Five-minute study · Day 58 · 2 Corinthians 5
2 Corinthians 5:17
A word worth stopping on: creation κτίσις ktisis
If anyone is in Christ: new creation. The old has passed away. Look, the new has come. Paul does not say 'new person.' He says new ktisis, new creation. He reaches all the way back to Genesis 1 and borrows the word for what God did when he made the world. The same vocabulary. The same scale. Paul is claiming that what happens when someone enters Christ is a new creation. The word ktisis echoes the same category of event as the creation of the universe.
Word study: creation
- Greek
- κτίσις
- Pronounced
- ktisis
- Strong's
- G2937
- Definition
- The act of creation, a created thing, the created order. From ktizo: to create, to bring into being what did not exist.
BDAG defines ktisis as 'the act of creation' and 'that which is created.' The word appears in the Septuagint (LXX) in contexts tied to God's original creative act. When Paul uses it in 2 Corinthians 5:17, the echo is unmistakable. Kaine ktisis, new creation, borrows the weight of Genesis 1.
Thrall, in her ICC commentary on 2 Corinthians, argues that Paul's phrase operates on two levels simultaneously. On the individual level, the person in Christ has been made new. On the cosmic level, the entire created order is being remade. Paul is not choosing between personal transformation and cosmic renewal. He means both.
The grammar supports this reading. Paul writes 'if anyone is in Christ, new creation.' There is no verb. The original Greek is a verbless clause, two words slammed together: kaine ktisis. The abruptness is the point. No process described. No timeline given. The declaration lands like the declaration in Genesis 1: God spoke and it was. Paul says 'in Christ' and the next word is 'new creation.' The transition is instantaneous in his grammar because it is instantaneous in his theology.
The 'old things have passed away' clause uses parerchomai, the same verb used for heaven and earth passing away in Jesus' apocalyptic teaching (Matthew 24:35). Paul is using end-of-the-world language for something that has already happened to the believer.
Historical context · 55 to 56 AD
Creation Language in a Broken City
Paul writes 2 Corinthians from Macedonia, probably around 55-56 AD, and the letter is one of the most emotionally intense documents in the New Testament. His relationship with the Corinthian church has nearly collapsed. False teachers have undermined his authority. Some members have turned against him. He has already written a severe letter (2 Corinthians 2:4) that caused grief on both sides.
Corinth itself was a city built on reinvention. The original Greek Corinth was destroyed by Rome in 146 BC. Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman colony in 44 BC, populating it with freed slaves and veterans. The city Paul knew was barely a century old, a new creation built on the ruins of the old. The residents understood what it meant to start over.
Paul's new creation language also draws on Jewish apocalyptic expectation. Isaiah 65:17 promises 'new heavens and a new earth.' Jewish texts from the Second Temple period (1 Enoch, Jubilees) anticipated a cosmic renewal when God would remake the entire created order. Paul's radical claim is that this future event has already broken into the present for those who are in Christ. The new creation is not only coming. It has arrived. The old age and the new age overlap in the life of the believer.
For a church in ruins, in a city built on ruins, Paul's word is that God specializes in making things new. The vocabulary he chooses is Genesis vocabulary. The scale is cosmic. And the location of this new creation is a specific person, in Christ, right now.
For reflection
Paul uses Genesis 1 language. Creation, not improvement. Think about one area of your life where you keep trying to fix the old when God may be doing something entirely new. What would it look like to let the new creation be new?
Kaine ktisis has no verb. No process. Paul's grammar treats the change as a fact already accomplished.
Sources: BDAG Lexicon; Thrall, '2 Corinthians' (ICC); Hubbard, 'New Creation in Paul's Letters and Thought'