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May 10/11, 2014
Jason Meyer | 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2
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.
Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says,
“In a favorable time I listened to you,
and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”
Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.—2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2
Introduction
I think the devil likes ditches. I made a case for that in this series back in 2 Corinthians 2:11. Paul warned the Corinthians about being “outwitted by Satan.” He said that we do not need to be outsmarted by him, “for we are not ignorant of his designs.” Paul argues that we know Satan’s designs or schemes. It made me ask myself if I really knew some of what was in his bag of tricks, since Paul assumed that we would. I argued there from the context that one of Satan’s schemes is to use the unbalanced nature of humanity against us. We are wobbly and imbalanced and far too readily fall into one extreme or another. Do you remember the situation? A man in the Corinthian church was living in unrepentant sin. At first the man did not repent of his very public sin, and the Corinthians were too lenient to start church discipline. Then later the man repented of his sin, but they were too harsh to remove church discipline. They were slow to do it and then they were slow to remove it. In both cases, Satan says, “I can use that.” He can work in a lenient church that does not take unrepentant sin seriously, and he can work in a harsh church that has a hard time forgiving repentant sinners.
You may have noticed that I like to use ditches in sermons too, but for a very different reason than the devil. I think in terms of ditches because I want to expose the devil’s nasty tricks. I do this all the time (you should see how many I end up editing out). I think I am somewhat trained to think in these terms ever since I read this quote from Martin Luther about 15 years ago: “Humanity is like a drunken peasant. He no sooner gets up on one side of his horse than he falls over on the other side.” Luther talked about our tendency to fall into extremes. But this week, I read a quote that cemented it even more in my mind. One of our members (Jim Preston) shared a quote with me from C. S. Lewis ...
I feel a strong desire to tell you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Part II, Chapter Six)
Because the devil sends errors into the world in pairs of opposites, I would like to speak to unbelievers and believers with the question for today’s sermon. Unbelievers, what would it take to save you? Believers, what did it take to save you? Do you know? What kind of power does it take or did it take to make it happen?
I think I could craft wrong answers to that question as a pair of opposites.
Ditch #1: Cynical about yourself
Ditch #2: Overconfident about yourself
Way of Salvation (Center): Confident in Christ
On the one hand, some are cynical about salvation. They feel like it is too difficult. It is hopeless. They feel too stuck and too entrenched in sin. On the other hand, some are overconfident about salvation. They think it is easy to change. They can choose to become a Christian at anytime. The truth in the middle is admitting that we are unable to save ourselves, but God is more than able to save us. Furthermore, he is not just able to save, but willing to save. That is good news indeed!
One of the most difficult things in all of the world is to try to bring two people together who are at odds with one another and are unwilling to work it out. You probably have all seen it. A relationship can be strong and then something happens so that the relationship becomes strained and then the relationship snaps in two. The two people become estranged so that they are virtually strangers at best or enemies at worst. But here is the good news. God is willing to restore the relationship that we have broken. This is called “reconciliation.” I want to look at verses 20–21 to see three pieces of the ministry of reconciliation: 1) the ministers of reconciliation (vv. 18–20), 2) the message of reconciliation (v. 20), and 3) the mechanics of reconciliation (v. 21).
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.
God uses the apostles (his ambassadors) to make his appeal. It is God’s appeal, but we are the ones who speak for him as his ambassadors. Is there a special class of super spiritual people that God uses for this task? No, he reconciles sinners and appoints them to tell the testimony of reconciliation. The reconciled become reconcilers. All have sinned. All humans need to be reconciled. God sent his sinless Son to reconcile sinners. God first reconciles some and appoints them in order to tell the testimony to others.
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.—2 Corinthians 5:18–19
God always takes the initiative. He is reconciling to himself. This is not the story of what others did to reconcile themselves to God. This is what God did to reconcile sinners to himself. He sent a mediator. Two stages are in view here: incarnation and then the cross. God sent his Son to take on flesh as fully God and fully man so that he could serve as a perfect mediator between God and man. Listen to what Paul says about this mediator:
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.—1 Timothy 2:3–5
To be a mediator, you have to be able to represent both parties. Jesus is the only one that can. As fully God, he can represent God. As fully man, he can represent man. But how could he ever mediate between a perfectly holy God and sinful humanity?
Jesus paid the purchase price. He purchased their freedom. He purchased their forgiveness. Jesus “gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:6).
Now there is a testimony to tell. There is good news to share. God appoints some of the ransomed to tell about the ransom. Paul continues ...
…Which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.—1 Timothy 2:6–7
One of my students, Brian Verrett, just showed me something from Isaiah that I had never seen before. God’s servant in the book of Isaiah is always singular up to a certain point (Isaiah 53). After the singular servant comes and suffers and pays the price, then servant becomes plural. The servant has created servants who will tell of what he has done. What is the message?
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
God makes his appeal through us. What is the appeal? What is our message? “We implore you on behalf of Christ, ‘Be reconciled to God.’ ” There it is. Be reconciled to God. What does that mean? You can’t separate the four words, “be reconciled to God,” from the bigger story of the Bible.
The Bible is a story of reconciliation. It opens with God creating humankind. He makes Adam and Eve and puts them in the special garden that he has made to have a relationship with him. He lovingly laid out the parameters of what the relationship would look like. He warned them that rebellion would lead to death, but they rebelled anyway. They refused to listen to his voice and they sided with his enemy, Satan instead. The wages of sin is death. They ran and hid from him in shame because of their sin. Humanity has lived under the curse of death ever since.
But hear the good news. God made a way to restore the relationship. The King is willing to restore and reclaim ruined rebels. He is willing! That is the best news in the world. The restoration of this relationship is called “reconciliation.” Restoring a relationship that was broken in two. God took the initiative to create the relationship by creating us. We broke it. We snapped the relationship in two by sin. Look at God take the initiative again to save us. God is willing to restore it.
But now the burning question is how. What is the way? A holy God can’t just declare the guilty innocent. The first Adam failed. He needed to send another Adam who would succeed. It all comes down to two people: Adam and Christ. It doesn’t get any bigger or more global than this. Adam was a representative for all of humanity. He failed. His failure becomes our failure because we are joined to him by physical birth. Paul says it clearly in 1 Corinthians 15. In Adam, all die (v. 22). In Adam, all die because of what Adam did. God sent his Son to be the last Adam. “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (vv. 21–22). In Christ, all will be made alive (v. 22). That is why Christ is called the “last Adam” (v. 45). What did God do for us through this God-man?
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
You should look under the hood of the gospel here and say, “Whoa! That’s power. That could save anyone!” The gospel is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe (Romans 1:16).
I want you to imagine this like the building of a bridge from one world (citizen of this world of death) to another (citizen of the world to come/life). The gospel is the power to save, and it is so powerful that it could save anyone. The bridge was broken and burned to the ground by our sin. We could not rebuild it. We would have to pay for the damages (which we could not) and we would have to build a new one. A penalty had to be paid (the damages), but then he had to address the problem of our unrighteousness.
Look at the two-part solution. First, look how he dealt with sin. God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin for our sake. For the sake of sinners, he made the sinless one a sinner! He took his sinless Son and made him to be sin. He regarded Christ as a sinner in our place or for our sake. The cross was the payment—the ransom. All the damages were paid. The debt was paid in full. You can’t get more full than the fullness of God! An infinite price was paid, then an infinite gift was given.
Second, what is that gift? He decisively dealt with our unrighteousness by giving us what Paul calls in Romans 5:18, “the gift of righteousness.” He had to deal with our penalty first “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21).
He regarded his Son that way so that in his Son we might become the righteousness of God.
He built the bridge perfectly through his life of obedience—bit by bit. Then when he came to the end—he defeated death with his death.
Let’s try an analogy to make the mechanism a little clearer. Imagine that you are going to take a test. You have to get a perfect score to pass this test. The stakes are high. If you get a perfect score, you get heaven. If you don’t get a perfect score, you get hell. We all take the test and because we are sinners, we all fail. It does no good to compare scores at this point. Someone who got a 20 on the test would be foolish to make fun of someone who got a 10 on the test. A failing score is a failing score. My failure was better than your failure. “I got a better ‘F’ than you,” is a really lame thing to say. Don’t do that. We all deserve hell.
But God intervenes. He sends his Son who takes on flesh and becomes like us in every way so that he can take the same test. He gets a perfect score. Like us in every way, except without sin. Now God says through faith in Christ you will be joined to him so that I will transfer the scores. He will get your score and you will get his score. He will pay the penalty for your score on the cross and you will get the reward for his score in heaven. We are saved by works—by the works of our Substitute. He obeyed in our place. He died in our place. We are saved by his death and his life.
Theologians sometimes call this double imputation: our sin imputed or reckoned to Christ; his righteousness imputed or reckoned to us. Our sin becomes his sin; his righteousness becomes our righteousness. Do you see what this means? We can’t be good enough to bring salvation within our reach and we can’t be bad enough to make salvation out of reach. No one can be saved without this gospel. No one is exempt or excluded. Stick with the test analogy. Some people think that they have done enough good. They have already passed the test. They think they have tested so high that they have clepped out and are not exempt from needing the gospel. You don’t test out of Righteousness 101. No one is exempt from needing the gospel. But on the other side, no one is excluded from the gospel by how bad they are. You don’t need to start taking remedial righteousness courses to qualify to take the gospel.
Do you see what this means on Mother’s Day? This is a mother’s mega-encouragement. Most mothers are very aware of their failures. Are you as aware of your righteousness in Christ? In Christ, you have the righteousness of God. You are regarded not as a sinful mother, but as a perfect mother in Christ. He paid the debt. You can forgive your mother for her “F,” or mother’s can forgive their children for their “F.” None of us get a perfect score based on our own personal parenting. Look to the mediator. Be reconciled to him and be reconciled to each other.
Go back to the bridge analogy. No one can pay for the damages and build a new bridge of perfect righteousness. And because he paid for the damages and built a new one, no one can say, “But I can’t cross.” So if the bridge is built, why doesn’t everyone cross it?
Conclusion
There are two bookends to this text. The appeal in verse 20 is the main point of 5:16–21: Be reconciled to God. The two bookends of the text are the means that make it possible. We needed the damages to be paid and the bridge to be rebuilt. We saw that it was in verse 21. But now we need something else. There is one more problem.
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.—2 Corinthians 5:16–18
Paul says that there are two kinds of perception: physical (flesh) and spiritual. Everyone can do the first kind. It is natural ability that comes from physical birth: You are born into the first creation. The second kind of perception comes from spiritual birth: You are born into the new creation. Christ and the ambassador of Christ can only be seen rightly with spiritual perception, not physical or fleshly perception. Can you see what he is doing? He is worried that they are regarding or seeing according to the flesh—according to the outward appearance (as he said last week). He says, “Though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.” When did Paul regard Christ according to the flesh? When he was an unbeliever. When did he “regard him thus no longer”? New birth. He saw Christ with new spiritual eyes. Paul is asking the Corinthians if they are unbelievers. Do they only see according to the flesh? Can they not see the things of the Spirit?
This concept of the new creation was introduced earlier:
But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.—2 Corinthians 4:2–6
Paul is concerned that Satan has blinded the Corinthians. Has he blinded them so that they can’t see the real Jesus that Paul preaches? Paul preaches the gospel as God’s power to save, but that is not enough. God must intervene or they will never see it. They need the power of the new creation.
That is why he makes his appeal now in chapter 5 to be reconciled to God. He is not just telling them a random fact about his ministry. Rejecting the ambassador of Christ means that they are in danger of rejecting Christ and his reconciling work. They need to be reconciled to God. He tells them about what God has done in Christ to make reconciliation possible in verse 21.
He then closes this section by making an appeal to respond immediately. It is the main point of the whole text, his appeal to respond to the gospel. Perhaps their claim to have received the grace of God was empty. They think they received, but they are deceived. So he makes his appeal to receive the gospel today. The bridge is built, the debt is paid, so I appeal to you, come to Christ. You can be set free by the power of the new creation. You can see that this is the point he was working towards because of the word “then.”
Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says,
“In a favorable time I listened to you,
and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”
Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.—2 Corinthians 6:1–2
Unbelievers, be saved today! Don’t trust what you did yesterday or what you will do tomorrow.
The power to save has built the bridge. It always exists outside of you. The invitation to come is always there. Now you need the power to come. Why can’t you come? The problem is inside of you. You are blinded and chained by sin. You need your eyes opened and you need your heart set free from its chains.
That is why the pair of opposites I mentioned at the outset of the sermon are both wrong. Don’t be cynical about salvation. Yes, you are blind and chained and can’t change. But God built the bridge and God is able to give you the power to come. Don’t be overconfident, either, as if the power to decide rests in your hands. You can’t pull the chains out of the wall and you can’t make yourself see. One believes you could not be saved at any time, the other believes you can be saved at any time.
You don’t need to make a new decision, you need a new creation.
As the song says, “Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed thee” (“Amazing Love”).
There is a moment when it all comes home. When that happens, you feel like the world is no longer your home. The chains are gone and you come to Christ. You cross over the bridge and you enter a whole new world—you become a citizen of heaven.
Believers, you are saved today! Salvation is not just a past-tense thing or a future-tense thing. It is a today thing. A now thing.
There is power to define and power to identify. God is the subject. He saves; you are the saved. He rescues; you are the rescued. He loves; you are the dearly loved. He reconciles; you are the reconciled. He justifies; you are the justified. The world no longer has the power to define you as if you belong to them. When you don’t fit their mold, they will call you names to try to shame you back. They will call you bigot. They will say you are out of touch. You are a fossil. You are a hater. They will persecute you to try to scare you back.
The cross has caused a crucified cut of the chord between us and the world. Paul says, “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).
The cross cut down the bridge. The cord between you and the world has been cut. If you don’t belong to this world, what do you belong to? A new creation: “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation” (Galatians 6:15). It is not about what you did or did not do. It is all about what God did for you. He made you new. The old is gone. The new has come. You are a new creature living in the light of a new creation. But you become a witness of another world, a better world, a better life, a better love. You were reconciled in order to reconcile. Saved to save. Rescued to rescue. Loved to love.
But you can call and show everyone the bridge. You are in range of all of their arrows and all of their scare tactics. They are trying to make you fit in again. But you can’t cross back. The cross has forever changed everything. We can sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus—no turning back, no turning back. Though none go with me, still I will follow. The world behind me, the cross before me.” But no matter how many times you are rejected and ridiculed, I want you to keep reaching out. The bridge is built. You keep telling them the testimony and trust that God can break the chains and open their eyes. I am praying that you will feel so pressed in by these two glorious realities (the power to save and the power to see) that you will share the message of reconciliation. You will preach it better as a first hander—as someone who is amazed by its power. You have got to see the view from over here. It all looks different! You have not seen anything yet. It just gets better.
Closing Song: ”The Power of the Cross”