2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Albert Barnes Bible Commentary:
They are new creatures. No matter what they have been before, whether moral or immoral; whether infidels or speculative believers; whether amiable, or debased, sensual and polluted, yet if they become Christians they all experience such a change as to make it proper to say they are a new creation.
Ephesians 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
It means, evidently, that there is a change produced in the renewed heart of man that is equivalent to the act of creation, and that bears a strong resemblance to it – a change, so to speak, as if the man was made over again, and had become new.
The phrase implies evidently the following things:
(1) That there is an exertion of divine power in the conversion of the sinner as really as in the act of creating the world out of nothing, and that this is as indispensable in the one case as in the other.
(2) That a change is produced so great as to make it proper to say that he is a new man. He has new views, new motives, new principles, new objects and plans of life. He seeks new purposes, and he lives for new ends.
If a drunkard becomes reformed, there is no impropriety in saying that he is a new man.
If a man who was licentious becomes pure, there is no impropriety in saying that he is not the same man that he was before.
There is a change so deep, so clear, so entire, and so abiding, that it is proper to say, here is a new creation of God – a work of the divine power as decided and as glorious as when God created all things out of nothing.
There is no other moral change that takes place on earth so deep, and radical, and thorough as the change at conversion.
They now renounced that independence, relied on the merits of the Saviour, their attachment to idols, their love of sin and degradation, their dependence on their own works, had passed away, and they had renounced all these things.
In regard to all, it is also true that old things pass away.
Their former prejudices, opinions, habits, attachments pass away.
Their supreme love of self passes away.
Their love of sins passes away.
Their love of the world passes away.
Their supreme attachment to their earthly friends rather than God passes away.
Their love of sin, their sensuality, pride, vanity, levity, ambition, passes away.
There is a deep and radical change on all these subjects – a change which commences at the new birth;
Behold, all things are become new – that is, all things in view of the mind. The purposes of life, the feelings of the heart, the principles of action, all become new. The understanding is consecrated to new objects, the body is employed in new service, the heart forms new attachments. Nothing can be more strikingly. descriptive of the facts in conversion than this; nothing more entirely accords with the feelings of the newborn soul. All is new.
There are new views of God, and of Jesus Christ; new views of this world and of the world to come; new views of truth and of duty; and everything is seen in a new aspect and with new feelings.
LEARN HOW YOU CAN BE BORN AGAIN AND BECOME A NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST JESUS.
PEACEMAKERS 