Living for Christ

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:6-17

2 Corinthians 5:6–17 NLT

So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him. For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body. Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere, and I hope you know this, too. Are we commending ourselves to you again? No, we are giving you a reason to be proud of us,* so you can answer those who brag about having a spectacular ministry rather than having a sincere heart. If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit. Either way, Christ’s love controls us.* Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life.* He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

Serving and Love

Paul’s earlier letter to Corinth had a lot about serving Christ and he wrapped up all the ways to serve in love. Without love, serving didn’t work What about love without serving? Can you love Jesus without serving him? Most people would say yes. A lot of folks believe that a relationship with Jesus means coming to him for forgiveness and then going back to whatever life you want to live.

But that's not a long-term relationship. That's a transaction.

Jesus wants to make you part of His family. He wants us to make our home with Him.

That desire of God is the motivation for the Gospel - God bringing us into relationship with Him and bringing us home.

Our response to the gospel is to serve Christ with the same love that He has for us.

Thesis: As we serve Christ, He changes the way we see everything.

Serving Christ

Not home yet - Steven Curtis Chapman

So what do we do in the meantime?

Why does God take so long?

What do we do as God continues to reach closer and closer to us?

We learn to serve Him as a love-filled response to God’s love for us.

God is with us whether we are at home or away.

Our goal is to serve Him wherever we are.

And we seek to do that with excellence because Paul reminds us in our scripture today that we will be judged by what we have done with the time we have been given.

Seeing each other

Service is one of the things we pledge when we join the church. It is a part of growing and maturing in your faith as well.

But it is much more than a badge of honor to wear. I think those of you who have served in the military must have a kind of code of conduct, either written or unwritten, I’m not really sure, about honoring those who serve. I have seen the difference and you have probably seen the difference as well between a person who continually reminds you of the honor they deserve versus the person that stands up for the honor of others.

I think that is why Paul chose to use the metaphor of a human body with the Corinthians to describe the church, rather than a building, the way Peter did in his letters. The western world, much of which was borrowed from the Roman Empire, got this idea in their head that, “if you build it, they will come.” The Roman Catholic church disproved that notion back in the middle ages when they tried to build Peter’s vision of the church as St. Peter’s Basilica. They brought in Michaelangelo and all the best craftsmen to do it and to do it right. And then the whole worldwide church nearly went bankrupt because they couldn’t afford it and it didn’t bring in new people like they hoped. Some people made a choice to show the world how amazing the church could be, but they weren’t showing off the love of Jesus in a way people could or would receive. That fatal move, building that building, would set off a chain of choices that would lead to the Protestant Reformation, one of the biggest splits the church has ever experienced.

What would have happened if they made a different choice, something to help them see and serve other people, rather than getting others to come see and praise them?

I used to serve on a roster of folks, both lay and clergy, that took turns preaching in local nursing homes. Among them were a retired drill sergeant, and a former general. They both served using the gifts that God had given them and honed through their military experience. The drill sergeant was one of our best volunteer organizers in the area. The retired general managed to lead in the community without anyone really knowing it. They knew his name and respected him, but he led by advocating for the honor, dignity, rights, and privileges of others, not himself. With all the earthly authority he had been given, keeping our nation safe, he still saw others and God’s beautiful masterpieces, worthy of his love and service. His old life was gone, he was a new creation as a servant of Jesus, and while we might have been impressed for a while seeing his resume, we developed a deep respect for the person God allowed him to become serving Christ.

You can serve some people like that, but you won’t be able to serve everyone on your own. Eventually you will come across someone you just don’t want to deal with, or who rubs you the wrong way. It is then, as Paul says, that “Christ’s love compells us” to love, whether we want to or not. We then serve simply for Christ, not for what we think we will get in return - even if all we want is a thank you.

Carrying the cross

When Jesus made the ultimate act of sacrifice - to serve and protect us, by dying on the cross, there were a lot of words shouted at Him. Most of them were not kind words at all. I am confident though that two very powerful words were not uttered that day, nor the day after. It would be three days later before Jesus would hear the words “Thank you.”

Some of us get thanked often enough that we notice it when others forget to thank us. We are over-blessed.

Some of you though are not so used to it and don’t notice when others fail to thank you, because it feels normal.

There are still others out there who have never been thanked for their service to God.

Jesus was one of those at the end of his earthly life. He didn’t get his reward until after He died.

That may sound very frustrating at times, but let’s go back for a moment and think about how our service is truly judged. Jesus is our model. We aren’t judged by everyone else. We are judged by God, and He already knows the things we have done. So what is the judgment based on?

The choices we made and the reasons we made them.

CTA

Did we choose to serve?

Did we do it for the money, or the honor, or the glorious bragging rights that Paul referred to among the Corinthian church?

Or did we do it because Jesus asked us to and we loved Him enough to do it?

And is that where it stopped? Or did we learn to see others differently as we served them? Did we learn to see them more as Jesus saw them? Did we learn to love them too?