NOTE ON 2 CORINTHIANS 5
NOTE ON 2 CORINTHIANS 5
As to the manifestation of verse 10 it seems to refer to believers, as also in Romans 14, “So then every one of us”, though we have other scriptures as to all being judged. His thought is that it will be a very speedy matter and that its purport is to bring each one in perfect agreement with the Lord’s estimate of our pathway; all one’s life would pass before one in a moment of time as a drowning man is said to review his whole life as he goes under water. So [p. 539] it will all be seen in the light of the Lord and His estimate of it, got before the kingdom. It was this then that acted upon the apostle, and knowing the terror of the Lord he persuaded men.
The bottom is as it were reached here (verse 14), all were proved dead since One had to die for all; but then there are those who live, who share in the risen life of Christ: for He is the only Man actually risen, and that being the case we should know what it is to live unto Him who died for us and rose again; therefore we now know no one after the flesh. Mary would have known Christ after the flesh, but was stopped by the words, “Touch me not”. New creation is connected with resurrection, not necessarily ascension! The old order has passed away, the new order has begun, and in that sphere all things are of God, who has reconciled us.
He has on His side removed (by death) every atom of that which made a distance between Him and us; and now the word of reconciliation was given to the apostles, and its practical bearing on us is that we too should be in accord with God’s mind as to the extinction of ourselves and all being of Himself. That seems to me to be a great thought in reconciliation — that our minds should be reconciled to God’s mind, to His thought as to Christ; He has but Christ before Him. It is an eminently sanctifying thought because the allowance of any little atom of the “first man”, that which God has condemned, will not do. That would show we are not in full union with the mind of God, since He condemned it in the death of Christ.