kainos Ktisis: Not a Renovation. A New Species.

The Greek phrase kainos ktisis uses kainos, meaning new in quality, not merely new in time. This is the same word used in Revelation 21:5 when God says "Behold, I am making all things new." It is the word for the new covenant (Luke 22:20), the new commandment (John 13:34), and the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). Ktisis means creation, creature, the act of creating. Together, kainos ktisis does not describe an improved version of the old self. It describes a new category of being that did not exist before. You are not a repaired version of who you were. You are something new.

The Old Has Passed Away: An Aorist Completed Action

The verb translated "have passed away" (parelthen) is aorist indicative, describing a completed past action. Paul is not saying the old things are in the process of leaving. He is saying they left. At the moment of union with Christ, the old condition, including the old identity, the old standing before God, the old relationship to sin and death, passed away as a completed event. The behold that follows is Paul's way of demanding attention to a present reality: look. New things are here. This is not future potential. It is present identity.

The NIV renders this verse differently than most translations: "the new creation has come" (not "he is a new creation"). This is a legitimate reading of the Greek, which is actually verbless: "if anyone is in Christ, new creation." The ambiguity is possibly intentional. You are a new creation because you have been brought into the New Creation, the new order of things inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus. Your personal renewal and the cosmic renewal are connected. You are a new creature because you are part of the new world.

Application for Your Life

You Are Not Who You Used to Be

Many believers live as if their past still defines them: past sins, past failures, past patterns of behavior. Second Corinthians 5:17 says the old things passed away. This is not denial of your history. It is a declaration about your identity. History describes what happened. Identity describes what you are. What you are in Christ is new. The past has no legal claim on who you are now because the old you is not what you are dealing with. You are a new creation, and new creations do not carry the condemning weight of what the old thing did.

Live From Your Identity, Not Toward It

A common distortion is treating 2 Corinthians 5:17 as a goal: try hard enough and eventually you will be a new creation. Paul's verb structure makes this impossible. The old has already passed away. The new has already come. These are completed realities, not spiritual targets. The application is not to try to become new. It is to live from the fact that you already are new. Behavior changes sustainably when it flows from a settled identity, not when it is used to build one.

Prayer Based on This Verse

Father, I receive what 2 Corinthians 5:17 says about me. I am a new creation in Christ. Not eventually. Now. The old has passed away. The old identity, the old condemnation, the old standing before You is gone because Christ absorbed it at the cross. What is present right now is the new. I choose to live from that. Not from the memory of who I used to be but from the reality of who I am in Christ. Where my thinking has been shaped by the old instead of the new, renew my understanding. I am not the person I was before Christ. I am a new creation, created in Christ Jesus. That is my starting point today. In Jesus' name. Amen.