Power of Life In Christ

2 Cor. 5:14-15

The meaning here in these verses is, if Christ died for all, it was because all had died, otherwise, there would have been no such need for Him to die. All, from Adam on down, as far as God was, and is, are spiritually dead, outside of being in Christ.

In Genesis 2:17, the Hebrew puts it like this, “in sinning, you will die spiritually, and as a result, die physically.” “In dying, you will die.”

Rom. 3:23, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (See also Rom. 6:23). Hebrews 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” 9:28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (notice it says many, not all, see John 8:21,24); and unto THEM that look for Him will He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

In 2 Cor. 5:15, not all died to sin is evident from the correspondency of "all" in the sentence; and further that "they which live" are taken as some out of the "all" that follows. He died for all, but that they which live should not anymore live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for THEM and rose again.

So Paul, through the Holy Spirit, does not even know Christ after the flesh, as a living Jewish Messiah, whom as a Jew he would have known. Nor does he know Christians as belonging to the old creation to which they had died, nor others, for they were all dead---their whole history. But if a man was IN CHRIST, he is a new creation: he belonged to that in which ALL things were (and are for us) of God.

The whole subject is the power of life in Christ as triumphant over death. (See Rom. 6:9; Col. 3:3-4; Heb. 2:14-15).

It is the power and fulness of a new thing for those taken out of death through Christ's going down unto it. (See Jhn. 5:24). There was, and is now, neither Jew, Gentile, sin, flesh, nor any other thing of the old Adam or legal estate, but a new creation.