The precise function of the word Therefore which begins this verse is not clear. Is Paul drawing out the consequences of what he has said in verse 16, or does the word Therefore go back to verses 14 and 15? If, as seems most likely, verses 16 and 17 are parallel in thought, then both verses draw out the consequences of what Paul has written in verses 14 and 15. Some translations such as Good News Translation and Revised English Bible fail to translate the connecting word Therefore and simply leave unexpressed the precise relationship of verse 17 to what precedes.
On the meaning and translation of in Christ, see comments on 1.21; 2.14.
He is a new creation: the pronoun he may have to be made more explicit in some languages, since some readers may think it refers to Christ. In those cases translators may have to say “that person is a new being.” New creation is literally “new ktisis.” The Greek word ktisis nearly always means “creation” in Paul’s letters, rather than “creature”; “creature” would make it refer to an individual person. The Greek has no pronoun and no verb, so the verb phrase that translators supply (“he is” or “there is”) depends in part on the meaning of the noun ktisis. According to Good News Translation and many other versions, the individual person “is a new being.” But according to Moffatt, Anchor Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, and New Revised Standard Version, “there is a new creation,” meaning not just that the individual person has been made new but also that a new situation has been created. The majority of English versions, however, seem to prefer the individual interpretation reflected in Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation. Translators may choose to place the alternative translation in a footnote, as Revised Standard Version does.
The old refers to things that characterized the pre-Christian life. Revised English Bible says “the old order.”
Has passed away: this may be rendered “has disappeared” (Knox), “has come to an end” (Anchor Bible), or “finished and gone” (Phillips). This stands in contrast with has come at the end of the verse.
Behold: this particle is often left untranslated in modern versions (Good News Translation and Revised English Bible) or is represented only by an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence (New American Bible and New International Version). New Revised Standard Version attempts to render it using the less archaic “see…!” If the receptor language has a particle that naturally calls attention to what follows, it may be used here.
Some manuscripts have the word “all” both at the end of verse 17 and at the beginning of verse 18. This reading of 17b is found in older translations such as Segond, Reina-Valera revisada, and King James Version (“all things are become new”), but the editors of the UBS Greek New Testament consider it more likely that a scribe later added the word to the end of verse 17.
Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellingworth, Paul. A Handbook on Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .