2 Corinthians 5:16

‘Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.'

The result of recognising what Christ has done for us in dying and rising again is that we look at everything differently. From now on we do not judge men from a human point of view. From now on we see them from the point of view of heaven. We see them as either believers or unbelievers. We see even the most righteous as sinners before God. We see the once depraved sinner who has been converted as a child of God, pure in God's eyes. Nor do we differentiate men into Jew or Gentile, dividing men on the basis of race or religion. We know all men in terms of whether they are believers, whether they belong to Christ and are God's true people, or not.

We even see Christ differently. We may previously have seen Him in terms of His earthly sojourn, and what He was then. We may have judged Him on our own prejudices. But now we see Him totally differently We see Him as the risen Christ, as the Lord of all. We know Him as the One in Whom we died, thus finding deliverance from sin, and from Whom we have received new life. A failure to see Christ like that was probably one of the failures of the later mentioned ‘pseudo-apostles' (2 Corinthians 11:4).