Easter 2025

New Creation

2 Corinthians 5:11–21 NIV

11 Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12 We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13 If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 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. 16 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. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 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. 20 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. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Exposition:

None of this is accomplished by our efforts but by God’s creative power

God reconciles us to himself not because of our distinctives or accomplishments, but because of the unique distinctives of the one who was made sin even though he knew no sin.

We don’t reach up to God, but God reaches out to us.

We do not save ourselves, rather it is God who saves us because He is the only one who can.

New Creation

All the prophets spoke of what God would do in the future - the renewal of all things, all wrongs made right. All of God’s enemies defeated, unification of Israel, the lion and the lamb laying together - The New Creation

Just like an Alfred Hitchcock film that has a surprise ending that then causes us to reinterpret the entire movie in “hindsight”, God surprised the world with the incarnation, crucifixion, and subsequent resurrection.

The resurrection being the very promise of New Creation, it was the bursting in of God’s New Creation project. It was not done all at once but the New bursting forth in the midst of the old.

For the disciples, we become part of this new creation project. We as New Creations are to live in the midst of the old age the way we would live in the new age… Walking in love with eyes on Jesus.

3 Characteristics of our “New Creation”

Freedom

“Christians believe that they have the absolute truth that everyone else has to believe - or else, that attitude endangers everyone’s freedom.”

“The Christians I know don’t seem to have the freedom to think for themselves. Each individual must determine truth for him or herself.”

One woman who said of Christianity, “There’s no room for me in Christianity. That would be my death! I don’t want to live for God. I will not. I want to live for my own sake.”

Social activist Emma Goldman called Christianity, “the leveler of the human race, the breaker of man’s will to dare and to do… an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow.”

True freedom in this sense is to “find your own way.” Or as the Supreme Court has enshrined in law, “the heart of liberty” is “to define one’s own concept of existence, of the meaning of the universe.”

Immanuel Kant, one of the fathers of the Enlightenment, defined an enlightened human being as one who trust in his or her own power of thinking, rather than in authority or tradition.

In other words freedom is the absence of external demands and rules the absence of constraint and confinement.

Yet, as we have in our own life experiences, this concept of freedom is an oversimplification of vast proportions.

The only way this concept of freedom is valid, is if there was no overarching purpose for which we were created.

The biblical sense of freedom is within purpose which causes confinement and constraint to actually be the means of liberation.

For example, a fish who is designed and has purpose, is only free as long as it limits and constrains itself to water. With the right constraints, it is free to enjoy it’s life.

A potential athletic superstar must practice and practice and practice, thus limiting his/her freedom from other things for a richer kind of freedom to accomplish greater things.

True freedom in the Biblical sense is as Tim Keller puts it, “Is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions.”

This weekend, the crucifixion, the resurrection and our subsequent “New Creation” reveals the greatest constraint of all and also the greatest liberation all - LOVE. The love of Christ constrains us.

Galatians 5:13 “13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.”

Love requires a loss of personal freedom in many ways in order for the richer and more liberating life of God in serving others. As Paul said, Living for Him who died and rose again.

You will not enjoy the freedom and fullness of an intimate marriage if you worship your personal autonomy, there must be sacrifice and you will not enjoy the fullness of our Christian faith until you grasp that true freedom is not found in living for yourself but for Christ who died and others we serve.

Free Forgiveness:

Forgiveness is completely and utterly free. No cost to you but at a great cost to Jesus.

The cross wholly and unquestionably dealt with our sins forever. Jesus so thoroughly obliterated our deserved punishment for sins that God will never refer to our sins again. Our judgment day has passed - the cross of Jesus. We are on the other side of judgment.

There is nothing we could ever have done that would have achieved forgiveness.

It was a debt insurmountable and something only God could do.

A way Jesus taught that causes us to look at this is from a parable in Matthew 18:21-35

Debt has been paid.

Punishment = Death

Jesus’ Death = Payment in Full

Result = No Punishment Left

Foolish to live as if I was still in debt.

Dishonoring to live in perpetual guilt and working/striving to get “right” with God.

No amount of service, giving, work, perfection could have ever put you even remotely in a place where God would owe us something or where you would finally deserve his forgiveness.

Forgiveness eliminates any merit based sense of relationship with God.

It removes guilt. Guilt is from what I do.

Guilt before God will pervert your understanding of this great news.

Guilt will blind you from his love and free offer of forgiveness.

Guilt will make you wonder if God still loves you and accepts you.

When I’m feeling distant from God, it’s because I’ve measured myself and have come up short. This leads me to believe that God must be measuring me by this same standard. So I end up with the false conclusion that he’s distant from me. Under this logic, how would I get close again? Obviously, the only option would be to achieve in a way that I hadn’t achieved previously.

The truth of God’s forgiveness is that He is not measuring you by you. It’s not about you, it’s about Jesus. It’s not about what you have done, it is about what Jesus has done.

We don’t deserve what God offers.

It is because of jesus that God is good to us, and it is because of Jesus’ fully satisfying sacrifice that God is good to you all the time.

As guilt deals with “what we have done”, shame deals with “who we are.”

Identity

Old/original creation - you weren’t there, had nothing to do with it, it was all of the Triune God.

We were simply beneficiaries of God’s creative design and love.

And so it is with the New Creation - all God. He did it, we are simply beneficiaries of the work of Christ and the new identity that God has given us as a free gift.

We aren’t the same with an added bit of Holy Spirit or something.

We participate not only in his life but in his death, burial, resurrection.

You as an individual are New. And you are part of a New community, a new family - the church.

If you aren’t apart of this new family, you will be invited to make the decision of faith.

Who you are at the core of your being is a gift. Our identity is received NOT ACHIEVED.

If I was to ask, who are you?

What you do, work/vocation

What you do in a negative sense: I’m a drug addict, I am a terrible person because of what I have done.

This is true in a sense.

But it is shallow.

Make your way out of the shallow waters and move into the depths of the sea of identity.

We are not “Human Doings” We are “Human Beings”

Human nature assumes:

I do in order to be.

Doing precedes being.

But God has divorced who we are from what we have done or do… in truth: I am who I am by birth!

You are more than the job you have

You are more than the amount of money you have

Your are more than your success or failures

You are more than what you’ve accomplished

You are more than your mistakes.

Titles do not define who I am. Success does not affirm my identity nor does failure hurt my identity. I don’t need earthly possessions and earthly fame to provide some kind of security blanket that says I am OK.

I am His creation and I am created in His image - all by his creative power.

Imagine what God could do through the individual who needs no affirmation or validation from anything in this world, but His Word is enough.

The resurrection and new creation reveal that this is not just a ticket to Heaven or a behavioral program, this is a complete overhaul and demolition of the old creation (you), and the new birth of the New Creation that you are. Completely new and different at the core of who you are.

We are cleansed and made so clean that we are not only compatible with God but we become His home, His very dwelling - filled with His Holy Spirit.

We are United with the Lord’s Spirit as one.

His Spirit is speaking within us that we are His children.

Embracing this “New Creation” identity in Christ will lead to different behavior - living the new age way in the midst of the old age (present)

What we need then because we all still struggle with sin...

The issue is not “Who you are”

Software upgrade.

Hardware is good.

All Eyes on Jesus

The New has come, all is of God - We are invited to live a life now in the present with “All Eyes on Jesus”

Enter the rest and beauty of life with God where our focus is fixated on the wonders, the works, the beauty, the glory, the kindness of Jesus. Eyes on what He has done, eyes on what He is doing, eyes on what He will do! For that is the lifestyle in the next age and defining lifestyle for His church in the midst of the old age.

1 John 4:17 “17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.”

Don’t miss the privilege of celebrating, don’t miss the reason for the party. The focus is on Him and will always be!