SUMMARY
The death and resurrection of Christ centered in the message of the cross constitutes a new creationCreation, in biblical terms, is the universe as we know or perceive it. Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of Revelation (which speaks of end times) the author declares that God created all things and... More, which defines a whole new existence.
ANALYSIS
When Paul testifies that Christ has freed us for a freedom that is expressed in loving service to the neighbor (Galatians 5:1, 14), the words are not new. But for Paul and for us, it is clear that alternative options of slavery always stand near, as the immediately following talk of “biting” and “devouring” one another indicates (verse 15). To experience the fulfillment of Paul’s claims about freedom rests on the power of a new creation, a new world. It will require a death and a resurrection. The world of bondage has to be put to death, and a new world of freedom has to come to life. At the center of this freedom stands the cross and resurrection of Christ.So it is to this final assertion that Paul confidently returns in the conclusion of his Letter to the Galatians. Although the words “new creation” occur nowhere else in the letter, they certainly pick up and summarize the many ways in which Paul’s entire argument asserts that new life in Christ is the promise of the gospel. The promise to Christians, united in the death and resurrection of Christ, clothed with his life in baptismJesus was baptized (literally, "dipped") in the Jordan River by John the Baptizer, at which time he was acclaimed from heaven as God's Son, the Beloved. Much later baptism became one of the sacraments of the Church, the action by which a person is incorporated... More, is that in Christ we are ushered into a new world–a new matrix of existence–in which each “No” of the language and grammar of bondage and the law has been turned into the “Yes” of God’s leading and guiding Spirit.
