Christians live under new conditions. Paul tell us in the Epistle lesson for this Sunday that the old life has been done away and that the new life has begun. We are new creations of God. There are all sorts of metaphors that the Bible uses to describe that Christian passage from old to new. It says that we have been born anew, or that we have passed from slavery into freedom. It proclaims that we have emerged from darkness into light, or from despair into meaning, from mourning into joy, or from death into life. We walk no more by the flesh, but by the Spirit, or we are no longer conformed to the world, but to the will of God. Throughout the scriptures, the newness of life that we have been given in Jesus Christ is emphasized.

 

Perhaps nowhere is that newness emphasized more than in Paul…