2 Cor 5:17: The New and the Old
The old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.'972Co_5:17.
1. This is a very bold and sweeping statement. We seem almost to be listening to a prophet of revolution. St. Paul, addressing the democratic Corinthians, might be regarded himself as speaking the language of democracy. His view of Christianity, it might be said, was that it was an absolute emancipation from the fetters and traditions of the past. He was an over-zealous and ardent reformer; he had no reverence for antiquity; he was full only of a new order of things which was to supersede all that had gone before. Old thoughts, old systems, old beliefs'97of all these a clean sweep was to be made, and man was to start afresh on a new path of progress, of which none could see the end. And something like this is the view, no doubt, which many persons have taken of Christianity. They do regard it essentially as a democratic movement, as a class religion. They identify it with the interests of a class. To them its chief charm consists in its assertion of the freedom and the equality of all men. They see that it has emancipated the slave and defended the right of the poor, and they value it most exclusively as the prime agent in a great social revolution. It was this communistic tendency that caused it to be welcomed at first by one class and suspected by another. Hence it was that the poor and the oppressed embraced it so eagerly. Hence it was that rulers, holding it to be subversive of governments, dreaded and sought to crush it in its cradle. It is the same tendency that in later times made many hail its influence, who had no sympathy with its creed.
Yet it cannot seriously be maintained that this is the view which St. Paul took of Christianity. Much less can it be pretended that such an opinion finds any kind of countenance or support in this passage. The revolution of which St. Paul is speaking here is entirely a spiritual revolution. He has learnt, he tells us, a new estimate of things, he has learnt to give them their proper value. He no longer regards men or things by the common standards of the world. Even his appreciation of Christ as his Saviour is no longer what it then was'97'93after the flesh,'94 that is, of an external kind; it has been exchanged for a profoundly spiritual recognition of His glory. He has become the disciple of a Divine mysticism. He has a life quite distinct from the life of the senses or the life of the intellect. He can say of himself, '93I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.'94 St. Paul claims to have passed into a new region of spiritual life. He claims to have dispensed with a view of Christ's work which, true no doubt in itself, still fell far short of that to which he had now attained. Looking back upon his past career, and comparing his former with his present knowledge of his Saviour, he could liken the change to nothing less than a new creation: '93If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.'94
2. The words of the Authorized Version do not represent accurately the original passage. The words, as written by St. Paul, are not '93Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new,'94 but '93Old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.'94 St. Paul does not speak of an obliteration of the past, but of a renewal of the past. The old things themselves have become new. The old was gone, not because it had been blotted out, but because it had reappeared under a purer, nobler, more excellent form. God's law, as seen in the building up of the Christian life and Christian society, was the same law as might be discerned in all the work of His hands. Transformation, not destruction, is the rule of His operation.
You may trace that law, as some have thought, in that creation of which the first chapter of Genesis contains the record. The first creation fell into wasteness and crumbled into ruin; but out of its ruins was built up that world of order and beauty which we inhabit. Old things passed away; behold, they became new. You may trace that law, scientific observers will tell you, throughout the material universe. No matter perishes; no force is lost. The particles which constituted one body may be fashioned anew to constitute another. The force which we know as heat may be known under another name as motion or electricity; but the matter never perishes, the force never decays. The old has passed away; behold, it is become new. You may trace that law in the vegetable world, when the corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies only to emerge again, first in the green blade and then in the golden ear, the same and yet how different. The old has passed away; behold, it is become new. You may trace the law in that most wonderful of transformations, when the crawling, unsightly worm, whose house and world have been a leaf, bursts from its chrysalis-tomb, clothed with beauty and splendour, to spread its dazzling wings in the summer's sun, and to feed where it will on the choicest sweets of the summer's flowers. This eternal law shall be seen, we are assured, hereafter, when our human bodies, having turned to corruption, shall be raised anew, the same not in identity of substance but in identity of form, when that which was sown a natural body shall be raised a spiritual body, and that which was sown in corruption shall be raised in incorruption. And the change of the individual shall be repeated throughout God's visible creation, and there shall be new heavens and a new earth, new not by destruction but by transformation, and fitted for their new and transformed inhabitants.
To those in Christ all things are not only new, but they are growing continually newer. In the old world, and with the old man, it is just the other way. Things are always getting older, until life gets to be an insufferable burden, a dreary round, a wretched repetition, and we see backs bent with nothing but pure sorrow, and heads white with none other sickness than vexation of spirit, and men brought to the grave because life was too wearisome, and time too intolerable, and existence too aimless and stale, to be supported any longer. But in the new world, and with the new man, the whole is reversed; and the new cry ever waxes more frequent and more loud. '93Look, and look again, how the old is passing, how the new is coming, how things are getting new.'94 Every day more of the old is weeded out, more of the new is coming in. Life is '93fresher and freer'94 and fuller of promise. There are new discoveries of the Father's love, new revelations of Christ's grace, new experiences of the Spirit's comfort. Life becomes interesting, and entertaining, and significant, and splendid, and grand beyond belief. What views of life Christ's world contains; what heavens of expansion overarch it; what hills of attainment are reared upon it; what distances of outlook are discernible from it! Yourself, Christ, God'97what thoughts about them all you could never have conceived before! History, Time, Eternity'97what feelings they stir in you, you never could have felt before! Purpose, Progress, Achievement'97what mighty motions of the will they produce!1 [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 130.]
3. Now the principle here laid down by the Apostle is one of the greatest importance when regarded as a principle of reconciliation between opposing tendencies. For both political parties and religious parties may be said, as a rule, to range themselves respectively under the banners of the past and of the future. '93Old things'94 is the watchword of the one; '93new things'94 is the watchword of the other. The one would try to resuscitate the past, would cherish it, even in its fossilized forms would try to galvanize it into life; the other would sweep away its every vestige, or leave it only as a subject of curious inquiry to the arch'e6ologist, or of inspiration to the poet. The one dislikes all change; the other thinks that no change can be too radical and too sweeping. The one hugs the shore or keeps to the harbour; the other riots in the tumult of winds and waves, if only a new world may be given to its eager quest and dauntless courage. But both these extreme parties are alike at war with the very constitution of the world. You cannot stereotype any phase of human existence. Change is God's law; progress is God's law.
The claim of a new thing to be old is, in varying degrees, a common characteristic of great movements. The Reformation professed to be a return to the Bible, the Evangelical movement in England a return to the Gospels, the High Church movement a return to the early Church. A large element, even in the French Revolution, the greatest of all breaches with the past, had for its ideal a return to the Roman republican virtue or to the simplicity of the natural man. I noticed quite lately a speech of an American Progressive leader claiming that his principles were simply those of Abraham Lincoln.2 [Note: Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 58.]
4. '93The old things are passed away'94; and quite rightly we are slow to see it. He has little sense of holiness who tramples on the past, or scorns the words of those whom God has taken from us. Yet the old things do pass away, and often silently. We seem to wake of a sudden to find that the old hand has lost its cunning, the old custom is turned to wrong, the old teaching emptied of its living force. Then what are we to do? We have a carnal craving for something fixed in this world, some rock of adamant on which the storms of time shall beat in vain. Meaner men simply will not take the trouble to give up the old things. The foolish mother would like her baby to be always little; the stupid politician shrinks from needful reform; the cowardly Christian looks out for a master upon earth, or hides himself among the trees of dogma, that no fresh voice from heaven may unsettle the thing he is pleased to call his faith.
All purely natural things must pass away. The beauty of our childhood fades, the proud powers of our manhood fail us, and words that were spirit and life to our fathers are empty sounds to us whom God has changed. Who cares now for the battle-cry of the Crusaders? The old things are passed away, and the glory seems departed with them from the earth. We look wistfully to the culture of Greece, the splendour of Rome, the fervour of the early Christians, the simple faith of the Middle Ages, the strong righteousness of Puritanism; but we can no more recall them than we can wake the dead. They have passed away for ever, and we must face as we best can the work of a world which without them seems cheerless and commonplace.
Passing away, saith the World, passing away:
Chances, beauty, and youth, sapped day by day:
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answered: Yea.
Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away:
With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play,
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day
Lo the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay;
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answered: Yea.
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after the long delay:
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray:
Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day,
My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say.
Then I answered: Yea.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 191.]
5. '93The old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.'94 This is God's law of change. They leave us only to return in other shapes; they vanish only to come back in nobler forms. God never takes away but that He may give us more abundantly. He takes away the innocence of childhood that He may give us the old man's crown of glory. He takes away the fathers we leaned on and the children in whom we garnered up our love that He may be Himself the Father of the fatherless and the hope of them that are desolate. He takes away the guides we trusted, the friends who were our very life, that He may be Himself our guide and ever-living Friend. He unsettles the simple belief of ignorance that He may give us the nobler faith of them that know. He smites with emptiness the burning words which stirred our fathers that He may give us other words of deeper meaning and of yet more thrilling call. Nothing that is good can perish. Though He sift it as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. The dross of our thoughts shall perish; but the word of our God which came to us will embody itself again in worthier forms. Through all the changing scenes of history His call remains the same'97Come upward hither, and I will show thee of My glory.
But it is needful to look at God's manner of making new Sometimes the change comes with a mighty destruction and the crack of doom. But has the old really perished? Is anything that was precious in the earth or the heaven of the old time taken clean away out of our reach? The answer lies in the Bibles which we hold in our hands. They have an Old Testament as well as a New. Adam's earth is ours. David's heaven is ours. Israel after the flesh has grown into Israel after the spirit. We cannot neglect the Scriptures of the Old Covenant without misreading the Scriptures of the New Covenant. It was Christ's coming that made the law to cease, and rendered useless part at least of the office of the prophets. Yet Christ Himself said, '93Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to fulfil.'94 That in them which He did seem to destroy had, in fact, already died a natural death, for its work was done; but in making all things new He brought life and immortality into the old. And even so must they in each generation strive to act who follow in His steps.
All around, in those well-ordered precincts, were quiet signs of wealth, and a noble taste'97a taste, indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older art, here arranged and harmonized, with effects, both as regards colour and form, so delicate, as to seem really derivative from a spirit fairer than any which lay within the resources of the ancient world. It was the old way of true Renaissance, the way of nature with her roses, the Divine way with the body of man, and it may be with his very soul'97conceiving the new organism, by no sudden and abrupt creation, but rather by the action of a new principle upon elements all of which had indeed lived and died many times. The fragments of older architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the precious corner stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such juxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of grave thought and intellectual purpose.1 [Note: Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean.]
(1) The principle is seen in History.'97If Greece has perished, she remains a light to the world. If Rome's eternal throne is cast down, her witness to right and law is imperishable. If the old saints are mouldered into dust, their spirit lives among us in many a patient toiler of whom the world is not worthy'97more prosaic, it may be, but no way less heroic than that which dared the cross and the fire in the olden time. If Puritanism has passed away, it has left us many of the best features of English life'97the sober earnestness, the civil freedom, the Sunday rest, the quiet sense of duty which labours to unloose the bands of wickedness and to undo the heavy burdens of all that suffer wrong. The more appalling the world-wide scene of change, decay and ruin, the more certainly a power of life is working upward through it all.
The great empires of the East passed away, but not before they had transmitted to the people of God the treasures of their civilization. Greece fell; Rome fell: but in other forms they survive still, Let us only think what we owe in our own intellectual life, and in the expression of our religious faith, to Greece; think what we owe in our civil and ecclesiastical organization to Rome; and perhaps we shall be inclined to confess with a new conviction that '93the dead rule the living,'94 and recognize, humbled at once and stirred by the grandeur of our obligation, that God has placed the future in our hands.1 [Note: B. F. Westcott, Christian Aspects of Life, 89.]
(2) It is seen in the history of the Church.'97Whilst it is God's law in creation and God's law in the history of man that old things pass away because they become new, this is true in the highest sense of the great work of human redemption. Look at the history of that redemption. When man fell, what was the Divine method? Did God blot out the rebellious race, and create another race upon the earth? No; out of the ruin of human nature a new and more glorious fabric was revealed; Christ the Son of God, the second Adam, was promised, and came in the likeness of sinful flesh. The bitter waters of the natural fountain were changed into sweet. A ruin was made the material of the new and better structure. The old became new. Mankind, which fell in the first Adam, was built up in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh. And as God revealed Himself, first to patriarchs and then to Moses, the law-giver of the Old Covenant, and then to prophets who were interpreters of His will, there were elements of the earlier dispensation which were perpetuated in the next. The patriarchal nearness to God, the vision of the Almighty, did not cease when God went before His people in a pillar of cloud and in a pillar of flame. The Tabernacle was perpetuated in the Temple, the rites and ceremonies of the law were not abrogated but spiritualized by the prophets. And when St. Paul would find the great proof of his doctrine of justification by faith, he goes back to the ancient dispensation. Abraham is its great example; the prophet Habakkuk waiting upon God, when the Chald'e6an armies were approaching, gives him the words which are the key-note of his gospel. But the old had become new. For Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, revealed as the great object of faith; and the true life of faith was life in union with Christ. And our Lord Himself teaches the same lesson. '93Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.'94 The Jewish priesthood perished, the Jewish sacrifices were abolished, the Jewish Temple was levelled with the ground, but their Divine meaning was fulfilled in Christ, and abides in Him and in His people to the present hour.
The Latin church left its work of witnessing and ministering for Christ, and made itself a judge and a divider among men. Its doctrines were all poisoned by one colossal blasphemy. It required what God has never asked even for Himself'97to be believed without regard to reason, and obeyed without regard to conscience. So the yoke of Christian Pharisaism had to be broken, that men might be free to serve God in spirit and truth. The unspiritual unity of Western Europe had to be shattered in pieces, that nations might escape the tyranny of an alien and sectarian church. Above all, the idea of an infallible church holding plenary powers from an absent king had to be rooted out before men could begin to see the gradual development which is God's word to successive generations. But an infallible church is also incorrigible: therefore He cut her in sunder, and appointed her portion with the hypocrites. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the after-swell of the storm; and only the nineteenth was free to take up the work which the Reformation made possible even in countries where it was rejected. That work is hardly more than begun; but we can already see its character. Our losses are no doubt immense. The old social order is gone, the old conception of miracle and inspiration is overthrown, and a growing tangle of practical questions represents the growing complexity of life and thought. But is there no gain in our wider knowledge of truth? in a more strenuous and earnest life? in a quickened hatred of social wrong? in a higher tone of that national conscience which under any form of government speaks the final word? Is it nothing to know Christ as He never was known before? to see the realms of grace and nature joined in their incarnate Lord? to be made free from the horror of past ages, the inscrutable despot far off in heaven, who sought some other glory than the highest welfare of His creatures? No heavier burden has been lifted from men since the Gospel swept away the whole slavery of gods and saints and demons, and left us face to face with the risen Son of Man who hears the prayer of all flesh from His throne on high.1 [Note: H. M. Gwatkin, The Eye for Spiritual Things, 54.]
The Master stood upon the mount, and taught.
He saw a fire in His disciples' eyes;
'93The old law,'94 they said, '93is wholly come to nought,
Behold the new world rise!'94
'93Was it,'94 the Lord then said, '93with scorn ye saw
The old law observed by Scribes and Pharisees?
I say unto you, see ye keep that law
More faithfully than these!
'93Too hasty heads for ordering worlds, alas!
Think not that I to annul the law have will'd;
No jot, no tittle from the law shall pass,
Till all have been fulfill'd.'94
So Christ said eighteen hundred years ago.
And what then shall be said to those to-day,
Who cry aloud to lay the old world low
To clear the new world's way?
'93Religious fervours! ardour misapplied!
Hence, hence,'94 they cry, '93ye do but keep man blind!
But keep him self-immersed, preoccupied,
And lame the active mind!'94
Ah! from the old world let some one answer give:
'93Scorn ye this world, their tears, their inward cares?
I say unto you, see that your souls live
A deeper life than theirs!'94
Here let that voice make end; then, let a strain,
From a far lonelier distance, like the wind
Be heard, floating through heaven, and fill again
These men's profoundest mind:
'93Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye
For ever doth accompany mankind,
Hath look'd on no religion scornfully
That men did ever find.
'93Which has not taught weak wills how much they can?
Which has not fall'n on the dry heart like rain?
Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man:
Thou must be born again!
'93Children of men! not that your age excel
In pride of life the ages of your sires,
But that ye think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well,
The Friend of man desires.'941 [Note: Matthew Arnold, Poems, ii. 169.]
(3) It is seen in the life of the Individual.'97That which is true of the great redemptive work of Christ in the world is true no less of His redemptive work in every soul of man. Here there is ever change, here there is ever progress; but here there is no destruction except of that which has been corrupted through sin. The grace of God in Jesus Christ is indeed a mighty power in the heart. The conversion of a sinner to God is indeed nothing less than a turning from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. But even where that change has been as marked, as sudden, as decisive as it was in St. Paul, there is no obliteration of past history or past character. New affections are not given, but the old affections are made new, because they are turned to a new object, because they are purified, strengthened, elevated. The trust which once leaned upon earthly props is now fixed upon God and His Christ; the hope which once was bounded by the narrow horizon of time is now full of immortality and embraces eternity in its arms. The love which once was idolatry of some human object has now found its legitimate satisfaction in Him whose love passeth knowledge. A new intellect is not given, but the old intellect is made new, because it now finds its highest exercise, not in science or art or literature, though it despises none of these things, but in the study of the revelation of God. A new character is not given, but the old character is sanctified to a higher use. Energy becomes devotion to God; impetuosity, zeal in His service; resolution, loyalty to Christ Jesus. And so long as life lasts, the perpetual transformation is going on.
We are slowly, very slowly, abandoning our belief in sudden and violent transitions for a surer and fuller acceptance of the doctrine of evolution; but most of us still draw a sharp line of demarcation between this world and the next, and expect a radical change in ourselves and our surroundings, a break in the chain of continuity entirely contrary to the teaching of nature and experience. In the same way we cling to the specious untruth that we can begin over and over again in this world, forgetting that while our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts of grace and strength, God Himself cannot, by His own limitation, rewrite the Past. We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselves in our sin; our temptations are there as well as the way of escape. We are in the image of God. We create our world, our undying selves, our heaven, or our hell. Qui creavit te sine te non salvabit te sine te. It is stupendous, magnificent, and most appalling. A man does not change as he crosses the threshold of the larger room. His personality remains the same, although the expression of it may be altered.1 [Note: Michael Fairless, The Roadmender, 79.]
There were some rough diamonds among the converts; but if they were rough they were diamonds still. One man, a brick-layer's labourer, could not read a chapter of the Bible without a mistake in every line. Yet for fifteen years he attended the Sunday morning prayer-meeting at seven o'clock, often conducting it, and praying with such fervour and power that my father felt the influence of his prayers upon his ministry to be exceptional, if not unique. A woman, who in the early days of his work among the pig-feeders of Notting Dale held up in his face a quart pot of beer and laughed at him with words of scornful obscenity, was attracted to the Tabernacle, was soundly converted to Jesus Christ, and was thenceforward a living monument of the most winsome Christian goodness. It was with special reference to her that my father wrote: '93I believe we had as real and noble a company of praying women as ever they had in the apostolic days.'94 Another woman was a member of a little colony of gypsies who often encamped upon some waste ground not far away from the Tabernacle. Herself led to the feet of Jesus by my father's ministry, she brought several others to hear him preach, and among those of them who were converted were three brothers'97the father and two uncles of the now famous evangelist, Gypsy Smith. My father baptized them'97I can myself remember the scene'97with peculiar and exultant joy.2 [Note: Henry Varley's Life-Story, 69.]
In his Confessions St. Augustine has left record in literature of a profligate and shameful past, of a deep repentance and flight to God for succour, and of a grand recovery alike to moral obedience and to splendid service. The profligate of Carthage, steeped in degrading animalism, becomes in Rome the first of the four great Latin Fathers of the Church, exercising an influence on Christian thought and life second only to that of the Apostle Paul. In this case, as in many others which might be recorded, the springs of action were not lamed by the memory of a mournful past, but rather quickened into finer intensity and more strenuous endeavour. Shakespeare had dared to say:
Best men are moulded out of faults.
There is blue sky in front of us if in the memory of any guilty act we feel that we would rather die than repeat it. To have erred in the past does not condemn us to degradation in the future. The soul, though deeply stained, may be cleansed and regain its purity, if not its innocence. Again and yet again He who '93knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust'94 takes us by the hand and says '93Start afresh.'94 With God, and hope, and tomorrow, we may mock the counsels of despair. It is inevitable that some error should creep into our lives, for we are but human. Let the bitterness of past failure sting us into nobler action in the present, and the weakness revealed urge us to supplication for diviner strength. We have at least gained through defeat a fuller knowledge of ourselves. Our self-confidence has been rebuked, and we have learned the special perils, the besetting sins, against which we need to guard. Says Browning:
When the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.
He is tried that he may triumph. He wrestles that he may be crowned.1 [Note: R. P. Downs, Beaten Gold, 148.]
The New and the Old
Literature
Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 10; iv. 274.
Bonar (H.), Family Sermons, 435.
Calthrop (G.), in The Penny Pulpit, No. 853.
Dewey (O.), Works, 759.
Dykes (J. O.), Sermons, 249.
Gibson (J. M.), The Glory of Life, 35.
Gladden (W.), Where does the Sky Begin, 187.
Gwatkin (H. M.), The Eye for Spiritual Things, 49.
Jowett (B.), Sermons Biographical and Miscellaneous, 356.
Martin (G. C.), in Great Texts of the New Testament, 127.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, v. 164.
Perowne (J. J. S.), Sermons, 172.
Westcott (B. F.), Christian Aspects of Life, 86.
Westcott (B. F.), The Historic Faith, 129.
Wordsworth (J.), Sermons Preached in Salisbury Cathedral Church, 97.
Christian World Pulpit; xxxv. 346 (G. Matheson); lii. 187 (T. V. Tymms); lxvii. 86 (K. Lake); lxix. 262 (W. L. Watkinson).
Churchman's Pulpit: Easter Day and Season, vii. 342 (A. M. Mackay).
Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd. Ser., viii. 93 (G. Calthrop).
Autor: JAMES HASTINGS