Have you ever been in a conversation with someone about something really important and you’ve been interrupted? Perhaps the phone has rung, or someone has come into the room with something that just can’t wait and the conversation is stopped dead in its tracks. What do you do? Well if it’s me, I try to start it up again as soon as the interruption is over. I might need to remind myself where we were, but if it’s important that’s what I’ll do.
Well today we need to restart a conversation we began at the start of the year; a conversation about what it means to be human.
You may recall, if you can remember back that far, that we began with the wonder of creation, with humanity as the pinnacle of that creation, the ones whom God has blessed with being made just a little lower than the angels. But then we saw that humanity had failed to live up to their expectations. The paradise they’d been put into was spoilt and they were expelled from God’s presence, an impregnable barrier placed between them and God.
The result was that we find ourselves in a bind. No matter how much we want to do the right thing, no matter how much we seek after God, we keep on falling short. Our best efforts are still well below the standard of perfection necessary for us to stand before God without fear.
But then we saw that God isn’t finished with us. The failure of human beings to obey God didn’t mean the failure of his plan to create a people for himself. But it did mean that he had to send his own Son to earth as a human being to live the life of obedience that Adam and Eve had failed to live. It did mean that Jesus Christ had to die in our place and rise again. But the result of that great act of love by Jesus Christ was that we’re now enabled to become his children, not just as a legal fiction, but in reality as we’re born again, as God’s own Spirit comes to live within us, to bring new life to our own spirit.
Well, that’s where we got to just before Easter. There may have been a bit more to it than just that, seeing as it took 6 weeks, but that’s the basic outline.
So here’s the situation for humanity in general. People are separated from God by a huge gulf, a gulf caused by their own rebellion, their own inability to allow God to be God in their lives. What’s more, as we saw a few weeks ago in Ephesians, we’re unable to even begin to move back to God. Why? Because we’re spiritually dead. But God does what’s needed. He makes the first move. Just as in the garden of Eden, after the fall, he came walking in the garden calling out to Adam and Eve, "Where are you?" So now he’s sent his only Son into the world to bring us home.
He’s sent his only Son, Jesus, into the world, as Paul says in our passage today, to die for all, so that all may die along with him, and then to rise again so that all might rise with him.
So what difference does that make to us as a Church? Well, let’s look at what God has to say to us via Paul’s second letter to the Church in Corinth.
1 Motivation for Mission
He begins as he so often does with his own example. What is it that he’s modelled for them and us? Look at 5:11: "Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others."
The Fear of the Lord
Now if you’ve got your bible open, just look back to v10 because that explains what he means by the fear of the Lord. (2 Cor 5:10 NRSV) "For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil." The plight of humanity is a serious thing, isn’t it? We’re walking along a precipice in the dark with a great chasm on either side. We’re in great danger unless someone comes and rescues us. So, he says, he does his best to persuade others. What’s he persuading them of? Of the danger they’re in. Of the reality of the day of judgement. Of the reality of our human condition, our fallen nature.
I know we don’t like to think about such things. We’d prefer to think that as long as we’ve lived a reasonably good life we’ll be OK. It’s so easy to stick our head in the sand about this isn’t it? Because the alternative is to realise that we, and our friends, are in diabolical trouble (and I use the term advisedly!). But the reality we all face is this: We must all "appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil." And that’s why Paul works so hard to persuade people.
But this isn’t a hardhearted persuasion. He isn’t motivated by some puritanical desire to see people cringe in fear or wallow in their own depravity. He isn’t motivated by a judgmental heart as is sometimes the criticism of evangelistic efforts. No, look at what else motivates him, v14: "14For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died."
The Love of Christ
Far from being motivated by a judgmental spirit, his motivation is the love of Christ. That is, the love that Christ has shown by giving himself up to death for us.
What’s more, his motivation has a long term aim in mind. "15And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them." His great desire for all those to whom he speaks is to see them live, and live not for themselves, but for Jesus Christ.
Do you remember how we talked about the fall as being characterised essentially by a desire on the part of human beings to run their own world? And it’s as true today as it was when Adam and Eve first disobeyed God. We all basically want to live for ourselves, don’t we? Isn’t that the basic motivation for the things we choose in this life? It’s certainly the basis of most of the political decisions of our leaders. What will people most perceive of as helping them, giving them a better life? What will make people feel better about themselves, or more secure, or more comfortable?
You may have read this week about Sir Edmund Hilary’s criticism of a group of climbers on Mt Everest who came across a lone climber who’d run out of oxygen and was dying. They stopped to check him out but decided they couldn’t do anything to help him so they just left him to die and kept going so they could reach the top as planned. That’s truly living for yourself isn’t it?
But God’s desire is that we’ll live not for ourselves but for Jesus Christ. Of course that does have a positive outcome for us. If we live for him who was raised, the implication is that we too will be raised with him, just as we’ve died with him. And that’s why Paul says he no longer regards people from a human point of view. Because although we look the same as anyone else, if we’re in Christ Jesus, we’ve died to the world and are alive to Christ. If we’re in Christ we’re a new creation.
The Greek actually says it much better than the English translation. It’s like a headline: "If anyone is in Christ: New Creation!" What was there before has passed away. The old has gone and now everything is new. The failure of the past is wiped away. Our inability to please God: gone! Our opposition to God and his purposes: gone! And most of all the breakdown in the relationship between us and God: gone!
2 The Message of Mission
How has this come about? Is it something I said or did? No! This is the work of God who was, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. Through Jesus’ death on the cross, God takes our sins and lays them on the head of Jesus. Jesus dies our death so that we might share his risen life.
This is a message our generation needs to hear. We see people all around us seeking to find a way to God. Following all sorts of spiritual advisors in the hope of finding a way to make themselves worthy of God, or seeking some sort of experience of God’s presence in their lives. But the good news of the gospel is that God has done it already. He’s already made the way clear for us to be reunited with God. Christ has died in our place. His death and resurrection have broken down the barriers that have separated us from God ever since Adam and Eve first rebelled against God’s command. He’s given us his own Holy Spirit to bring us new life.
3 The Magnificence of Mission
But then there’s the next step, isn’t there? Now God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. You may or may not be aware that this week has been designated as the week of Prayer for Reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. We’re a bit removed from it living here in the eastern suburbs, but this is a big issue for various parts of Melbourne and Australia. We all know that the S word (Sorry) doesn’t exist in the vocabulary of our Prime Minister. But as a nation we need to work at mending the broken relationships we have with our indigenous brothers and sisters. So it’s fitting that we be thinking about this passage today. It’s also appropriate that we think about these issues when we’re talking about a merger with a congregation where half the people speak a language we don’t understand. Are we committed to a gospel of reconciliation, to a gospel that proclaims the breaking down of human barriers that divide us; barriers of race and language and culture? When we sat in St Michael’s a month ago and listened as prayers were said in Cantonese, were we excited at this concrete expression of the power of the gospel to cross boundaries of race, language and culture, or were we offended because we couldn’t understand what was being said?
What does the gospel say? God has brought us who were far off, separated by an impassable gulf, back to himself and in so doing has brought people from every part of the world into his own family. He’s reconciled us to himself and to each other. This is the message we’re called to proclaim. This is the message God has entrusted us with: the message of peace with God and with one another; the message that the dividing wall of hostility has been broken down. In fact look at how it’s expressed.
We’re not just mere messengers of the good news. No, the job we’re given is a magnificent one. We’re Christ’s Ambassadors! We should be wearing purple robes as we tell people about what God has done in Jesus Christ. When we speak we speak as the representatives of the one who sits on the throne in heaven.
Are you excited by that message? Are you excited by the role you have to play. As Tim said last week, everyone of us is a minister of the gospel. Whether you proclaim it at length like I’m doing at the moment, or whether you model it in your life, you are Christ’s ambassador. God makes his appeal to your friends and family through you. You know, God does on occasion speak directly to someone. He does sometimes speak through dreams. But the way he most often communicates with people is through the things you or I say and do. As someone once said "In everything you do, proclaim the gospel. When necessary, use words." The daunting thing about that of course is that it means our behaviour needs to be exemplary at all times, doesn’t it? But then, the last verse of our passage might give us some hope. "21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." God has not only reconciled us to himself, but he gives us his Holy Spirit to live in us, to help us live out the righteousness he’s won for us in Jesus Christ. Our righteousness comes as a gift. It comes as a result of Christ’s sinless life, his death and resurrection. But that also means that we can now begin to live a new life of obedience. Remember v17: We are a "new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"
The old sinful nature is being renewed so we might live lives that fit the righteousness Christ has won for us. In the meantime we’re on a mission: a mission from God. The motivation for our mission is the fear of the Lord and the love of Christ. The message of our mission is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The magnificence of our mission is that God has made us his ambassadors to take that good news to our friends and family. Let’s pray that we’d be able to fulfill that mission in the world.
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