Reading: 2 Corinthians 5.11-21
The disciples of Jesus had been with him for three-and-a-half years, had heard him teach, watched his miracles, seen him die, been assured that he was alive... It was becoming clear to them that he had work for them to do. He would be physically absent, he would send the Holy Spirit so they could do the work!
During this interval – between Resurrection and Pentecost – it was so important that they grasp afresh who Jesus was and why he had come!
As the disciples began to see Jesus in a new light, they also began to see the call to follow Jesus in a new light. He is not just a great man and a great teacher, a model and an example. He is the Son of God with all authority in heaven and on earth. Following Jesus means learning from him, but it also means being involved in his life and mission. It is responding to his will, obeying him – “My Lord and my God!” When we understand who Jesus is, there are immediate implications for our understanding of who we are and who we are meant to be!
Last week we were thinking about this new view of Jesus. In particular we thought about those two key questions asked during the life of Jesus
“Who do people say that I am?”
“What will I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?”
or, if we put them another way,
Who is Jesus?
How do I respond to the real Jesus – for the rest of my life?
Today we are taking a new view of people. But how we view people will be closely related to our understanding of Jesus and how we respond to him.
Notice what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5.16 – “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view (literally, ‘according to the flesh’). Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.”.
What is this “worldly view” of Jesus Christ, this knowledge of Christ “according to the flesh”? Last week we saw that some people of the time thought of Jesus as John the Baptist raised from the dead, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets. In more recent times we noted that some people who see Jesus as a real and significant historical figure think of him as a great Teacher, Example, Hero or Martyr.
What did it mean for Paul to say that he had known Christ “according to the flesh”? Some think it possible, even likely, that the young Saul could have seen and heard the earthly Jesus. But, as far as the Biblical evidence takes us, Paul’s first encounter with Jesus was on the road to Damascus.
Brought up in Tarsus, Paul (or Saul as he was earlier known) went to Jerusalem to be educated under the famous Rabbi Gamaliel. When Peter and John had been arrested over the healing of the lame man and their refusal to stop preaching Jesus, there was pressure in the Sanhedrin to have them put to death (Acts 5.33). It was Gamaliel who urged a moderate response – “I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” (vv. 38-39).
The first reference to Saul is at the stoning of Stephen – “the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul... Saul was there, giving approval to his death” (7.58, 8.1a). Had he heard what Stephen said before the Sanhedrin? Perhaps, but not necessarily.
Stephen had spoken about God’s gracious promises to them as a people – and the ways in which the Lord’s people had opposed God’s plans and dealt harshly with the prophets God had sent. “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him – you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.” (7.51-53).
This made them furious. But then, we are told, “Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’.” (vv. 55-56) So, Stephen was saying, Jesus is alive, glorified in heaven and standing to welcome his people home.
“On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison” (8.1b-3).
What had Saul known of Christ “according to the flesh”? He had viewed him as a deceiver, an imposter – good thing he was crucified, dead and buried! His old teacher Gamaliel was being too soft, too diplomatic. Of course this movement is of human origin. It’s a dangerous deception that has to be nipped in the bud, stamped out before it spreads any further! Jesus has been a very popular man – a hero – who attracted quite a following. We have to dissuade and disperse his followers.
Saul became a ringleader in the persecution of Christians. He even obtained from the high priest letters to the synagogues in Damascus to bring Christians back to Jerusalem as prisoners. Then – “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (9.4)
That was the turning-point in his thinking and behaviour. He had brushed aside Stephen’s vision of the risen Lord Jesus, but if Jesus really is alive, what then? The change in this encounter from the old Saul to the one we know as Paul was dramatic. After “several days with the disciples in Damascus” we learn that “at once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God” (v. 20).
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 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” (vv. 14-16).
If we have this new view of Jesus, we know that we must acknowledge Jesus as our Saviour, Lord and Friend. But notice what Paul says here about how we view other people – “from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view”. Paul is saying that our new view of Jesus – and what he did when he died for all and rose again – will affect how we look at every other human being. And he meant every other person.
How do we regard other people? What about those who have arrived in Australia by boat? What do we think about the drunk? the homosexual? the AIDS sufferer? the wife-basher? the child-molester? the murderer? the thief?...
We have our human way of summing people up, deciding their worth and writing them off. Can the leopard change its spots? That’s in the Bible – Jeremiah 13.23. People are what they are and that’s that! We even get a bit of righteous satisfaction from this way of looking at people. But Paul is saying that, if we have really grasped that Christ died for all, we can no longer look at people that way.
Let’s be clear – God regards sin as very serious indeed. Why else should he send his Son to die for sinners? What did God see in the world he loved that he should do that? If he had just seen the sin and violence, he would never have sent the Saviour! He sent the Saviour because he had created human beings in his own image, because his plan and desire had always been that they should know and love him. He sent the Saviour because he wanted to open the way to forgiveness, to restoration, to a new beginning, to a new life. God looks at sinners very differently from the way we do!
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (v. 17). Paul is quite excited about this. In the original he leaves out some of the verbs. A very literal translation would be, “If any in Christ, new creation! See! The old things have passed by, new things have come into being!”
God’s redemptive provision is here and is available for every human being “in Christ”. Christ “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (v. 15). We cannot any more regard anybody from a “worldly point of view”, because each person is potentially a new creature in Christ. Is that the way we regard our neighbours, the people we meet, the people we hear about in the news...?
We read on – “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 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” (vv. 18-20).
Before the ascension, Jesus had said to his assembled disciples, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things...” (Lk 24.46-48). “... you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1.8).
Notice what Jesus says, “You are witnesses...” – you have the evidence – and “you will be my witnesses...” – you will bear witness on my behalf.
Paul is saying that God’s work of reconciliation is complete in Christ who has borne to the full the judgment due to human sinners. To us has been committed the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5.18). We aren’t here to make up our own message, to suit some current fashion, to help people “feel nice”. We are “ambassadors” on behalf of Christ (v. 20) with the responsibility of faithfully declaring God’s message, calling people everywhere to be “reconciled to God”.
Having a new view of Christ and his redemptive work leads us to view ourselves and other people differently, because “if any in Christ, new creation!” This new view of people inevitably commits us to the ministry of reconciliation – praying for and longing for others to be reconciled to God – to be new creatures in Christ.
©
Peter J. Blackburn, Halifax and Ingham, 15 January 2012
Except
where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New
International Version,
© Zondervan, 1984.