Changed: Part 2, Treating others the way that Jesus does.

Changed: Living a Christ-centered life in a self-centered world.

Part two: Treating others the way that Jesus does.

2 Corinthians 5:16

Story or Illustration (preferably a moment where Jesus shows us what it looks like to regard one another His way.)

God changes you when He saves you.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.”

1. God changes your relationship with Him

you are no longer an enemy, you are no longer condemned, you are no longer destined for an eternity in hell.

you are now a child of God, you are now forgiven and justified, and you are now destined to live for eternity with God.

2. God changes your relationship with sin

Jesus defeated sin by living a perfect life and then dying in your place. If you are in Christ, you are no longer a slave to your sin, you are free from your slavery sin and you have been given the Holy Spirit to lead you and empower you to follow God.

3. God changes your relationship with others.

As 2 Corinthians 5:15 says, “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.”

And living for him, for Jesus, means that we live according to His ways in all aspects of our lives. As Paul says in the next verse, verse 16, “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.”

Two things to add to our study of this passage this week, and then we will pick up next week when we meet again together.

Following Jesus begins with seeing Jesus as who He says He is.

Before he was saved Paul saw Jesus as a heretic and those who followed Him as heretics. Paul was a supporter of the crucifixion of Jesus, and was striving to persecute and put down the rebellion that was becoming Christianity.

But, Paul was looking at Jesus through the flesh, meaning He was not looking at Jesus through the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit. But, God changed that. And because of his encounter with Jesus and salvation, He looks at Jesus now through the truth- as the promised Messiah who came to save the world.

Paul went from an enemy of Jesus to a servant and follower of Jesus.

And, Paul then gave his life to Jesus and the spreading of the message and truth of Christ so that others would know.

Following Jesus means looking at others through the cross of Christ.

The change in how you view Jesus leads to a change in how you see others. And this isn’t just a decision you make to look at people differently, it is the result of God changing your heart, your affections, your passions. it is directly related to believing the truth about who Jesus is and surrendering your life to God by faith in Jesus. As Paul writes in verse 18, “all this is from God..” and the new creation you have become is the creative and transforming work of God.

In the same way that God took the earth and fashioned Adam, and then breathed life into him, God makes you new and breathes life through the work of the Spirit into you.. the Spirit of God comes to live within you.

As a follower of Christ, you no longer look at people the way the world does.

1 Samuel 16:7 says that “man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.”

You and I don’t have the ability to know anyone’s heart. So, God doesn’t call us to look at people through their heart, because we can’t know it. And that would result in people being kind to those they think have kind hearts and harsh toward those with harsh hearts.

No, we are not to look at each other according to the outside, and we are not to try and discern the inside. We are called to view people through cross and the power of the gospel.

Everyone is equal at the foot of the cross.

Everyone is a sinner

Everyone is need of a Savior

Jesus is the savior

No one is saved by their works

No one is saved because they were better or have more potential than others.

Jesus died for all, so that in Him all might be saved.

The world divides itself up by what it sees on the outside, or what it thinks is on the inside.

Followers of Christ look at everyone through the promise and power of the gospel. We value others the way that Jesus values them, and the cross demonstrates the depth of His love for the world.

Everything changes when you see yourself through the cross and understand God’s love for you.

God changes us when He saves us, and that change means that we see everyone else and treat everyone else the way that God wants them to be treated.

Jesus told us in Matthew 7 and Luke 6 to treat others the way that you would treat yourself.

Jesus told us in John 13 to love others the way that He has loved us.

This week’s message has a simple but challenging action for us to fulfill

Instead of treating others the way everyone else says, we are to treat others the way that Jesus does.

Our challenge is to not treat others through the world’s system and values, but instead to treat others the way that Jesus would if He was in your place.

Paul said it this way in Romans 5:6-8, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

it’s true that it’s rare someone will die for a good person, but Jesus, who can see the heart of a man, died for people that He knew were sinful, so that we could be saved, changed, and live for Him and with Him forever.

When we talk about salvation, we are talking about a transformative work to your soul.

The changes that happen when you are saved are the work of God in Christ. He effectually changes you when He saves you. (See 5:18)

The way you view Jesus changes everything, For instance, it determines the way that you view others.

And, in our new relationship with Him, we are new creations with new meaning, purpose, and a new way of seeing everything and everyone around us.

One of the primary ways that you can see how God changes a person is in the way they are toward others.

The love of God toward us marks the way that Christians are toward others.

2 Corinthians 5:16

“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.”

Living a Christ-centered life-

Worldview

Values

Standards

Responses

Expectations

What does it mean to regard according to the flesh?

This is not just from the sinful desires of the flesh. It is from the perspective and values of the world or that you had before you came to know Christ.

One

What does it mean to regard according to Christ?

Passage: 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:13

[16] 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. [17] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. [18] All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; [19] 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. [20] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. [21] For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[1] Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. [2] For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. [3] We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, [4] but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, [5] beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; [6] by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; [7] by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; [8] through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; [9] as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; [10] as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything. [11] We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. [12] You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. [13] In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.

Notes, Quotes, & Commentary

“Before his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul (then Saul) evaluated other people on the basis of external and worldly standards. Of greatest concern to him were such things as: “What is your nationality? Are you a Jew or a Gentile? Are you educated or ignorant? Are you wealthy or poor? Are you male or female? Are you circumcised? Are you “barbarian, Scythian, slave, [or] free” (Col. 3:11).” - Sam Storms

“For Paul, perhaps the most important distinction that governed his pre-Christian value system was whether one was a Jew or a Gentile. But the blood of the cross has forever obliterated any spiritual significance in that racial difference (Eph. 2:11-22). While one’s ethnicity remains (in that sense I will always be a Gentile and Paul will always be Jew), it has lost any value in determining one’s status with God or place within his kingdom. The only relevant factor is one’s relationship with Christ. Indeed, “if anyone is in Christ,” as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” And one critical element of the “old” that has passed away is the appeal to external, worldly, physical, or ethnic standards for determining what is worthy of our devotion or who is qualified to inherit the promises of God.

I want to be perfectly clear. I am an American citizen. I love my country. I cherish my heritage. I am as patriotic as the next guy (perhaps more so). And if the need should arise, I would happily fight in defense of this land and the freedom that it affords. But I have a deeper connection with and a greater commitment to Christians in Russia and Iraq than I do to non-Christians in America. My primary, foundational, and fundamental allegiance is to the universal body of Christ, the church. I am first and foremost a citizen of heaven (Phil. 3:20). My greatest allegiance is to “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22), and only secondarily to Washington, D.C.” - Sam Storms

Man looks at the outward appearance…

There is a slight dilemma that some of us face… I think it’s a good dilemma, but a dilemma nonetheless. (And it has led some to question and deconstruct) The dilemma is that some of us have never regarded Christ in the flesh the way that Paul has. We may not have believed and been converted, but from the moment of our birth to the day we accepted Christ as Savior, we have only seen Jesus through the lens of the gospel.

Paul on the other hand viewed Christ as an unbeliever, but because he believed that Christ was a heretic and a blasphemer. Paul saw Jesus through the lens of the law- and didn’t believe that he was the Messiah.

So, on one hand this is all of us because until we see Jesus and believe, we don’t see Him by faith. But, for some of us, maybe even many of us, we have never seen Jesus as a heretic or a blasphemer and then changed our minds and believed for salvation. We came to believe the truth that we were being raised in. And that is a good thing… but the dilemma it creates is that we might struggle to see or identity with a passage like this one.

Spiritually we can agree that we didn’t see Jesus the same until we were saved. But, practically we didn’t view Jesus as false and then come to see him as true.

With this in mind, we have to do a little work to think about the fact of how our sight or our views are being influenced by the standards and the world around us.

We have to take what we have always known, and then make sure that the way that we see people is through the lens of our salvation in Christ… and not a carryover of the way we thought about people before.

Following Jesus means that everything we know and believe must be related to Jesus.

Jesus is the divider of world history, and He divides the story of our lives.

As new creations we have been made “in Christ” for a purpose, or as Paul says in Ephesians we have been created for good works that God has prepared before hand.

——————

One big conversation I have see online is the debate over whether or not it is a sin to marry someone of another ethnicity. I, like many people, thought this was already debated and settled. But, in recent months it has resurfaced through the influence of people like……

This is idea of Kinism…. And kinism states… and kinism is wrong… and it’s wrong because…

And, regardless of what the world says, or the standards we have known since birth- they way we regard others has to change and be the same as the way Christ sees them. (Even if it goes against society- that’s actually the point)

Examples…

nazi Germany…

South

But for most of us it isn’t something as major as this… its the every day one on one moments where we judge, and view someone according to the flesh rather than the heart.

And by the heart doesn’t mean we can look down on those who aren’t Christians. Jesus is the example for that!

———————-

To judge others according to worldly standards, or from a sinful point of view, only furthers division and discord rather than fostering reconciliation. Paul does not specify what these standards are, but from the context they must be related to outward appearances (5:12). The primary reason for raising this issue is the Corinthians’ misjudgment of his ministry, which they have assessed according to the worldly paradigms with which they are more familiar. Paul confesses that he (using an authorial “we”) viewed reality and persons from a fleshly perspective which used only human yardsticks to measure others. False, superficial criteria led him to esteem those who appeared to be wise, influential, of noble birth, and strong, and to disdain those who were none of these things. Before he was captured by Christ, such worldly norms warped his judgments as they do all who live under the thralldom of sin and whose veiled, benighted minds screen out God’s truth.

Garland, David E. 1999. 2 Corinthians. Vol. 29. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Paul’s opening salvo in 1 Corinthians, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor 1:26–27), sounds the same theme. The same ones who find the servile shame of Christ’s crucifixion to be folly or a scandal will also be repulsed by Paul’s lowly condition. In comparison to the wise, strong, and honored of this world, Paul looks like a fool who is weak and dishonored. As someone hungry and thirsty, ragged, brutally treated, homeless, cursed, and a laborer who works with his hands, he is deemed “the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world” (1 Cor 4:8–13). Others see only death in Paul. He responds, “Behold we live!” He also insists that those who recognize that we are now living at the end of the ages must change their epistemology accordingly. As one puts it, we now are to know according to the cross. But this yardstick should be expanded to include the resurrection and the Spirit. We know according to the cross, according to resurrection (see 4:14; 5:1–10), and according to the Spirit (3:16–18; 4:13). Understanding the full meaning of the cross and resurrection and fully experiencing the Spirit brings an enlightenment that causes Christians to see things and other persons in new ways.

Consequently, Paul now sees others according to their standing with Christ (see Rom 14:8–12) and concedes that all his previous judgments of others were wrong. God’s verdict on our sin condemns us all and destroys any illusions of superiority or inferiority. Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female are all on the same level before God. All share a kinship with one another because of sin but also share kinship with one another because Christ died for all to redeem all. When we see that we are all sinners dead in our sins and needing reconciliation from God, and when we accept Christ’s shameful death on the cross as our death, then all previous canons we used to appraise others must be scrapped.

Garland, David E. 1999. 2 Corinthians. Vol. 29. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

“The old has gone!” Again, this phrase can be interpreted to refer to the “old order” or to everything that controlled the individual’s pre-Christian existence. Both are true. The old order is passing off the stage (1 Cor 7:31). The individual’s whole being, value system, and behavior are also changed through conversion. We are dead to sin but alive to God in Christ (Rom 6:11). Denney writes of Paul: “The past was dead to him, as dead as Christ on his cross, all its ideas, all its hopes, all its ambitions were dead in Christ, he was another man in another universe.”

“The new has come!” Paul believes that the “new thing” that Isaiah foretold God would do has come to pass in Christ. It is greater than the exodus from Egypt (Exod 14–15) and greater than the deliverance from Babylon (Isa 48:18–19). God has now delivered us from the bondage of sin and led us back from the exile of our estrangement from God to a new reconciled relationship.

Garland, David E. 1999. 2 Corinthians. Vol. 29. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.