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May 26, 2019
Daniel Viezbicke (South Campus) | 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.—2 Corinthians 5:16–21
Introduction
Who are you?
What is your purpose? Our purpose at Bethlehem is right there on the wall: “We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” What’s your relationship to those around you? In your home? In your neighborhood? At your work? At your school? Do you think about yourself as a spreader of joy? In the apostle Paul’s passage here, he speaks as one who is a reconciler, one who brings two parties who are hostile to peace. He sees that as his purpose, and I believe that he commends and commands that as our purpose as Christians and as a church. It’s rooted in his identity with Christ—Christ Jesus has made Paul his own. Paul belongs to Christ, belongs to his family. And so he works for peace between mankind and God by spreading the gospel.
For us in America, removed from Paul’s first-century evangelistic context, we can be distracted from this purpose to actively be working for peace between God and mankind through the gospel. This about it. Our culture is accustomed to passive spectacle, all the more so in our media age. And instead of engaging with our culture and those in it, we can get caught up in the spirit of the age, with our smartphones as a way to avoid people, with our TV keeping us from our Bibles, with our social media becoming an endless stream of trivial observations and interactions. In the midst of such a spectacle-centered culture, we can so easily forget our identity and our purpose.
Or rather than forget our identity, we replace it with some substitute for “Christianity.” We remove ourselves from society, making our church, our education circles, or our immediate family the boundary of who we’ll trust, who we’ll nurture, who we’ll care for. In this day and age with all the political rhetoric everywhere, we treat our fellow humans as our enemies instead of those to whom we’re called to bring the gospel, those who are created in God’s image and who need to hear the Good News.
In our passage, Paul pictures himself and Christians as ambassadors to the world around us, announcing reconciliation. Christians are not those who are absorbed into the world around us and forget the message of the gospel, or who abandon our surrounding culture and don’t attempt to share this good news. It’s this word reconciliation that brings us the essence of what it means to be an ambassador. We are those who proclaim that there is a possibility to be at peace with God, through Jesus Christ, instead of experiencing hostility between humanity and God. And the “how,” the “what,” and the “who” of this reconciling work is Paul’s heart here.
Paul has written 2 Corinthians as his fourth letter in a correspondence with the church at Corinth. In 1 Corinthians, Paul has heard how messed up the church is, and he addresses the issues head on in response to a letter they wrote him. In 2 Corinthians, there’s been a measure of repentance and success in Paul’s effort to convince the Corinthians of their errors, but there’s still more to go. Some in Corinth identity themselves as “super apostles”—better than Paul—and he wants to warn the Corinthians and remind them of the truth they’ve believed in the past.
Paul recounts his ministry to them, including an explanation of his delay in coming to them, some follow-up to a church discipline matter from 1 Corinthians, and a long explanation in chapters 3 and 4 of Paul’s gospel ministry to them. Drawing on analogies from nature and the Old Testament, Paul tells the Corinthians that he and his fellow evangelists have seen the glory of God and by God’s mercy, are given the gift of proclaiming it to others. He’s been through much in this ministry, but it’s worth it. Outer self wasting away; inner self renewed day by day. Even if they die, they’ll be present with Jesus, awaiting the resurrection to come.
Then, in 2 Corinthians 5:11, Paul tells us that in light of all Christ has done, and in light of the coming judgment and resurrection, Paul and his companions seek to persuade everyone of the gospel message. Unlike the super apostles who boast in their outward appearance and eloquence, Paul simply preaches the gospel and hopes the Corinthians realize that it’s genuine and from a clear conscience. He says that he and his traveling evangelists are controlled by Christ, because Christ died so that those who are alive in him (having believed in Christ and been changed!) live no longer for themselves but for Christ.
This brings us to our passage. We’ll take it in three parts: the metrics, the message, and the messengers of the Kingdom. Or the “how,” the “what,” and the “who” of gospel reconciliation.
Outline:
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
How do you evaluate people around you? In Paul’s case, he sought to see people with the Spirit’s understanding. A Christian, an ambassador, does not look at people and evaluate them by outward standards. They don’t look at their social status, their economic status, or even their immediately obvious character as determinative for their identity. They evaluate them with the Spirit’s eyes; they look and they ask, “Has this person been reconciled, made at peace with God?” That is the benchmark on which everything else falls.
What is your standard of measurement for others? Is it strictly their behavior? Or do you evaluate them in light of Christ? Now, there’s a connection here: Real fruit comes from a real root. Those who do have faith in Christ will have fruit in keeping with repentance. But we’re all, every one of us, inconsistent at times. So we have to look past what is merely outward.
That’s the dichotomy here; Paul once looked at Christ without spiritual understanding, merely according to his own understanding as a zealous Jewish leader. To Paul, Jesus was another in a long line of pretenders to the title of “Messiah,” and belief in his teachings was worthy of death. He didn’t see him as actually coming from God, here to reconcile humanity to God.
Paul’s life before Christ looked remarkably like others in his culture; indeed he stood above them and was a great example of an adherent to Judaism. But he was called out, and forsook all that, and was made an ambassador. And he’s calling out the Corinthians.
For us, we ought not think of our lives as essentially copies of those around us, plus the “Jesus benefits.” If we’re content to have lives that look like good, moral people who don’t know Christ, we’ve forgotten our purpose rooted in our identity. If we’re content to have families whose kids get good jobs and who have good grandkids, we’ve forgotten our purpose rooted in our identity. Or, if we’re content to get good grades, get good jobs, and have decent friends without ever stepping outside our comfort zone, we’ve forgotten our purpose rooted in our identity.
We ought not evaluate everyone according to outward appearance, purely according to what they look like or how they act without regard for their relationship with God. When we’re in Christ, we have the ability to see with spiritual eyes our fellow image- bearers who were created for glory and to glorify God.
Now, the text itself doesn’t say, “We see with spiritual eyes instead,” but the contrast throughout Paul’s letters is between the Spirit and the flesh. So when Paul says, “We regard no one according to the flesh,” it’s implied that we now regard them according to the Spirit. We’ve been given fresh eyes to see the world and those in it according to, as it were, God’s eyes.
When there’s new life, we have a new outlook. I remember when I was a new father, Caedmon was brand new, and we were living in an apartment near Uptown in Minneapolis. Our entire environment went from “Oh cool, I live in the city” to “Everything is dangerous.” Everything we saw before with certain eyes became new as there was a new life to love and protect.
This is Paul’s ministry. He’s seen Christ, been changed, and now doesn’t see the world the same anymore. And he wants people to know it. Earlier in the book, 2 Corinthians 3, Paul has said he’s seen Christ and been changed, like Moses going up the mountain at Sinai. But Moses’ face had to stay veiled because the Israelites didn’t want to see that glory; Paul says he himself is like one who unveils his face, so it can shine, and the Corinthians can be changed by beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ in the face of Paul. So it is too with us. Unless we’ve been changed, unless we behold Christ, unless we’ve been reconciled, we will not see others as they truly are, and they will not see Christ truly in us.
Seeing Christ truly causes you to see other people truly—so that you don’t measure according to outward standards, but according to God’s word! You once regarded Christ according to the flesh only. Don’t do that to those for whom he died. They are a new creation.
So all of humanity is divided, and here it is: Those who have been reconciled to God and those who haven’t. Those who pledge allegiance to Jesus in response to what he’s done in his life, death, resurrection, and reign … and those who refuse to pledge this allegiance. Who persist in their rebellion.
Not only does Paul say that he, and we, have new insight or understanding of people, but we also have this message to take to them.
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
What is the essential gospel? It is the reconciling work of God through Christ by the power of the Spirit to save any who will believe. And save to the uttermost!
To get further at what it means to be reconciled to God, let’s look at the only other place that Paul uses this word repeatedly: Romans 5:6–11.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Reconciliation and salvation. You, me, God’s enemies, are made at peace with God by the death of Christ, which means you will certainly be saved from his wrath. And it must be received … which again divides all of humanity into two groups. Those at peace and those at war with God.
Compare to a one teacher of the Bible, Rob Bell, who thinks that all of humanity is already at peace with God.
A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.1
Rob Bell’s solution? He looks at this text and other texts that utilize “restoration”-type language, and says that reconciliation—peace with God—has been accomplished, regardless of one’s disposition toward God in Christ. Regardless of whether people have faith in Christ in this life, they will see him eventually. On this thinking, and the thinking of many so-called Christians, all are reconciled, regardless of whether they trust Jesus and regardless of whether they follow him as their Lord here and now.
But, in the very next verse, we see Paul’s answer to this sort of thinking: He doesn’t think everyone who hears him has been reconciled, or that all of humanity has been reconciled without regard to faith in Christ. No, look at verse 20: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God!”
And that’s our call, too, to get reconciled and to go reconcile.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
What we’re to do is see our fellow humans with the Spirit’s eyes, treasure the gospel message we carry, and then call people to peace with God. How can Paul say, “Be reconciled,” instead of “reconcile yourself”?
Here’s what I think is going on: Paul is looking at the mountain of our sin. He’s looking at how crippled humanity is in our ability to be at peace with God. He’s looking at the absolute, transcendent holiness of God. And he’s looking at the cross and what Christ did to reconcile us. And he says, “Look at everything that’s happened! Get reconciled to God! It’s the most natural thing when one sees all that has happened.”
One of my children the other night said, “I want to spit and hit a star.” We reassured our child that that it wasn’t possible, and that it would end up in their eye instead. We can no more be at peace with God than we can spit and hit a distant star. So God must do it all, he must come down, he must be spit on, he must be killable, he must be killed … all so he can make reconciliation with us. Because of this, Paul—and we—can look at anyone and say with the full weight of reality, the full weight of the revelation of God, and say, “What are you doing playing with sin? Don’t you know what God has done in Christ? Get reconciled!”
Paul is speaking to the Corinthian church, telling them to be reconciled, indiscriminately—knowing that some of them are and some of them aren’t. So, I’d say to you this morning: Get reconciled to God! And go reconcile others.
Paul’s analogy for relating to the culture is an ambassador, a representative of another who carries not inherent authority but the authority of another. One who carries another’s message on their lips. Indeed, if we’re being proper with the analogy, the messenger of reconciliation not only represents a king but also a kingdom.
Ambassadors is the proper metaphor, but not only a metaphor, for what we’re doing. We, as members of God’s kingdom, represent him and his kingdom to those who do not acknowledge his lordship.
In short, we’re not in this alone! We’re not to think of ourselves as so many I’ve encountered over the years—lone-wolf evangelists who are unattached from other Christians and particularly unattached from the local church. Instead of thinking of ourselves in this way, consider what God has done. He has placed us in local churches, where we get to invite people to see the gospel lived out among a people who live to glorify his Name.
One author, Jonathan Leeman, pictures this reality this way:
Picture thousands, even tens of thousands, of time machines suddenly showing up all across the land. The nation gasps. News cameras crowd around them. Government officials and police forces quickly engage these strangers as they climb out of their time machines. It feels like a science fiction movie about an alien invasion. Yet the people say they are from the future. They represent a coming kingdom, they explain. Interestingly, they speak English, dress like us, and otherwise seem pretty normal.
That said, they admit they want to change the way we live. It almost sounds like, well, what’s the word—colonization? For instance, they want to persuade everyone to join them and give primary allegiance to their king. … They also explain that each time machine will hold its own weekly meeting, where they will teach everyone who joins to live according to their king’s standards of justice and righteousness. … They conclude by telling us to think of their time-machine gatherings as embassies from the future that we are all hurtling toward, and that they are trying to give us a leg up on that future now.2
You, Christian, are from the future in this way: You know the outcome of this world. You know the king is returning. You know the Kingdom will advance and swallow up all kingdoms. So what to do about it, about this knowledge from the future, from the One who holds the future?
This matters in our homes, where our children have not yet believed in Jesus and need to be made at peace with God. Moms, dads: You are doing reconciliation work as ambassadors in your homes. Don’t give up!
Kids, teens, you’re playing sports this summer, and parents, you’re meeting other parents who aren’t reconciled with God. Are you showing them the love of God and speaking of hope you have and how you’ve been changed?
Employees, employers: As you commute week after week, realize that you are an ambassador of a kingdom, with an embassy at your back. Your good, long-term work of adorning the gospel with good works, of speaking to your hope in Christ, is not in vain.
Fellow church members, this matters for how you relate to each other. If we’ve been reconciled to God, we ought be quick to forgive and seek reconciliation with others, instead of allowing distrust or bitterness to become a new status quo.
To continue to think about this role of ambassador that you’ve been given and help keep it in front of us and practical, you received an insert today that asks five questions. Throughout the summer and into the Fall, we’ll use these five questions as a tool to consider how we’re growing in going together.
I’ve asked a few people to answer these questions. [ROLL VIDEO ...]
Application: Five Questions to Consider
Conclusion: The Messiah who Reconciles (2 Corinthians 5:21)
How is all this possible? He who never knew sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. This is the ground, all the reason for our salvation: Jesus took on my sin, died, and rose so that we might have a right standing with God as sons and daughters.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
On consider again what Paul says in Romans 5:1–5
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Bethlehem, God’s love has been poured into you. You have peace with God through your Lord Jesus Christ. God is growing you in hope, producing endurance for every good work—including walking faithfully in evangelizing our neighbors and the nations.
What would it look like to put down our phones, to reengage our neighbors, to make our social circles bigger than our families or those like us, to speak the gospel to them and see them reconciled to God. To take seriously the fact we’ve been given spiritual eyes to see beyond outward appearances, and to the root of the matter. I think it would mean that we would see neighbors and coworkers and schoolmates and teammates and family members come to faith in Christ. To be consistent in our work together, and leave the results to God. Let’s do it together this summer and beyond.
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1. From Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, by Rob Bell, p. viii.
2. From How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age by Jonathan Leeman, pp. 136–137.