Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

As we continue our sermon series, “Seeking Transformation,” throughout Lent, we come across a word that is familiar to us but may be more than anticipated - “reconciliation.”

We hear that word a lot when it comes to relationships.

Couples who are trying to be reconciled after going through difficulties in a marriage.

Children who are reconciled to parents because of problems and issues that they have faced.

Friends who have had a falling out are reconciled after years of bitterness to a place of forgiveness.

All of these examples of reconciliation display a piece or part of the puzzle for us as Paul unravels this mysterious word.

For Paul, to be reconciled means that we are placed in right relationship with God.

And through that right relationship, we receive the benefits of being in relationship with God.

We are no longer estranged and separated.

Now, we come together so that we can have peace between us.

At one time, we were separated by sin.

But God has made a way for us to return to him and live in harmony.

Today, we are going to explore what it means for us to be reconciled to God and how that reconciliation transforms us so that we can then share this message with the world.

1.

We are a new creation in Christ.

(vs.

16-17)

One of the foundational understandings of the Christian life is that once we are in Christ we are called to be different than we were before.

In our previous state, before we came to Christ, we were dead in our trespasses.

We were separated from God.

As Wesley puts it in his sermon entitled “The New Birth,” we were “wholly dead to sin” and “void of the image of God.” Outside of Christ, there is nothing that is good in us.

Our very nature is entirely corrupted by sin.

But, when we come to Christ, there is something that has happened to us that changes us.

It changes our thoughts and our desires.

We want to be more and more like Christ and not be like we once were.

Paul says in Ephesians 4:20-24

Peter talks about being born again in 1 Peter 1:3

Jesus says the same thing when he has his conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:3

Paul wants us to understand here in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 that we are a new creation.

In Christ we are something different than we were before.

The Holy Spirit is changing our inner spirit and our very nature.

Like I commented in last week’s sermon, once we are in Christ, we have the ability not to sin as we are transformed and sanctified into the likeness of Christ.

John Wesley called this initial work of the Holy Spirit regeneration.

Regeneration is the actual change that takes place in the believer once he or she is justified by God’s grace.

And although there is sin that still remains even when we are regenerated and made into a new creation, sin no longer reigns or holds power over us.

Paul tells us elsewhere in Colossians 3:12-14

Wesley says that the image of God that is in us is the moral image.

That is, when Adam and Eve were first created by God they enjoyed a moral nature that is like God’s - one that is solely based on love.

This love was the sole principle of all that humanity did.

All the actions of humanity we found to be in this unchanging characteristic of God.

However, humanity was created with a free will to choose to remain in this love or choose to disobey God and fall into death.

Unfortunately for us all, disobedience and death were chosen because Adam and Eve decided that they wanted to be like God.

The disobedience of Adam and Eve created an “enmity” between God and humanity.

That means that there was a divide that was created because sin entered into the heart of humans.

The only way that this enmity could be breached is if humanity was re-created somehow.

And in Christ, God has made that way.

This leads us to our second point:

2. God has done the work of reconciliation.

(vs.

18-19, 21)

Because of this divide, we are enemies of God outside of Christ.

Paul says in Romans 5:10

This concept of being enemies of God is lost on many people.

We want to say that everyone is a child of God.

God loves us all no matter what.

It is true that God loves us.

But he loves us even while we are his enemies and not his children.

In Christ, we are adopted into the family.

Prior to that, even though God has great and deep love for all of humanity and all of creation, we live as though we are his enemies.

Our sinful condition places us in a state where we are at war with God.

God is the Ruler and Creator of all things.

He alone is worthy of our worship and praise.

However, when we are outside of Christ, all of the love that God created us with in his image is not turned toward him but toward ourselves.

This worship of the self and the pride that comes with it is the essence of our nature without Christ.

Because our sin nature is self obsessed, God has to do something dramatically audacious in order to remedy that situation.

The foundation of which was laid throughout the history of Israel and the law.

Israel itself and the law were but shadows or pretext for what was to come in Christ when the God who created all things entered into time and space and walked among us in order to save us from the self-consuming sin that has stained and tainted the image of God in each of us.

We are all image bearers of God, but we are not his children unless we are in Christ.

Paul tells us that this dramatic and audacious action that God did to bring the reconciliation necessary between himself and his enemies was the cross.

We repeat the words of Paul in our liturgy for the Lord’s Supper in Romans 5:6-8

Ironically, it is the God that breathed into us the breath of life that died in our place that we might be reconciled to him and bring us into relationship with him.

This is the central message of the gospel.

God did that which we could not do for ourselves in order to recreate us through the power of the Holy Spirit and breath new life into us by his power so that we might be regenerated, justified, and sanctified.

This work of God allowed us to enter into that state again where the love of self and the central aspect of our sinful nature would no longer have dominion and power over us so that even now we might walk with him everyday in holiness and righteousness so that one day when Christ returns we might enter into that eternal rest with him in the new creation of all the universe where it will return to how it was in the very beginning:

And it will fulfill what the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 43:18-19

The reconciliation that is given to us through Christ is but a foretaste of what will be.

This gift of reconciliation that has been offered to all who call upon his name is the greatest gift of all.

This leads us to our final point:

3. We are called to accept this gift and share it with others.

(vs.

20)

The gift of reconciliation and salvation is a free gift that has been given without price to us.

This gift cost God greatly as Christ gave himself up for us on our behalf.

He took upon himself the death that we deserved so that we might live.

This is the message that has been imparted to us through the apostles over the past 2,000 years.

Paul gives us the imperative that we are to be reconciled.

This means that as followers of Christ, our nature is no longer one of sin but one of reconciliation and a new creation.

The sin nature no longer has power over us.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are something new in Christ.

The old self has been taken off, and the new self has been put on.

Because we are now in this new reality, it is our call to be ambassadors for Christ in the world.

In our own context, an ambassador is one that represents the interests of his or her home country to a foreign country.

An ambassador is going to take policy matters to a foreign government in order to establish trade, military alignments, and diplomatic work to keep peace among nations.

The ambassador is the primary representative of the nation in a foreign land.

Paul compares the work that he has done and our work to that of an ambassador.

We are Christ’s representatives in the world.

As new creations who have been reconciled and born again, we share the message of reconciliation to a foreign land.

We are “resident aliens” so to speak.

We are in a foreign land.

The world around us is a post-Christian society that is often hostile to the message of the gospel.

But like Paul and the Corinthians, we must be bold in our proclamation of the gospel.

God is making his appeal to the world through us.

This is why we must represent him well.