The Cross Shaped Life
The Cross Shaped Life • Sermon • Submitted
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· 14 views“When I am weak, then I am strong,” says Paul the apostle (2 Cor. 12:10). This is the high point of 2 Corinthians, Paul’s final letter to the church at Corinth. It is also the pervasive theme of the letter. God turns upside-down our intuitive expectations of how the world works.
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We want life to be better!! When we say that we often mean, I want life to be comfortable. Easier. Richer. Sexier.
Our Sickness is that we follow the promises of better quicker.
Our Sickness is that we follow the promises of better quicker.
We want work to be better or be more successful
Tony Robins
We want to be healthier
Dr. Oz
We want relationships to be more fulfilling
Dr. Drew, Dr. Laura
Look better
Sexually
I want my spiritual life to go better…
We Will Follow The Promises of Better Quicker.
We Will Follow The Promises of Better Quicker.
As humans, since Adam and Eve in the Garden, we have fallen prey to the snake oil sales men…
It can be better now!
Try my new product.
This is what my celebrity clients do…
We all want our lives to be better, love to be better, heath to be better, that’s why we fall prey to snake oil sale’s people and never experience the transformation we really need.
Well, that’s the story of us and that is the story of people in first century Corinth. They lived in a culture of:
find your own truth…
we have a spirituality for you....
the more you have the happier you will be...
this sex practice will finally fulfill you...
Thats the Culture Paul waked into in Corinth (Acts 18)
He saw the false promises being sold and his heart broke.
He buckled down for 18 months and shared the love of Jesus by starting a community of life transformation.
As a physician cleans and bandages a wound, Paul addressed the contamination of the Corinthians’ foul hearts and applies the healing balm of the gospel.
After almost 2 years of gospel formation and leadership training Paul senses it’s time to replicate this ministry in another town.
But after he leaves, chaos breaks out. The Community of Transformation falls prey to empty promises and false teaching. So Paul write a letter of correction, (1 Corinthians)
2 Corinthians allows the us to see how Paul applies the gospel in the moment.
He is using the real-life situation of his audience in order to apply the truths of the gospel in real time.
Paul’s message: embrace the nature of the cross paradox.
Paul loves the Corinthians and wants them to see the power and glory of a gospel that humbles the powerful while strengthening the weak.
As you encounter God’s Word, you can trust that God the Holy Spirit is operating in the moment to transform your heart and to reorganize your life around the promises of God which find their “Yes” in Jesus
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.
You likely, already know 2 Corinthians… Let’s do fly over.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
COMMUNION
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
This letter confronts each of us with the logic of the gospel, a logic that defies our natural inbred intuitions about the way to be happy. In our weakness, we discover the surprising power of God.
Paul is saying to a people he loves.
The transformation you are looking for is found in the cross shaped life.
The transformation you are looking for is found in the cross shaped life.
For when I am weak I am strong… that’s when the power of Christ rests on me…
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
“When I am weak, then I am strong,” says Paul the apostle (2 Cor. 12:10). This is the high point of 2 Corinthians… It is also the pervasive theme of the letter. God turns upside-down our intuitive expectations of how the world works.
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?
AreThey should imitate Jesus by walking in this new “cruciform” way of life, loving and self-sacrificially serving others, just as Paul lowered himself to love and help the Corinthians.
The irony of it all is that Paul’s low status, which the Corinthians were so ashamed of, was proof that he authentically represented the crucified and exalted Messiah. If they were to reconcile truly, the Corinthians would have to embrace the upside-down nature of the cross and see Paul’s ministry as a reflection of that glorious paradox.
Second Corinthians provides evidence that the gospel works.
By the grace of God, over time, the gospel is worked into our hearts so that we will recognize the deep transformation of the gospel in every dimension of life.
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.