THE INVITATION OF LOVE

Let me ask you a question: If you had to pick one, which of the following best describes true Christianity?

A set of beliefs that comes from the Bible.

A way of life defined by imitating Christ.

A religion and culture focused on Jesus and His teachings.

A hope in life after death based on Christ’s saving work.

Do you have an idea of what you’d choose? It’s a tough choice, isn’t it? See the problem is that none of these fully captures the Christian faith. None of them paint the whole picture. They’re all accurate to a point, but none of them can by themselves sum it all up.

So let me ask you this: If you could write in an answer, what would you write? Or, suppose I added “all of the above” as an option. Would that fix the problem?

I’m going to argue that, no, it would not. Many of us can easily fall into thinking that Christianity is merely a worldview, merely a system of ethics, merely a way to worship in community, or merely something we look forward to, and it’s not! It is at least those things, but even at its core, Christianity is about more than just this list.

Maybe you’re joining us this morning and you wouldn’t yet call yourself a Christian—that’s awesome, I’m glad you’re here! But as you look at the screen, you may be wondering, man if that doesn’t sum it up, then what does? Maybe you’ve been presented with a Christianity that fits cleanly into one of these categories, but it seems like it comes up short; or you’re wrestling with it.

Does God really just want me to think differently? Does He just want me to act differently? Does He want me to love differently, and to sing songs? Is it really just about getting to heaven one day? If you’ve found yourself asking these questions, then I’m so excited to share with you what God has been showing me in the book of Second Corinthians.

Because in our passage today, we are going to discover what many believe is at the very heart of the Christian faith; and I might just be one of them. So if you’ve got your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Second Corinthians chapter 5.

We’ve been taking a deep dive into the love that God has for us during this advent season, talking about the Love that Launched Christmas.

As we turn to the Scriptures today, we’re going to pick things up in the middle of a very personal conversation that Paul is having with the church in the ancient city of Corinth. So if you’ve got your Bibles open to 2 Corinthians 5, go ahead and stand with me to honor the Word of God, and let’s read together, starting in verse 18.

2 Corinthians 5:18-21 “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 people’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. * God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

You may be seated.

As we get into the text, I want to start by looking at the context, because it’s important for us to realize that Paul is, as I said, having this back and forth conversation, talking about “we,” generally meaning Paul and his traveling companions, and “you,” meaning the Corinthian church. So for example, when Paul says in verse 20 that “We implore you on Christ’s behalf…,” He’s saying “Me and my coworkers are pleading with you, Corinthians.” But what makes Second Corinthians so interesting is that Paul, as he’s adressing these personal issues, gets caught up in the goodness and the majesty of who God is and what He’s done, and so he slips back and forth from this personal conversation to these broad and beautiful claims about what God has done for all believers.

And one of the reasons this letter is so personal is because Paul has caught wind that the Corinthians are having a hard time believing what he’s told them. In Paul’s absence, some false teachers have come in who are using their status, their pedigree, and their skill in speaking to undermine Paul’s message and to accuse him. And if we look just before our text today back in verse 11, we find Paul saying: We’re trying to pursuade others, and that includes you, Corinthians! God knows us; in other words, our conscience is clean! You’ve been told that I’m up to no good, that I’ve been trying to get in your pocket, that I have ill motives, but I hope you can see right through that—so on and so forth.

So Paul is defending himself and his gospel to this church that he loves; and I pray that his words are a blessing to us today as well, because we too may have a hard time believing what Paul has to say when it comes to the good news about God’s love. Because just as there were accusers in Corinth, there’s an Accuser that has come along in our lives as well to steal, kill, and destroy the power of God’s love in our lives.

So the question behind the passage is: Can we trust Paul’s message? Can we rely on His motives? And while we may not be asking the same questions of Paul, we certainly can find ourselves asking these questions of God, especially in the context of talking about God’s love for us.

What do I mean by that? What I mean is that if I were to ask you, “Hey, does God love you?” You would probably say “yes.”

It’s easy for us to agree that God loves us; but so often, when we agree, somewhere deep down we have redefined what that means. When we say “yes,” we mean to affirm that God, perhaps because of duty or obligation, chose to save me. And when we say “me” we mean “mostly everyone else; and then maybe me, but only as a second thought.” So when I say, “yes God loves me,” what I really mean is, “yes, because of some duty, God chose to save all of mankind,” but those are not the same thing. And the reason I know we have trouble with this is because when we begin probing into God’s love, we quickly become uncomfortable. We quickly divert our eyes.

I mean consider this: God loves you, but does He like you as well? Does He delight in you? Is He proud to call you His child? Does He look on you with the very same cherishing gaze as that with which He looks at His one and only Son, Jesus? I mean, in some ways that sounds almost blasphemous! And it’s somehow more difficult for us to accept this kind of “love” from God. And yet this is just the kind of love that we would expect from any parent. I love my kids, and sometimes I do things for them out of obligation, but if I didn’t like them, if I didn’t enjoy them, if I didn’t cherish them, then you might ask questions about what I actually mean by the word, “love.”

But when it comes to God’s love, we think, of course the Father is proud of Jesus; Jesus was perfect! Jesus accomplished the salvation of the world! Jesus is God! But me? I’m a joke. I’m a black sheep in the family of God. I’m barely skating by. I can’t get my act together. How could God be proud of me?

Isn’t it interesting that we find it easier to affirm God’s duty and commitment to us, His love for us as a people; but when it comes to His cherishing love, to whether or not He likes me in particular, I can feel my soul begin to shrink back. It’s the same reaction that Adam and Eve had in the garden: It’s the reaction of shame. And it says, “God may love me, but only because He has to. It can’t be because He wants to.”

And so we mistrust or we redefine. Because of shame, we can actually find ourselves resisting the idea of God’s love for me. So the Corinthians had some reservations about Paul’s message, and we can have some reservations as well.

But back in the text, Paul’s response to the Corinthians is clear: He says, you want to know my motive? You want to know what drives me? You want to know what causes me to get up and dust myself off over and over again, beating after beating? It is because, verse 14, I am compelled by the great love of Jesus Christ: Christ’s love compels us.

For Paul, Christ’s love was the driving force of his life. What’s interesting is that some other translations have the word “control” here (ESV, NET), and still others have “constrain.” The idea is that the love of Jesus is the motivation, and it also directs the path. It puts up boundaries that carry us along wherever Christ would lead. It’s the fuel, but it’s also the compass.

But notice as well that Christ’s love isn’t compelling to Paul only in some abstract sense. He goes on to say, “Christ’s love compels us (why?), because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.” In other words, Paul is compelled by Christ’s love because He is convinced of Christ’s love, and for Paul the convincing evidence is that He died for us.

Here’s the first important point I want all of us to see this morning: Before God’s love becomes compelling in our lives, it must first become real to our hearts. If we’re resistant to the idea that God could love us, then His love will never make it into the gas tank, and we’ll end up trying to live the Christian life running on the wrong fuel. And this is the danger in thinking that Christianity is just a worldview, or just a system of ethics, or just a way to find community, or just a hope for the future. We end up with insufficient fuel in the tank. It’s simply not enough. And running on the wrong fuel isn’t just bad, it is destructive. It will destroy us. It will destroy our ability to love others well. It will destroy our ability to withstand trials and difficulties. It will destroy our ability to be ambassadors for the good news.

I see so many people who are living as ambassadors for sports teams, and for brands, and for TV shows, and for tiktok hacks, because these things have in some small way changed their lives, and we naturally share what changes us! That’s why people offer you essential oils all the time, because for them it’s been life changing! But what Paul is saying is that what has changed my life is the unimaginably glorious truth that God loves me. And because I’ve received this message, I’ve been entrusted with this message!

You see, it is when we become convinced that God loves not just the world generally, but me in particular, that it begins to change everything about our lives. It’s when God’s love goes from being an abstract math problem to being a treasure hidden in a field, or a precious jewel that it begins to compel us. In other words, if you aren’t being compelled by Christ’s love, then it’s very possible that you’ve never been convinced of His love.

And so when we look at the stats and see that we’ve got an evangelism problem, or that nearly half of millenial practicing Christians believe it’s wrong to share your faith in hopes that a person will one day profess that faith, what I see isn’t people who lack boldness, what I see is people who have not grasped the beauty of God’s love for us in Christ.

And what Paul does next is that he uses a word to talk about God’s love-infused salvation that was up until that point used nowhere else in all of ancient religious literature: He writes, “All this,” meaning “all of these new things, all this new life, the salvation-work that God accomplished which demonstrated His love, and the way it changes everything about our ministry and our outlook, “all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.” This word “reconciled,” isn’t used anywhere else in ancient religious texts. Other religions talk about serving god. They talk about worshiping god. They talk about being slaves of god. But we serve a God who says “I no longer call you servants… Instead, I have called you friends” (John 15:15). And “You are no longer slaves, but sons and heirs” (par. Gal 4:7).

What Paul finds so incredible is God’s reconciling love, and the thing that sets apart God’s reconciling love is that reconciliation reminds us that God’s love is irreducibly, and intimately, personal. His love is about people, and it’s about relationship.

Where at one time our relationship was that of being God’s enemies, reconciliation teaches us that this way of relating to God as enemies gets exchanged for a relationship with God defined by peace. This becomes clear in one of the only other places that reconciliation is mentioned, which is in Romans chapter 5, when Paul connects it with the ideas of forgiveness, justification, and peace, writing “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.... For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” So when we talk about God’s reconciling love, we're talking about God’s love that “reestablishes our interrupted or broken relationship with Him.” We exchange a relationship of enmity and alienation for a relationship of peace and intimacy.

And this relationship is what was so absent from the options that we talked about at the beginning of the sermon, and that is what’s so dangerous. Because many will say to Christ when He returns: “Lord, Lord, did we not do all the stuff? Did we not live rightly? Did we not worship and serve and perform miracles in your name?” And Jesus will say, “depart from me, I never knew you.” We never had that relationship of peace. I was never familiar with you. What God is after is not just people who know the right answers, or people who act the right way, or people who worship correctly, or people who say a sinner’s prayer. What God is after is PEOPLE. He’s not after what you can do for Him. God is not served by human hands, as though He needed anything (Acts 17:25); He is after YOU, to the praise of His glory. And He has been after you for a long time.

Because the truth is that our relationship with God has been interrupted; it is broken. This is why reconciliation is necessary: there are barriers in place. If our relationship with God was re-established in Christ, then that means that at some point it was dis-established. And if we turn back to Romans 5 and pick up right at verse 12, we read that “sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—” and this sin “resulted in condemnation for all people…” In other words, every single person has to live with the consequences of what happened in the garden when Adam and Eve chose to reject God. So you can write down that we inherit a broken relationship with God.

See because when we talk about the relationship being reestablished, we aren’t talking about going back to the innocence we had earlier in life. I’m not trying to get back to the relationship I had with God at age 4. God and I were not all good when I was a child. Clay Wright, from the time he was born, had what we call a sinful nature, and was in need of a savior.

And so not only do we inherit a broken relationship because of Adam, but we all sin. And because of our sin guilt, we can’t be in the presence of God. Like we recently read in the book of Isaiah, if sinners come into the presence of a holy God, it ruins us. When Isaiah is confronted with the glory of God, he says “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and live amongst a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord Almighty!” (Is 6:5). And so because of sin, God has this problem: How can He get rid of sin without getting rid of the people that He loves? It can’t be overlooked. While we remain in our sin, we cannot dwell with a holy God. And we can not do anything about it.

And as if that were not enough, over and over again we run into the issue not just of our guilt, but of our wayward heart. See it’s not as though God would have us, and we would have God, if it weren’t for this inconvenient sin guilt thing. It’s that our hearts are far from God. It’s that we are cursed and gone astray. It’s that we have forsaken God, and we’ve tried to replace Him with idols and empty ways of living.

The story of the Bible is the story of God’s great, but often unrequited love—that God is pursuing us relentlessly, but we look the other way. Over and over again, God reaches out to humanity, and humanity rejects Him. And so even as Jesus laments over Jerusalem, and over Israel, He could just as easily lament over the whole world: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those [that I] sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing,” or in the RSV, “you would not” (Mt 23:37). Tragedy of tragedies, God would have us back, but we resist His love, and reject His offer. And we chase after meaninglessness. It’s like Lewis writes:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased (Lewis, The Weight of Glory).

The offer is there, but so often we live as though it isn’t. We go about our day. We live like barriers are still in place. Like the veil hasn’t been torn. And almighty God is standing on the porch, eyes on the horizon, arms open, ready to embrace His child.

Friends, that’s my story. God has been so good. God has reached out. But there have been so many times throughout the years when my heart was hard toward God. When I just wanted to do it my own way. When I knew that it was wrong; when God wanted to show me that He is the One that I needed; but I would not turn to Him.

And this is the story of every human heart since the Garden of Eden. It’s the story of our spouses, and it’s the story of our children. And so we need to do two things. We need to receive the love of God afresh, and we need to carry on the message! Like Paul, we need to be convinced of God’s love so that we can be compelled by His love to be ambassadors of His love to a world that desperately needs His love. We need this message. Our spouses need this message. Our neighbors need this message. Our children need this message. And this is the most important gift that could be given this Christmas season.

And that’s one reason I love this book called The Jesus Storybook Bible, because it captures this tension so beautifully when it depicts the garden scene, and I want my children to know why their hearts wander, and what God has done about it. And I want to share it with you:

The snake’s words hissed into [Eve’s] ears and sunk down deep into her heart, like poison. Does God love me? Eve wondered. Suddenly she didn’t know anymore.

“Just trust me,” the serprent whispered. “You don’t need God. One small taste, that’s all, and you’ll be happier than you could ever dream...”

Eve picked the fruit and ate some. And Adam ate some, too. And a terrible lie came into the world. It would never leave. It would live on in every human heart, whispering to every one of God’s children: “God doesn’t love me.” … *TURN*

You see, sin had come into God’s perfect world. And it would never leave. God’s children would be always running away from him and hiding in the dark. Their hearts would break now, and never work properly again. God couldn’t let his children live forever, not in such pain, not without him. There was only one way to protect them.

“You will have to leave the garden now,” God told his children, his eyes filling with tears. “This is no longer your true home, it’s not the place for you anymore.” *TURN*

But before they left the garden, God made clothes for his children, to cover them. He gently clothed them and then he sent them away on a long, long journey—out of the garden, out of their home.

Well, in another story, it would all be over, and that would have been the end. *TURN*

But not in this Story. God loved his children too much to let the story end there. Even though he knew he would suffer, God had a plan—a magnificent dream. One day, he would get his children back. One day, he would make the world their perfect home again. And one day, he would wipe away every tear from their eyes.

You see, no matter what, in spite of everything, God would love his children—with a Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love. And though they would forget him, and run from him, deep in their hearts, God’s children would miss him always, and long for him—lost children yearning for their home.

And in that moment, God whispered a promise to Adam and Eve: ‘It will not always be so! I will come to rescue you! And when I do, I’m going to do battle against the snake. I’ll get rid of the sin and the dark and the sadness you let in here. I’m coming back for you!’ And he would. One day, God himself would come.”

And this is the Love that Launched Christmas! This is why we celebrate: God came back for us. While I was His enemy. And that’s why Paul flies off the page. And so he writes, “all this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ.” The work is over! The barriers are removed! In Christ, God has removed every barrier that separates us from Himself.

“All this is from God” because God is the agent of our reconciliation! What we were powerless to do, what we were unwilling to do, He set out to accomplish Himself on our behalf, because His reconciling love makes a way where there is no way. Though we were unable to be with God because of sin, He pursued a way to gather us back “to Himself.”

Because He is not only the agent of reconciliation, but He is the object of reconciliation! He didn’t pursue us just to set us free from sin; He pursued us to bring us back home! Because His love is not just a cold duty; His love is a love that delights in us, and it pursues us personally.

And even though it cost Him everything, He purposed that our reconciliation would come “through Christ,” that He Himself would be the means of reconciliation. Because knowing what was to take place, and knowing that we would still struggle, and wander, and stumble, and fail, He loved us to the end, and He embraced us on the cross. This is what it means that God was “not counting people’s sins against them.” It doesn’t mean that He was ignoring sin, it means that He was choosing not to charge it to our account. It means that He wasn’t counting it against us. Because His plan was to count it against His Son!

And so God made him who had no sin, who knew no sin, to be sin. He became sin, for us, in our place, on our behalf. On the cross, Jesus didn’t become sin in the sense that He began sinning; rather He represented before God all the sin of the world. All of our sin and guilt and shame was attributed to Him, so that God could take onto Himself His own wrath toward sin. Christ became sin so that we could become the righteousness of God, and be invited to God’s table. And so we sing, “Because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free! For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.” This is deeper than knowledge. It’s deeper than forgiveness. It’s deeper, dare I say it, than redemption. It is forgiveness and rescue and redemption for the purpose of being restored to God. That’s the whole point! And that is a compelling love.

So if you’re in this room, and if you’ve had your doubts about God’s love, you, like me, need once again to hear God’s message of reconciliation. God wants you to hear it! And so He sends people like Paul, and you, and me with a message for the whole world: “I love you! Come back home! There is no need to run any longer.” There is nothing left to separate us.

He did it for ALL of us; but He also did it for EACH of us. All that’s left is for us to receive His love. This is why Paul writes, “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” At first it can sound strange: I thought we were already reconciled to God? I thought you said the work is finished! Why are you imploring me? Why are you pleading with me? Why is God making an appeal to me?

Is He telling them to receive salvation again? Absolutely not! He is telling them to believe the gospel again. He’s telling them to believe it, and to receive it, so that they can be compelled by it.

Because the love that launched Christmas is also the love that can compel us back to God and out to others, if only we will receive it. The invitation is out. The Father’s arms are open wide. And the message needs to be proclaimed the world over. And I wonder: What are you going to do with a gift like this during this Christmas season?

This is my hope for our church: That we, like a bride waiting for her groom, would be so caught up in Christ’s love that we would be “constrained along the path” of receiving and sharing the great love of our Jesus from now until He returns.

But before we can be compelled by His love, we’ve got to live in this rhythm of receiving the love that He died to give. Let’s receive His love anew this morning. Jesus is calling.

Pray.