What Does 2 Corinthians 5:19 Mean?

(19) **To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world.**—Better, perhaps, *How that it was God who was reconciling in Christ a world unto Himself.* Both “God” and “world” are, in the Greek, without the article. The English rendering is tenable grammatically, but the position of the words in the original suggests the construction given above. He seems to emphasise the greatness of the redeeming work by pointing at once to its author and its extent. The structure is the same as the “was preaching” of Luke 4:44. All the English versions, however, from Wiclif downwards, adopt the same construction. Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Geneva version translate, *making agreement between the world and Himself* instead of “reconciling to Himself.” The “world” is, of course, the world of men, the “all” of 2Corinthians 5:15. **Not imputing their trespasses unto them . . .**—The two participial clauses that follow describe the result of the reconciling work. The first is that God no longer charges their transgressions against men: the pronouns being used in the third person plural, as being more individualising than the “world,” and more appropriate than would have been the first person, which he had used in 2Corinthians 5:18, and which he wanted, in its narrower extension, for the clause which was to follow. The word for “imputing,” or *reckoning,* is specially prominent in the Epistles of this period, occurring, though in very varied shades of meaning, eight times in this Epistle and nineteen times in that to the Romans. The difficulty of maintaining a logical coherence of this truth with that of a judgment according to works does not present itself to the Apostle’s mind, and need not trouble us. (See Note on 2Corinthians 5:10.) **And hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.**—Literally, to maintain the participial construction, *placing with* (or *in*)* us the word of reconciliation.* Tyndale gives “atonement” here, as in Romans 5:11.