Make Disciples | 2 Corinthians 5:17-21

Have y’all ever received a gift that was a great gift, but you just weren’t thankful for it?

I did this recently with a gift that my dad gave me. So I moved up here to Athens from Dublin a little over a year ago. And when I left Dublin, my dad let me have a guitar of his. And it wasn’t your typical guitar. It wasn’t an electric or an acoustic guitar, it’s called an acoustasonic guitar.

So basically an acoustasonic guitar is an acoustic and an electric guitar put together. And its pretty cool how they did that, but the only problem is, it can sound like an acoustic guitar and it can sound like an electric guitar, but it can’t do either one very well.

Have y’all ever heard the saying, “I’m a jack of all trades, but an Ace of none?” Well that was basically this guitar.

And my dad let me have this guitar when I first moved up to Athens. And I used it a few times on Sunday mornings as an electric guitar and I even tried to use it as an acoustic, but it didn’t sound super great doing either one. So I didn’t really use it that often. And it just sat in my closet. And after a while I decided to just give it back.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Well you didn’t plan on using it so you were justified in giving it back to him.” And I agree with you to an extent. He actually wound up selling it and got a good amount of money for it and I’d rather him have that money than the guitar just sit in my closet for years.

But here’s what made it so difficult to do. Like I said earlier, this wasn’t a typical guitar. And while it didn’t mimic an electric or an acoustic guitar super well, it still sounded somewhat like both of them and this was a huge accomplishment for the designers of the guitar. And because of this, it was an EXPENSIVE guitar.

I just want to hear y’all guess how expensive this guitar was. If I were to buy it new right now it would cost me $3,300. And I gave it back.

I didn’t understand the incredible gift that my dad had given me. And so I wasn’t grateful for it. In all honesty I could’ve (and probably should’ve) tried to use it more often. Maybe I could’ve figured out how to really optimize it and make it sound better than it did. But I just gave this $3300 gift back.

Now what if I told you that you and I do this every single day.

I don’t know if you knew this, but Jesus gave us probably the best gift we could ever receive. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, He has given us the opportunity to have eternal life. To be in heaven with Him for all eternity.

And He has also given us the Holy Spirit as we accept Him as our Savior. He lives in us, guiding us toward Him.

We are given these incredible gifts that we can’t even comprehend the magnitude of, and while He has already given us the gift, He gives us one task before we enjoy the fullness of His gift. Let me read it for you.

Matthew 28:18–20 NLT

18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Now y’all may remember that we’ve been following these three verses for a few weeks now. It’s called The Great Commission. A couple weeks ago we talked about the authority of Jesus in verse 18, last week we talked about having a heart to go, and this week we’re talking about the two words that are really the center of this commission that Jesus gives us. Make disciples.

[Scripture Reading]

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 NLT

17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

We are gonna spend some time using this passage to build an understanding of how disciples are made.

And verse 17 really is gonna provide the blanket statement for the next four verses.

2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT

17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

So if you belong to Christ, you are a new person. Old life gone. New life starts at the moment of salvation.

And we see this play out in two ways in our passage tonight. We’re gonna keep tonight super simple because its easy to overcomplicate things when you talk about making disciples. But tonight we’re just gonna have two points that describe how disciples are made.

1. Jesus reconciles us.

The word “reconcile” is a very important word to understand for our passage tonight. This word basically means a restoring of a relationship.

So for example if I go up to Zay and smack him across the face, I just hurt my friendship with Zay. I just drove a wedge between us. But let’s say I go back up to Zay and apologize and let’s pretend he’s feeling gracious tonight and he accepts my apology. I am now reconciled to him. That wedge is gone and our friendship is restored.

When Adam and Eve sinned against God at the very beginning, it was a serious offense. It drove a wedge between God and humanity. God couldn’t exist where sin exists because He is completely righteous, so we could no longer have a close relationship with the God that once walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. Our relationship with God was broken.

But when Jesus came and became the perfect sacrifice for our sin through living a perfect life and dying in the place of our sins, we became reconciled to God. Our relationship with Him was restored because our sin was paid for.

And there are three sentences in our passage tonight that describe how Jesus has reconciled us to Himself.

2 Corinthians 5:18 (NLT)

18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ…

He writes that this reconciliation with God is a gift. That has huge a huge impact on humanity. This means that there’s nothing you can do to earn your reconciliation with God. There’s nothing you can do to restore your relationship with God because He did it for you on the cross.

That’s great news! There’s not a rulebook on how to get into heaven. There’s just Jesus! Through Jesus our relationship with God has been restored! And all of this is a gift that we could never earn, yet He freely gives us.

We also see this at the beginning of verse 19.

2 Corinthians 5:19 (NLT)

19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them…

Christ, that’s Jesus if you haven’t picked up on that yet, was God. And through His death, people’s sins are no longer counted against them.

We talked a second ago about how you can’t earn your salvation because it is freely given as a gift, but did you also know that there’s nothing you can do to separate yourself from your relationship with God?

When you mess up by lying to someone, when you give in to watching pornography, when you hold hate for someone in your heart, God doesn’t hold it against you. Jesus paid for it on the cross.

There’s nothing you can do to make God love you more through your good works, and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you less through your sin. And that’s not because God doesn’t love you or that He has this reckless love that sweeps your sins under the rug. He already has love for you that you can’t even comprehend that wants what is best for you, and that’s Him.

Let’s read verse 21:

2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT

21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

I love the way the NASB translation says this. It says that, “He made Him who knew no sin TO BE sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” We call this the great exchange. Jesus became our sin, we become His righteousness. And we see that play out in both the forgiveness of our sins and the transformation of our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

Philippians 1:6 NLT

6 And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

This salvation that Jesus gives us is carried through to completion by God in our hearts; making us more like Jesus every day.

This gift is incredible. God has given us salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus and He continues to draw us to Himself through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

It is so important for us to remember how great this gift is. This is so much better than a $3000 guitar, yet just as I forgot how great that gift was, we forget every day how great the gift God has given us is.

2. Jesus makes us reconcilers.

Y’all like that word? I looked it up and it is actually a word so don’t come at me.

In diving into point 1, I had to jump around a bit in our passage to show y’all how Jesus has reconciled us to Himself. And that’s because it’s all over this passage. And the scripture that describes our task of reconciling others to God is also all over this passage. And there’s a reason for that.

Both of these points go hand in hand. Jesus reconciling you to Himself means you now reconcile others to Him. I mean just look at how these two points are intertwined in this passage.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 NLT

17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

There’s a reason I said verse 17 was the blanket statement for our passage tonight. It talks about how the old life is gone and a new life has begun. The wedge between you and God is gone, you now are reconciled to Him. Your old way of living for yourself is gone, you now are a reconciler. Your purpose now is to reconcile others to God.

And the reason why I started with point 1 is because our task to reconcile others to God flows from our reconciliation to Him. When we realize this incredible gift we have been given and give our lives to Christ, this motivates us to tell others about it!

I told y’all last week about how I told everyone about Korean BBQ because of how cool it was, we now tell others about God because of how great He is and how great this gift He has given to us is!

So our mission is not required for salvation, it flows from salvation.

And Paul even goes so far as to say we’re Christ’s ambassadors. Do y’all know what an ambassador is?

Most of the time this word is used for ambassadors of foreign nations. And these ambassadors when they visit other countries literally represent their country.

So let’s say I’m an ambassador for the United States and I live in Japan. I can negotiate as a representative of the United States with government officials in Japan. I can sign treaties, enact foreign policy, all the fun stuff.

We now are Christ’s ambassadors. And honestly when I think about what I just said, it sounds terrifying! You speak on behalf of God. I mean Paul literally says that in verse 20, “We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”

We speak for God when we talk to others. And yes I do think that should make you think at least a little bit about the words that come out of your mouth, but I also don’t want this terrify you.

Remember, God is the one that saves. He is the one that has provided the way of salvation through Jesus, and yes He does use you to save others, but He even gives you the Holy Spirit to equip you to do this. So He does make disciples through and through. He provided the way through Jesus and the means through the Holy Spirit.

So when you approach someone to tell them about Christ, or invite them to church, or even just show them some love by doing something nice for them, know that that’s God working through you.

And He won’t fail. He may not save that person on the spot, but if they choose to reject God then that was His will. But we are tasked with this ministry of reconciliation.

I want to reign this in and close us out tonight going back to the story I told in the beginning. Remember how I was ungrateful with the gift my dad gave me and I gave the guitar back? Well it turns out that it would be pretty helpful for me to have an electric guitar; especially considering that part of my job is to manage some electric guitar equipment owned by the church.

So I went back to my dad last week, but this time I didn’t want to let him down or make him feel used so I asked if I could buy one of his electric guitars instead of asking him to lend me one.

And his response stunned me. He told me that he’s not gonna charge me for one of his electric guitars. He said, “I’m gonna lend you this electric guitar that I have because I don’t want to get rid of it. But I want you to use it for free.” And he even went on to tell me that he’d probably just give it to me one day.

Let me tell you how my earthly father, my dad, just pictured the gospel to me and how my heavenly Father, God, loves me. My dad gave me a great gift freely and I was ungrateful and gave it back. When I went back to him to try and earn that gift by paying him for it, he still offered to give it freely.

Matthew 7:11 NLT

11 So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.

You have been given the incredible gift of salvation. Completely free. Your broken relationship with God is restored and you are reconciled to Him! And He now gives you the ministry of reconciliation. He now sends you so that He can accomplish His mission through you.

That’s what making disciples is. It’s being reconciled to Jesus and now reconciling others to Jesus. It’s bringing people back to God after their relationship was severed in the garden by Adam and Eve. This is our Great Commission.

Y’all bow your heads for a minute. You might have realized tonight that you are not reconciled to God. Maybe you haven’t had a relationship with Him and you want to be reconciled tonight. Jesus, who is God, became a man to die for your sins and rose from the grave on the third day because He wants to be reconciled to you. He loves you and wants a relationship with you. I encourage you, if that’s you tonight, please come talk to me or Kelliann or any other leader.

For the rest of us, being reconciled to God means having the ministry of reconciliation. You have all been tasked with this ministry from God. Don’t run away from it. Don’t be ungrateful with this incredible gift you’ve been given. Give it to others.

You now have the heart of God living in you. The things that God wants are now your wants. And He wants everyone to be saved.