Cosmic repercussions

The enormous creativity made possible by this vision of reality is immediately obvious: “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but new creation (καινὴ κτίσις)” (6:15). As in [Gal] 5:6, Paul announces the irrelevance of taxonomic systems by which society had been divided in subtly hierarchical terms: old “antinomies” are here discounted in the wake of a new reality that has completely reordered the world. The connotations of the phrase “new creation” stretch well beyond individual conversion, gesturing to a cosmic refashioning awaited in the future (cf. 1:4).—J. M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 395