2 Corinthians 5:14-21, "The Kingdom Perspective on People"
The Kingdom of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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When you see these people, who do you see?
What controls the way we see other people? What are some labels the world puts on people?
If you could see people the way God sees them, what would you see in them?
Jesus changes everything. He recreates your life. He doesn’t take away the parts of you that God made good, like your personality, your abilities, your curiosity, your creativity. He remakes it all in the image of God. Your life dominated by self-love dies, and a new life ruled by the love of Christ begins.
Matthew 16:24–25 (ESV)
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Lose your life for Jesus’ sake and you will find a brand new life. It will be filled with love. Paul is testifying to this new reality.
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;
Love is the law of the kingdom of Christ. His love was demonstrated in His death for us. But that death was a condemnation of all our sin, the wages of sin is death, and all have sinned. We were all dead in our trespasses and sins.
and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
Jesus’ death was a condemnation of sin, especially the sin of self-love. Self love that uses others and labels them in convenient categories for self. Your self-love corrupts everything. It warps every relationship you have: with God, with others, with yourself, with the rest of creation. Your perspective on others is warped around a distorted image in which you are much bigger than you should be and others are much smaller than they should be. Your self-love has to die and you need to be remade.
Christ has died for your sake, that you might no longer live for yourself. But those who unite themselves to Jesus in His death, are also united with Him in His life. And sinful self-love will be recreated.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
What does it mean to regard Christ according the the flesh? For the Jews it meant looking for a Messiah who would raise an army, overthrow the Romans, and establish the throne of David and establish peace on earth.
Today, it means to see Jesus as a good teacher who told people to be kind, but they killed Him for it. It means to see Him as a failed messianic figure from the first century. Just another fool the Roman Empire crucified for being too zealous.
But we who know Him know different. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. So He chose the path of humiliation. If you are looking for a king like the other rulers of the earth, Jesus is not going to fit the mold. We need a new model. Jesus is the king who gives His power away. He is the king who dies for His people before He takes up His throne.
And our view of Jesus affects how we view other people. If we can see Jesus for who He is, the one who dies and lives for all of us, we will also see one another in the right proportion.
“Long lay the world, in sin and error pining, til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” On a human level, we see each other as useful or useless, attractive or not attractive, smart or stupid, funny or boring, creative or analytical, black, white, brown, or whatever. We label people according to our pride and our brokenness. Because none of us can quite wrap our minds around the fact that every human being, no matter what label we use, is so valued and beautiful and loved by God that He would die to make a new creation of their life.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
What is possible for a human in a new creation? Living in wisdom, purpose, meaning, unbroken happiness, shalom
What is the old that has passed away? Not our bodies, they stay the same. Self-idolatry, slavery to desires of the flesh, pride
What is the new that has come? The Christ-life (1 Corinthians 1:30 “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,”)
This takes us back to the beginning. If in creation, the kingdom of God was full in us, and was broken by our sin, Jesus restores the kingdom of God in us. New creation means we can live fully in the will of God. We can live fruitful, flourishing lives.
Our lives look the same on the outside. We don’t suddenly transform into glowing beings of light and outward beauty. Our bodies continue to break down, and we continue to struggle with psychological and emotional problems. But we have been given a new nature. We are no longer controlled by love of self. Now the love of Christ controls us.
Are you there yet? How many of us can say, I am no longer motivated by love of self, but only the love of Christ? But are we growing?
Bernard of Clairveaux wrote about our experience of love with God growing through four degrees. First degree, we love God for self’s sake, because He can do good things for us. It is really just a version of self-love. But after being drawn to God by many needs, we begin to love God for His attributes. The second degree of love is loving God, not for doing good to me, but for being good. This experience of God elevates our love to “praise God for His essential goodness, and not merely because of the benefits He has bestowed, to really love God for God’s sake, and not selfishly.” This is the third degree. “The fourth degree of love is attained for ever when we love God only supremely, when we do not even love ourselves except for God’s sake; so that He Himself is the reward of them that love Him, the everlasting reward of an everlasting love.”
Some people summarize it this way, the highest degree of love is to love one’s self only in God.
When we have union with God, we are consumed with love for God, we love only what God loves. We love His will, His word, His ways, and His creation. Mostly, we love people. The love of Christ controls us.
When the love of Christ controls us, how does that change our love for others?
We love everyone, no matter what label the world has put on them. Everyone is created in His image, and Jesus has died for them to reconcile them to God and make them a new creation.
But most people don’t know. Most people are not living their lives reconciled to God. So, as we have seen so many times now, we who are a new creation in Christ have been made a kingdom of priests. We help everyone to know God through Christ. We have a ministry.
2 Corinthians 5:18–20 (ESV)
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
An ambassador lives in one place, but belongs somewhere else. And his or her whole job is to talk about how great that other country is. I imagine they bring around pictures of their country and show everyone. They talk about the investment opportunities. They share the finest qualities of their rulers and their people. They just don’t stop talking about the country and the ruler they represent.
The ambassador has been sent with a purpose. The ruler of her country wants to make an appeal through the ambassador to the people of the other country. What is the appeal here?
Be reconciled to God. It is the appeal of a king who is ready to take over your country. But here are the terms:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
This is the love of Christ. The only person unstained by sin became sin itself and took its curse on the cross so that we might become as if we had never been stained.
Communion
Questions for Discussion
If you could make this world and all the people in it a new creation, what would it be like?
What are some labels the world puts on people? How does our passage change the way we see people?
What are some things that control us that aren’t Christ? What happens to our lives when the love of Christ controls us?
What are some wrong conceptions of who Jesus is that people have? How does our passage address that? What do we learn about Jesus from our passage?
What do we learn about our lives as believers in Christ from our passage?
What is our identity according to this passage, and how does that impact our relationships with others?
What does verse 19 teach us about God? What is the gospel message of this verse?
What does it look like to be an ambassador for Christ in your neighborhood, workplace, or school?
How will you respond to this passage this week?
Who is someone you can share this passage with this week?