Reconciliation Handout
| !!! Reconciliation
We will become ambassadors of Christ, charged with the ministry and message of reconciliation, helping people to find a personal relationship with God. |
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:11-21
The purpose of the sermon is to cause people to ask themselves whether they are truly “ambassadors” of Christ or not and to give them some instruction as to what they might do to embrace that role and function productively in it.
The Ministry of Reconciliation – 2 Corinthians 5
11 Since, then, we know [KI1] what it is to fear the Lord, we try [KI2] to persuade men. 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[KI3] . 13 If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of 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 [KI4] point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new [KI5] creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 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 men’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. [1]
1. We cannot represent what we do not know personally.
“Since then we know what it is to fear the Lord we try to persuade men.” (v. 11-15)
q We cannot communicate what we have little or no personal knowledge of. Runner’s pride. I struggle to maintain a good attitude when I am being sold a pair of runners by someone who has never seriously “run”. There is a body of knowledge that comes a person’s way just by living and breathing. I suppose that I could have been pre-taught everything that 22 years of running has brought to me but pre-knowledge is never a precious thing – it is that which is learned through personal experience – good and bad that is a badge of honor.
q When we learn these things and they become uniquely our own the most natural thing in the world is to want to communicate them to other people. Everything in my life that I have been a part of and experienced personal benefit from is something that I love to involve others in. (we try to persuade men)
2. We must learn to see people and the world that we live in through a different set of eyes.
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” (v. 16-17)
[KI5] This is the way that God sees a person. Repeatedly throughout the pages of scripture we are reminded that we are not to judge people because only God knows the thoughts and intents of a man’s heart. Our eyes deceive us by times.
Jesus saw the lost as blind and deaf. He prayed for them as they were crucifying him saying that they did not know what they were doing and they were right. Even the disciples didn’t know. Was it because Jesus failed to make that announcement or that his teaching techniques were ineffective? No just that we can be extremely dull when it comes to perceiving spiritual truths with our human understanding. They are “spiritually discerned” by the child of God and foolishness to the child of the Devil.
How do you see the world in which you live and breathe?
a) It’s a wicked place controlled by the Devil
b) It’s getting worse all the time
c) There’s never been a period of history in which it has been this bad.
d) Society hates the church
e) They are out to get us.
These attitudes render the Christian ineffective in our current generation. I am not suggesting that we should believe that bad things are not taking place but the problem with this way of thinking is that we inwardly believe that there is no hope – no way of turning things around and so we give up. We justify our withdrawal from society in the name of holiness. So we point fingers, lift our noses and turn away from people who know no better now than they did when they were driving the large rough spikes through the hands and feet of the Savior. Do you know what else – it hurts the heart of God more that we turn away then it did when he spilled His blood for this Great Cause.
George MacLeod wrote a poem that helps put a lot of things in perspective, helping to emphasize content rather than cosmetics, Christ rather than self, the gospel going beyond the church walls rather than simply being contained within them.
I simply argue that the cross be raised again
at the center of the market place
as well as on the steeple of the church,
I am recovering the claim that
Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral
between two candles:
But on a cross between two thieves;
on a town garbage heap;
At a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan
that they had to write His title
in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek...
And at the kind of place where cynics talk smut,
and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.
Because that is where He died,
and that is what He died about.
And that is where Christ's men ought to be,
and what church people ought to be about.
-- George MacLeod
See: Matt 9:12-13; Luke 19:10
It’s sad you know when God’s people run away. When they refuse to stand toe to toe with the enemy in the name of Christ to love the fallen and the lost. When we love the lost we fight the fight, we run the race, we are never better than when we are actively engaged in the struggle for the souls of men
[KI5] Judging alone by what we are able to see with our physical senses.
3. We must accept what has been given to us.
“And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (v. 18-19)
q All this is from God . . . Everything that you enjoy about your relationship with God is from Him. If you are in a faith relationship with God today, it is because of what He has done – not because of what we have done. When I bow my head to pray God hears me because of what He has done.
Nothing blinds the mind to the claims of Jesus Christ more effectually than a good, clean-living, upright life based on self-realization. For a thing to be satanic does not mean that it is abominable and immoral. The satanically managed man is moral, upright, proud, and individual; he is absolutely self-governed and has no need of God.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
... Bede Griffiths, The Golden String, pp. 107-8
q He has given us something to do – “the ministry of reconciliation”
This is the work of the ministry and it is “work” by times. It is easier to walk by people and convince yourself that they deserve their plight. When you stop to help people you are in it for the duration. The way back for people is often a complicated process. On one hand it may be simple, on the other hand it requires something from the “helpers” and is not for the faint of heart.
Reconcilation — a change from enmity to friendship. It is mutual, i.e., it is a change wrought in both parties who have been at enmity. In 2 Cor. 5:20 the apostle beseeches the Corinthians to be “reconciled to God”, i.e., to lay aside their enmity. Reconciliation properly applies not to good relations in general but to the doing away of an enmity, the bridging over of a quarrel. It implies that the parties being reconciled were formerly hostile to one another. The Bible tells us bluntly that sinners are ‘enemies’ of God (Rom. 5:10; Col. 1:21; Jas. 4:4). We should not minimize the seriousness of these and similar passages. An enemy is not someone who comes a little short of being a friend. He is in the other camp. He is altogether opposed. The NT pictures God in vigorous opposition to everything that is evil.
Now the way to overcome enmity is to take away the cause of the quarrel. We may apologize for the hasty word, we may pay the money that is due, we may make what reparation or restitution is appropriate. But in every case the way to reconciliation lies through an effective grappling with the root cause of the enmity. Christ died to put away our sin. In this way he dealt with the enmity between man and God. He put it out of the way. He made the way wide open for men to come back to God. It is this which is described by the term ‘reconciliation’.
Reconciliation in some sense was effected outside man before anything happened within man. Paul can speak of Christ ‘through whom we have now received our reconciliation’ (Rom. 5:11). A reconciliation that can be ‘received’ must be proffered (and thus in some sense accomplished) before men received it. In other words, we must think of reconciliation as having effects both God-ward and man-ward.
Bibliography. Arndt; J. Denney, The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, 1917; L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross3, 1965; H.-G. Link, C. Brown, H. Vorländer, NIDNTT 3, pp. 145-176; F. Büchsel, TDNT 1, pp. 254-258. l.m.[2]
q He has given us something to say – “the message of reconciliation” You have a message brother and sister – something worth saying. You won’t be effective in what you say until you have done something to reinforce your words.
4. How to become an “appealing ambassador”.
“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.” (v. 20-21)
n Good people skills are a must. It scares me to think of how our world may be at the mercy of little more than ego run amuck. Good people skills do not come with salvation. The desire to love people and to learn to appreciate and live well with them is something that every Christian should have. If you do not have this basic love for people then the scripture says that you are a liar, that you walk in darkness.]
n While we can never accurately discern a person’s motives – anyone who wants to fool you badly enough can do so – we can learn to look deeper than the external.
n We need to become students of others. To show a genuine interest in the concerns of other people will open their own hearts to our message. Philippians 2. A person who acts in their own interests can never be a good ambassador. We must learn to set our own agenda aside. Jonah was an example of the that – he ran from God and even when God reigned him in he had an agenda of retribution against the world. I think that there are Christian folk who want to see this world get what is coming due them. Although they might never vocalize it they like the idea that God will one day “pay back” for the wrongs that people have done them. People who operate in this spirit can never help others find Christ.
n Be extremely careful not to lay extra-biblical requirements on people. Let the Word say what it says – don’t take away from it and don’t add to it. On a regular basis I find myself at variance with the truth. It is then convictional to me and I try to come in line again. In Genesis, Eve was the first to add to what was said. The Pharisees were famous for that as well. They added their traditions to total over 500 rules – over 300 of them were “do not’s” and the balance were the “do’s”. When we try to make the Bible say something hat it does not clearly say then we destroy our credibility and the credibility of the Word itself. There are people who preach sermons today with a “word from the Lord” which they place on par with scripture itself. I find this to be extremely dangerous ground. There have been times when God has said some very special and precious things to me that I feel to be His personal direction for me and I embrace that and accept it. I would not preach it however as the rule of conduct or direction for everyone. Jesus had authority when he taught. That’s because the people knew that they were hearing something that was representative of God’s heart not the rules and regulations of men. Power is always a poor substitute for authority. There are people who hold positions of power and no authority. There are others who carry authority without position. If the church today is without the power of position that is preferable. If the church has no authority, it is not because of the state of our society, it is because of the state of the church. We can change that as we begin to become the ambassadors that God would have us to be.
n Refuse to adopt adversarial stances or postures with people. There are a lot of people who are prepared for a fight.
As far as I know we are never urged to become enemies of people who do not know Christ. We are never to enter into an adversarial posture with them. They may stand against us but we are never to stand against them.
Every interaction that we have with people serves or hinders Kingdom interests.
While a man rests on his own merits for acceptance with God, it is of little consequence whether he be a pagan idolator, or a proud, ignorant Pharisee. I know not which of the two is most distant from the kingdom of God.
James Milner (D. 1721)
----
[1]The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.
[2]The New Bible Dictionary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) 1962.
Page: 1
[KI1] We cannot communicate what we have little or no personal knowledge of. Runner’s pride. I struggle to maintain a good attitude when I am being sold a pair of runners by someone who has never seriously “run”. There is a body of knowledge that comes a person’s way just by living and breathing. I suppose that I could have been pre-taught everything that 22 years of running has brought to me but pre-knowledge is never a precious thing – it is that which is learned through personal experience – good and bad that is a badge of honor.
[KI2] When we learn these things and they become uniquely our own the most natural thing in the world is to want to communicate them to other people. Everything in my life that I have been a part of and experienced personal benefit from is something that I love to involve others in. (we try to persuade men)
[KI3] This is the way that God sees a person. Repeatedly throughout the pages of scripture we are reminded that we are not to judge people because only God knows the thoughts and intents of a man’s heart. Our eyes deceive us by times.
[KI4] Judging alone by what we are able to see with our physical senses.
[KI5] The immediate difference in a person’s life is real and professed but the reality of it is confirmed and becomes increasingly more evident with the passing of time.