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New Creation and Reconciliation in Christ
Because Christ’s death and resurrection have changed the age in which believers live, Paul no longer evaluates people merely according to the flesh. Anyone in Christ belongs to new creation: the old has passed and the new has come. The wording resonates with Isaiah’s promises of God doing a new thing and creating a renewed world, now inaugurated in Christ.
Reconciliation begins with God, who reconciles people to himself through Christ and entrusts a ministry and message of reconciliation to Christ’s ambassadors. God was in Christ reconciling the world, not counting trespasses against people. The climactic statement says that the sinless Christ was made sin for us so that in him we might become God’s righteousness; Isaiah 53 provides an important canonical background, while the exact force of 'made sin' should not be flattened into a claim that Christ became morally sinful.
Second Corinthians and Colossians both center reconciliation in God’s action through Christ. Second Corinthians speaks of God reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting the ministry of reconciliation; Colossians describes former alienation giving way to reconciliation and a new standing before God.
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