A reflection on 2 Corinthians 5:16-20

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, s/he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.—2 Corinthians 5:16-20, English Standard Version

I didn’t grow up in the Mennonite church. I grew up in the suburbs of Orlando, Fla., going to a large evangelical church. I loved my experience there—people showed me a lot of love—but it didn’t really help me understand this passage (2 Corinthians 5:16-20).

I was never sure what it looked like to be a new creation or what it meant to regard anyone according to the flesh. My life looked a lot like my peers’ lives. While I talked about Jesus and went to church more than they did, I still had similar values, dreams and standards for my life. I knew I should do well in school, go to college, pursue a career that would sustain a middle-class lifestyle and hopefully have a family I would raise to do similar things.

Presumably this was all part of what it meant to follow Jesus, too, so for a long time my biggest claim to Christian “fame” was that I never cussed, was a good student and went on service trips every summer. These are all commendable (particularly the latter), but Paul is not referring to personal morality or a middle-class lifestyle when he says we are a “new creation.”

To get the gist of what Paul is saying in this passage, we need to peek back at verses 14 and 15: “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Therefore, we no longer regard anyone according to the flesh.”

This is a pretty radical passage. It starts with the self-sacrificial love of Christ for everyone, then essentially says, “So now we question everything we’ve been taught to assume.” That’s what it means to be radical, to get back to the underlying value (love) and rebuild everything according to that value, laying aside anything that gets in the way, no matter how important we thought it was, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us.

That’s what Paul means when he says we regard no one according to the flesh. We question everything our culture says about how the world should be, and we build a new world based on Christ’s love. It means we no longer judge people according to our culture’s standards. We don’t judge based on ethnicity or skin color. We don’t elevate people based on their class or choose whether or not to associate with them based on their gender. We don’t base our love or help on people’s legal status in this country. What this passage says is that these standards of the flesh (our culture’s standards) are no longer our standards.

We don’t let our categories become divisive or cause us to fear, oppress or harm others. Our God is a god of reconciliation, and because we are in Christ, we are the Great Reconcilers—new creatures belonging to a new creation that is marked by the image of Christ.
How then do we view each other? We view each other as family and sometimes as comrades or friends but always as people loved by God and in the process of being reconciled.

Isn’t that a beautiful image? The idea that all the things that cause us to hate or fear or belittle or shun or oppress are all meaningless to God and meaningless in the church? Paul says they have passed away. We don’t regard anyone that way because we live in a different world—a new one inaugurated by Christ.

I wish I could say that as confidently as Paul does, but often I still find myself in a world more interested in one group’s well-being than another’s or more likely to fear a certain group or to beat them up or simply ignore them or to try to exclude them from churches or conferences. Most of the time I live in that world. Sometimes, though, I step back for a second and see something remarkable.

I realize that a lot of people the world likes to categorize or disdain or fear or bully—people I used to (and sometimes still do) view the same way—are people I know. And not only know but associate with, am friends with and am now becoming family with. We are a long way off from looking like the new creation in my community, Missio Dei, but at the same time I can see that it’s happening and that gives me hope.

I joined this community more than two years ago, and my world has changed a lot since then. Missio Dei is a Mennonite church and intentional community in Minneapolis. We’re called to lives of hospitality, simplicity, prayer, peacemaking and resistance—resistance particularly against the things in our country’s culture that are divisive and oppressive. What does that look like in our homes?

It looks like community meals made with commonly owned food and guest rooms available to both the well-off people who visit us and the people who come to us in need. It looks like struggling through cultural differences between Latino folks and people with Scandinavian heritage, trying to love people who have been in and out of jail or struggle with addiction, learning from and listening to LGBT people as well as folks who are ex-gay. It looks like a lot of failure and tiny beautiful successes. In the end, it’s living in a clash between God’s kingdom and this world. Much of the time it is messy, but the moments that are so backward that they couldn’t be anything else but God’s kingdom inspire me—like when a homeless Ethiopian friend bought me lunch.

I can’t wait to see more of this new world. It’s a world where people are being reconciled to each other and showing other people what it means to be reconciled and participating in a whole creation that is being reconciled to God. The hard part is that it all starts with getting rid of biases and judgments and prejudices that come with viewing each other according to the flesh. That’s the hard work.

It’s hard work because it means we are going to be uncomfortable. We are going to have to spend a lot of time listening (or learning how to speak up when we would normally be silenced). We may have to make some decisions that a lot of people find foolish and that “a lot of people” will probably find offensive, too.

Worse yet, it will probably affect our security—financially, physically and psychologically. We will probably lose some friends and maybe some family. But we will also make some new friends who have experienced a lot of pain. Being friends with them may be hard, but I’m fairly certain it’s all worth it—at least I’m increasingly banking on the idea that it is. I think that’s what it means to put your faith in Christ, so I’m doing (something close to) my best to live it out.

If you agree, then I implore you: Let’s get to praying and listening and working on actually acting like the new creatures God has so boldly proclaimed us to be. Below are some questions that I hope will help you in this process:

1. What are some of the ways “the flesh” organizes people (for example, by gender or class)?

2. How are these groups viewed, and how do you view them—whether positively or negatively (or some mix of the two)?

3. What would it look like if we viewed all these people in light of God’s kingdom?

4. How was Christ viewed according to the flesh? How do we view him now?

5. What commonalities might he have with people who are marginalized and categorized today?

6. What are you going to do about your biases?

7. What are you willing to give up or lose in pursuit of a kingdom perspective? (Be specific, concrete and realistic. Think about what you would be willing to lose in the next steps of this process and about concrete things or people who might be affected.)