For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature ( οὔτε γὰρ περιτομή τι ἔστιν οὔτε ἀκροβυστία ἀλλὰ καινὴ κτίσις); for neither is circumcision anything, nor un-circumcision, but a new creature (or, creation).
The reading of the Textus Receptus, followed in our Authorized Version, is this: ἐν γὰρ χριστῷ ἰησοῦ οὔτε περιτομή τι ἰσχύει οὔτε ἀκροβυστία ἀλλὰ καινὴ κτίσις. But by almost all recent editors this reading is replaced by the one given above.
That ἔστιν is the true reading, and not ἰσχύει, all are agreed in thinking; ἰσχύει being regarded as a correction imported from Galatians 5:6. The evidence for the rejection of ἐν χριστῷ ἰησοῦ, which is found in all the uncial manuscripts except the Vatican, is by no means equally decisive.
The presence of those words in Galatians 5:6, where they are very suitable to the context, has with great probability been supposed to explain their being also found here, being introduced, like ἰσχύει from the former passage, by the copyists; but here the qualification made by them is not so certainly required.
The apostle felt it to be not merely true relatively, that is, for those "in Christ Jesus," but, since Christ died on a cross, true absolutely, that for salvation neither circumcision was aught, nor uncircumcision, but only a new creature.
For the discussion of the terms of the aphorism as here stated, as compared with its form in Galatians 5:6 and in 1 Corinthians 7:19, the reader is referred to the notes on Galatians 5:6. The words καινὴ κτίσις may mean either "a new creature," or "a new act of creation making a man a new creature."
It is hardly admissible to take κτὶσις as "creation" in a collective sense, as in Romans 8:19; though this may, perhaps, be its meaning in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation," that is (perhaps), he finds himself, as it were, in a new heaven and a new earth.
Christians as such are elsewhere described by the apostle as the product of God's creative hand; thus in Ephesians 2:10, "For we are his workmanship ( ποίημα), created ( κτισθέντες) in Christ Jesus for good works."
As "begotten again" (1 Peter 1:23, ἀναγεγεννημένοι), or "born anew" (John 3:3, γεννηθέντες ἄνωθεν), subjects of a "regeneration" ( παλιγγενεσία, Titus 3:5), they must, of course, be the products of a new act of creation.
In 2 Corinthians 5:14-18 the sentence, "If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation," or "he is a new creature," lies embedded in a passage which describes in language of remarkable intenseness the transforming influence of Christ's death, wherever by faith it has been fully grasped.
That passage, occurring as it does in an Epistle written nearly at the same time as the Epistle to the Galatians, leaves no doubt as to the ideas which in the apostle's mind cluster round the term" new creation," mentioned, here too as in effect there, in close connection with the cross of Christ, his sole supreme glory.
It points to the state of a sinner consciously reconciled to God by the death of Christ, and finding himself thus translated into the midst of new perceptions, new joys, new habits of life. new expectations.
"The old things are passed away"—guilt, the overmastering power of sin, laborious effort after goodness frustrated after all and ineffectual, the servile routine of a dead unquickening ceremonialism: "behold, all things are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself through Christ."
The phrase, "a new creature," appears to have been used by the Jews to describe the change resulting in the case of a heathen becoming a proselyte. That was no doubt a great change; but far greater seemed to the apostle to be the transformation in the case of one translated from the bondage and darkness of the "letter" into the "newness of the Spirit" (Romans 7:6).
lie had himself experienced how marvellously great as well as how blessed the transition was; and he has described it in glowing terms also in Eph 1:17-2:10. In the present passage the particle "for" seems to point back, not exclusively to Ephesians 2:14, but to the general tenor of the whole passage in vers.
12-14, as rebuking that great ado about circumcision which the innovators referred to were making in the Galatian Churches, thereby diverting the minds of those that listened to them from the Christian's true business.
This sense of the particle may seem somewhat loose; but it suits well the rapid, decisive, summarizing strain with which the apostle is now closing up his letter. The supreme concern, he means, for every one who wishes to be a member of God's kingdom is that he shall realize in his own experience the "new creation;" alike in the freedom and joy of adoption which appertains thereto (Ephesians 4:1-32.
), and also in that walking of the Spirit which includes the crucifixion of the flesh (Galatians 5:16-25). On this point we may compare Ephesians 4:23, Ephesians 4:21 and Romans 12:2.