To reconcile us to God - Tewantin

Anglican Church Noosa Why the Cross? … to be reconciled to God 17 March 2024 Rev’d Chris Johnson We live in a world longing for reconcilia1on. • Jew and Pales1nian • Ukrainian and Russian • America and China Here in Australia, probably the way we most oDen hear the word is to do with Aboriginal Reconcilia1on. I want to say a liFle more about that later. Our world hungers for reconcilia1on. The Bible has a lot to say about people being reconciled with one another. There are a lot of ‘one another’ verses in the Bible. • Through love serve one another. Gala1ans 5:13 • With pa1ence bear one another in love. Ephesians 4:2 • Exhort one another every day. Hebrews 3:13 • If one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. Colossians 3:13 • May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another. 1 Thessalonians 3:12 § Serving one another, § bearing one another, § forgiving each other; these are all signs of reconcilia1on. But the Bible, of course also talks about reconciliaDon with God. § -In Genesis 2 human beings are living in a beau1ful harmonious rela1onship with their Creator. § -In Genesis 3 there is a quarrel. Adam and Eve defy God. The rela1onship is broken. There is enmity between God and human beings. § -It is only in the New Testament that we get the full picture of a restored rela1onship with God. One of the best passages for this is 2 Corinthians 5:17 & 18. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ the new crea2on has come… All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.” It is this passage from 2 Corinthians 5 that I want us to focus our aFen1on on this morning. The first truth to note is that God is the author of reconcilia1on. Verse 18 says, “All this is from God.” that is, § the new crea1on, § the new beginning with God. It is all from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ. 1 If you look at the rest of the passage… In v19 it is God who is reconciling the world to himself v19 it is God who commits to us the message of reconcilia1on. v20 it is God who makes his appeal through us v21 it is God who makes Jesus who had no sin to be sin for us God is the subject of all these sentences. God acts. God ini1ates. William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has a pithy comment on this passage. He says, “All is of God; the only thing of my own which I contribute to my redemp2on, is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.” So the first thing to note is that God is the iniDator of reconciliaDon. And he does that through the sending of Christ into the world, and that involves the whole of his life and teaching, but primarily his death and resurrec1on. The second thing to note is how does he effect this reconcilia1on through Christ? V19 of our passage says that “he stopped coun2ng people’s sins against them”. Now that may sound simple enough. But it is important to ask how? Some people think it is by having what I call a Santa Claus view of God – he tells you to not be naughty but nice; but even when you're naughty, he just wipes the slate clean at Christmas, and gives you the presents anyway. Other people achieve a clean slate by redefining sin. It's no longer defined externally, that is, by what we read in the Bible. It is now all about the inner journey and finding my authen1c self. So it all comes down to individual preference. It is all very fluid. There are no absolutes, so sin becomes a non-category. So people have all sorts of ways of minimising sin or denying sin, and thus convincing themselves as v19 says, that their sins don't count against them. But when God says, ‘he doesn't count people’s sins against them’, on what basis does he say that? I think v21 has the answer. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” When Paul talks about Jesus being ‘made sin for us’ he is talking about the cross. And this is what we've been looking at through this series and especially last week with the topic of subs1tu1onary sacrifice. God had to find a way to take away our sin, • without condoning it, • without turning a blind eye like it didn't really maFer, • without redefining or denying it, • Without all the subtle and not so subtle ways human beings try and ‘not have their sins count against them.’ 2 God did this with the cross. The New Testament 1me and again says Jesus died for our sins. Died on our behalf. And here in 2 Corinthians 5:21 those liFle phrases are filled out, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” John StoL put it so well when he said, “How then could God express simultaneously His holiness in judgement and his love in pardon? Only by providing a divine subs2tute for the sinner, so that the subs2tute would receive the judgement and the sinner the pardon.” Charles Cranfield said, “God, because in his mercy, he willed to forgive sinful people and, being truly merciful, willed to forgive them righteously, that is without in any way condoning their sin, purposed to direct against his very own self in the person of his Son the full weight of that righteous wrath which they deserved.” That liFle word wrath can be confusing in our contemporary context. It some1mes carries with it the idea of flying off the handle or going into a rage. When the Bible talks about ‘God's wrath’ it is simply saying God is inextricably opposed to sin and evil. It doesn't maFer if it is a liFle white lie that just gets you out of a 1ght spot or a big fat one that pockets you a lot of money. God's wrath is on all sin, he is diametrically opposed to anything and everything that is wrong. So when 2 Corinthians 5:21 says he was ‘made sin for us’ it is saying he took the wrath, he took God's just judgement on sin. So this is the way God can forgive us and reconcile with us in a completely righteous way. This is absolutely staggering that God is prepared to do this. This is what changes God's disposi1on towards us from wrath to rela1onship. Christ's work on the cross isn't automa1c for everyone, we do have to repent. v20 is Paul’s call to repentance, “We implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconciled to God.” We have to repent and say yes, I want to accept Christ’s work on the cross, and I want to take up my cross and follow Jesus. To receive reconcilia1on is then to become a minister of reconcilia1on v18. And Paul uses the image here of being an ambassador, v20 “We are therefore Christ's ambassadors.” An ambassador brings messages from their own country to the country in which they are living. We are members of God's Kingdom, that is our true home. We are now living in a foreign land; Australia should be like a foreign land to us, and we are bringing messages from God's Kingdom and our King – Jesus, to this foreign land. The message of reconcilia1on we bring works at a number of levels. There is the ver1cal aspect where we implore individuals to be reconciled with God. There is also the horizontal aspect of being ambassadors of reconcilia1on in our society, loving our neighbour, and serving our community, seeking to be Christ to our world. If we have discovered God’s heart for reconcilia1on in the cross then there will be certain perspec1ves we can bring to the problems of our world which can make a prac1cal difference. And here I want to say a few things about Aboriginal ReconciliaDon, because if there is one area where the cross should make a difference I think it is this one. 3 At the outset though, I want to say Chris1ans can have different opinions on the poli1cal decisions that have to be made to advance Reconcilia1on. For example, in the Referendum last year there were Chris1ans on both sides of the debate. And I heard strong opinions expressed on both sides of the debate in this parish. That's OK. Our Unity in Christ is big enough for that. What I hope we can all agree on is that because of the cross we as Chris1ans have a unique perspec1ve to bring. The cross is about love reaching out across divisions and barriers, and seeking the good of the other. The sacrificial love that God shows us at the cross, is the love that we should show our neighbour. The apostle John said this in 1 John 3:16 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, if anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with ac2ons and in truth.” At the cross Jesus did not just love with words or speech, he loved with ac1on and truth. Reconcilia1on is hard work. The cross shows us that reconcilia1on involves struggle and hard work! Some1mes we can get caught up in a purely roman1c idea of reconcilia1on or a purely self focused understanding of reconcilia1on. -But the cross will always bring us back down to earth. -And issues like Aboriginal reconcilia1on will always bring us back down to earth. Knowing what God did in Christ to pay the price for my sin and reconcile me to God, gives me the mo1va1on to enter into the struggle. This struggle takes me deeper into the heart of God and just how incredible it is what he did on the cross. I exhort you to enter into the struggle, it might be in the area of Aboriginal reconcilia1on, it might be in some other social issue of our 1me, but it is only as we engage with the pain of our world, that God opens up new vistas of all that he says in the Bible about the atonement of the cross. I want to conclude by returning to an illustra1on I used back in the first sermon in this series. It may have been a liFle difficult to fully grasp back then but I hope having worked now through an understanding of the cross as redemp1on, victory over evil, and subs1tu1onary sacrifice, you might be able to appreciate this illustra1on a liFle more. This story shows why we need all of these understandings of the cross, for it to be an example that mo1vates us into engagement with the world. If you and a friend were walking along a jeFy and your friend suddenly says to you, “I want to show you how much I love you!” and then jumps into the ocean and drowns, would you think that was a great act of love or folly? If on the other hand you fell off the jeFy into the ocean and your friend then dived in and saved you but in the process drowned themselves, would you think that was a great act of love or folly? It is only if the cross actually achieves something, only if we were in dire need and the cross actually saves us, that it can be a great act of love. It is only if it wins our redemp1on, is victory over evil, is a subs1tu1onary sacrifice that it is a great act of love. Otherwise it's like jumping off the jeFy for no reason which can hardly be a good example. It can only be the mo1va1ng example to drive us into mission, if the Bible's teaching on atonement is true. 4 So my friends dig deep into all the Bible says about the cross and let it be your mo1va1on for living to love and proclaim Jesus. The writer of the 2nd century Epistle to Diognetus, reflec1ng on the cross, was moved in this way, “Oh sweet exchange! Oh unsearchable opera2on! Benefits surpassing all expecta2on! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous one, that the righteousness of one should jus2fy many transgressors.” My friends, let that be your mo1va1on to live for Jesus and change the world! 5