So, I've been thinking about 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2 a bit lately. Here's the text (NIV):
16 So from now on we regard no one from a
worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no
longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation
has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is
from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to
himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has
committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are
therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through
us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God
made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God. As
God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2 For
he says,
“In
the time of my favor I heard you,
and
in the day of salvation I helped you.” z
I tell you, now is the time of God’s
favor, now is the day of salvation.
You
know, if you look at these you’ll notice that the word "reconcile" (in some form) appears five times in those verses. And, if we
were in a Bible Study 101 class it
would be fairly easy to conclude what this passage is all about. Shout
it out…reconciliation! Yes, this is
a text about reconciliation! Let me ask you a question: how many of you love stories of
reunion and reconciliation? I love them. I think I love them partly because they are so rich in emotion and I think we all love them
predominantly because they appeal to a deep-seated longing to be at one
with other human beings and with God.
The theme of reconciliation is treated in a number
of ways by the narratives of the Bible. The most famous biblical reconciliation
scenes occur in two family reunions that light up the book of Genesis. The
first, you might remember, is the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis
33, who were reunited after twenty years of separation. In that story Jacob
is the guilt-haunted supplicant, humorously overprepared for the meeting, while
Esau is generous and impulsive in his forgiveness.
In the second great reconciliation story you might
remember Joseph in Egypt, disclosing his identity to his brothers and
forgiving them after their terrible treacherous selling of Joseph into slavery (Gen
46:1–47:12).
Tracking
through the Hebrew Bible we note that the theme of reconciliation underlies the
book of Hosea, where the prophet
obeys God’s command to be reunited with his faithless wife, Gomer.
In
the Song of Songs moments of
separation between the two lovers in that story are resolved in scenes of splendid
reunion. A similar motif underlies the New Testament, for example, in the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus,
and it becomes the dominant thread in the story of Jesus’ restoration of Peter
(Jn 21:15–19).
Of
course, I am not being exhaustive, but what I am suggesting is that the motif
of reconciliation and restoration
receives a distinct and emphatic treatment
in the Bible—meaning of course that this is something to really pay attention to as students of God’s word. And what we
find, particularly as we read scripture as Christians, is that this
reconciliation is built on the foundation of God’s unbelievably gracious forgiveness
of sinners because of the great work of Jesus Christ. It’s quite lavish, God’s
grace, in the work of reconciliation—and if anyone is prodigal—a word which
simply means “wasteful”—if anyone is
prodigal in the Bible—it’s not the Son from the famous parable—the truly
prodigal one is God, who lavishly “wastes”
his grace upon a sinful world. A thank God for that!
Another
thing we find as we read scripture is this grammar
or language in the Bible that expresses desire for reconciliation with
God—and this becomes a model for us today as we reach out and expend ourselves
seeking after God. The really classic case of desire for reconciliation comes
from Psalm 51. In fact, it’s such a beautiful exhortation for reconciliation, I
want to read the whole thing. David writes…
1 Have
mercy on me, O God,
according to your
unfailing love;
according to your
great compassion
blot out my
transgressions.
2 Wash
away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from
my sin.
3 For
I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always
before me.
4 Against
you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil
in your sight;
so you are right in
your verdict
and justified when
you judge.
5 Surely
I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time
my mother conceived me.
6 Yet
you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom
in that secret place.
7 Cleanse
me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will
be whiter than snow.
8 Let
me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you
have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide
your face from my sins
and blot out all my
iniquity.
10 Create
in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast
spirit within me.
11 Do
not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy
Spirit from me.
12 Restore
to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a
willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then
I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will
turn back to you.
14 Deliver
me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my
Savior,
and my tongue will
sing of your righteousness.
15 Open
my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will
declare your praise.
16 You
do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take
pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My
sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite
heart
you, God, will not
despise.
18 May
it please you to prosper Zion,
to build up the walls
of Jerusalem.
19 Then
you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
in burnt offerings
offered whole;
then bulls will be
offered on your altar.
Now,
the only reason that the psalmist can pen such a beautiful song of exhortation
for reconciliation with YHWH is because he realizes, what? That God is a…reconciler. God is a reconciler. This characteristic is fundamentally a part of who God is…
Which
brings me to 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2 and a little problem that Paul was dealing with.
You see, there was a fundamentally important and abundantly exciting new
reality in the world as Paul was writing this letter—and I describe that
reality like this: God is...in Christ
Jesus…reconciling all things to Himself. That was the new reality. God is…in Christ Jesus…reconciling all
things to Himself.
And
that’s wonderful, right? But there was a problem. The problem was that the
Corinthians, among whom Paul was ministering, were really kind of missing it because they hadn’t processed
this new reality. And missing this new reality of what God was doing in the world because of the work Jesus Christ,
was keeping the Corinthians from seeing the world with the new eyes of the gospel.
The
result of the Corinthian’s anemic gospel view of the world was that they
expected everything, particularly Paul’s own style of apostleship, to conform
to the fashions and customs of the world they were used to. And the world that
they were used to was an old world—a ‘merely human’ world. A world where things
were assessed as Paul describes it: ‘according to the flesh.’
So
Paul’s challenges the Corinthians to recognize that God is doing something
entirely new. A new world has come about, through the death of Jesus in the
‘flesh’ and the resurrection of
Jesus in a new body, which is gloriously physical but not corruptible. The
challenge of the gospel is to live coherently in that new world, and this is
where the Corinthians are missing it. They are living according to the
standards of an old world. And Paul is quite troubled by this because he knows
that [and listen this very carefully]
the role of the church is to be the
place in the world where the work of Christ in reconciling humans to God should
be realized in practice. The task of
the church, he suggests, is to be a sacrament of the world’s possibility. The task of the church, Paul knows, is to
be a sacrament of the world’s possibility. As he writes in Ephesians 3:10, “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God
should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according
to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
And
so Paul begins describing in 2 Cor. 5, in sweeping terms, the
view from where he now is. He is on the threshold of the new creation itself,
and everything looks different because everything is different.
And
for Paul this new reality has an ethical purchase on him. He writes in verse 16, 16 So from now on we regard no one from a
worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no
longer.” In other words, when Paul looks at other people, other
Christians…himself…anyone…he sees them in a new way from how he did before.
When
he looks at the Messiah, he sees
him, too, in a new way; there was a time when all his dreams of a Messiah were
concentrated on ‘purely human’, that is, ‘fleshly’, ideal—a Messiah who would
conquer the enemies of God, build the Temple
of God, establish a ‘purely human’ kingdom. But for Paul, in light of the new
reality of the gospel, he realizes all such dreams must come to dust; that’s
what the Messiah’s death and resurrection have taught him. The way to the true kingdom of God is through death, and out the other side into God’s new world.
So:
putting together what he’s learned about other people and what he’s learned
about the Messiah, he writes in verse 17—take
a look at it there in your bible—he writes one of his great summaries of what
Christianity is all about. In the Greek language he was using, he said it even
more briefly: ‘If anyone in Messiah, new
creation!’ It sounds like gospel HAIKU doesn’t it? ‘If anyone in Messiah, new creation!’ In other words, if anyone is
in Christ, they are a new creation!” And of course the ‘new creation’ in
question refers both to the person concerned and to the world which they enter,
the world which has now been reconciled to the creator.
And
so Paul says in the next verses (18 and 19) something quite profound about reconciliation.
He writes, 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us
to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins
against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
OK, what does Paul say? He says (or
rather he emphasizes) that what has happened in and through the Messiah is not
a matter of God claiming a world that didn’t belong to him, or making a new one
out of nothing, but of God reconciling
to himself his own world, his beautiful and beloved creation, after the long
years of corruption and decay. And this, once more, explains what Paul is up
to. If God was doing all this in the Messiah, that work now needed to be put
into effect, to be implemented. And disciples had (and still have today!) a
part to play in this great work of God!
The
great New Testament scholar, NT Wright, describes it in this way: [listen to this, I love it]: He writes, “the great symphony of reconciliation
composed on Calvary needed to be copied out into orchestral parts for all the
world to play.” And that’s where Paul and the other Apostles come in. ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in the
Messiah, and entrusting us with the
message of reconciliation.’ He says it twice in verses 20 and 21, in very similar words, to rub the message home.
Something new has happened; something
new must now happen.
Of
course, the world had never before seen a ministry of reconciliation; it had
never before heard a message of reconciliation. No wonder the Corinthians found
Paul’s work hard to fathom. It didn’t fit any preconceived ideas they may have
had. He was behaving like someone … who lived in a whole new world.
And
this new reality of God had a really, really fun result for Paul (and for us
too): This new world has a new king,
and importantly for us…the king has ambassadors.
Paul at that time was the chief of these ambassadors, though not the only one. So
Paul was going into all the world with a message from the world’s newly
enthroned sovereign, a message inviting anyone and everyone to be reconciled to
the God who made them, loves them, and had provided the means of reconciliation
for them to come back to know and love him in return. And so when Paul writes
in verses 20 and 21 [take a look at it there], 20 We are therefore Christ’s
ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on
Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. He is saying, in effect, ‘This is
what I do! I’m a reconciler!’
And this can be your confession too if
you are in Christ! “This is what I do!
I’m a reconciler!”
Why
is this the case? Because of what Paul comments upon in verse 21. Paul writes, 21 God made him who had no
sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
How
is this possible? How is it possible to be reconciled to God? And how is it
then possible to be the conduit for a message of reconciliation? The answer
is—time and again—because of Christ Jesus. The answer is in the cross, on which
God made the sinless Messiah to ‘be sin’ on our behalf.
All
our sins, our failings, our inadequacies, were dealt with there, so that we—and
those in Paul’s time—the apostles, and really all who are called to be
‘ministers of reconciliation’—could embody in our own lives the faithfulness of
God. No wonder the Corinthians found it difficult to grasp what Paul was up to,
why his ministry took the shape it did. Nothing like this had ever been thought
of in the world before!
But
on this basis of this great work of Christ—and the ministry of reconciliation
committed unto them—he turns to them in the first two verses of chapter 6 with
a direct appeal, which comes to us as much as to them:
As God’s co-workers we urge you not to
receive God’s grace in vain. 2 For he says,
“In
the time of my favor I heard you,
and
in the day of salvation I helped you.” z
I tell you, now is the time of God’s
favor, now is the day of salvation.
In
other words: You’ve accepted God’s
grace; don’t let it go for nothing! Make the most of it! The new creation
is already here. God is saying ‘Yes!’ to all the prophecies and promises of
God. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:20-21: “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.
And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 21 Now
it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, 22 set
his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit,
guaranteeing what is to come.”
And
what I want to suggest to you this morning is that God is saying the same thing
right now: This is the day of salvation.
This is the right time. Don’t forsake the time of God’s favor; make
the most of it.
And so I leave you with these humble suggestions for “making the most of it”:
1) Respond to the great urge in your
hearts for reconciliation with God and with others. Don’t fight that.
2) Second, realize that God has
commandeered us to act in accord with our blessed status as reconciled ones
right now. Don’t be like the Corinthians might have been—acting in
accord with an old reality that was not consistent with the fact that God was
reconciling all things to himself. IN
other words, don’t begrudge others. Don’t hold back your love for others, as
if, like Scrooge, you might store it away for yourself. Let your love flow
liberally and freely in the world, consistent with the reality that you are
reconciled to God.
3) Third, remember the great and
sobering point that as Christians ‘we believe in life before death and as Christians we believe in life after death’, and that is important. So
often you will hear Christians speak of “Heaven over yonder up there” as of
that is where the real game will begin
so it keeps them from really flourishing as Christians in this life. But I tell you that ‘Salvation’ is not just
‘going to heaven up yonder over there’,
but it is ‘being raised to new life in
God’s new heaven and new earth’. In other words, we can enjoy ‘salvation’
here and now (always partially, of course, since we all still have to die), but
we can genuinely anticipate in the present what is to come in the future—and this is part of our “ministry of reconciliation.” ‘We were saved’, says Paul in Romans 8:24, ‘in hope.’ And we should live like a people with hope.
4) Fourth, remember that God’s
reconciliation through the death of Christ constitutes an enduring relationship
between the living Christ and the reconciled so that we as believers can be
certain of being saved in the final judgement and can exult in the hope of
divine glory that is to be theirs. There is no need for existential doubt…God
can be trusted in all things.
5) Which of course
brings me to my next point. God of course is the sole agent of
reconciliation, which is the demonstration of God’s love to the wicked, the
sinners and his enemies. From before the foundation of the world, God freely
and apart from outside influence determined to save sinners in order to eternally
display the glory of His grace. And we know that God Himself is an eager
reconciler, as Paul wrote to the Romans:
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we
shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies
we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been
reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult
in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the
reconciliation. (Rom. 5:9–11).
