"So if anyone
is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new!" (2
Corinthians 5:17 NRSV)
The primitive
Christians were accustomed to speak, in a language which was older than
Christianity, of being "in the Spirit" -- as though Spirit were an
ethereal atmosphere surrounding the soul, and breathed in as the body breathes
in the air. Paul, too, used this expression,
but he placed alongside it a parallel form of words, "in Christ" or
"in Christ Jesus". Where we
find these words used we are being reminded of the intimate union with Christ
which makes the Christian life an eternal life lived in the midst of
time. The deeper shade of meaning would
often be conveyed to our minds if we translated the phrase "in communion
with Christ". But, Paul's Christ mysticism is saved from the introverted
individualism of many forms of mysticism by his insistence that communion with
Christ is also communion with all who are Christ's.
-- C. Harold Dodd in The Meaning of Paul for Today
-- C. Harold Dodd in The Meaning of Paul for Today
#3776
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