Sermon Tone Analysis

Please turn in your bibles to the book of 2nd Corinthians chapter 5, starting in verse 16.

2 Corinthians 5:16–21 (ESV): 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.

Please pray with me.

These six verses are so densely packed with ideas that should not be.

This text boldly describes concepts that are impossible.

If you study the character of God more closely, they become even more impossible.

These verses are God’s word, so we know they have to be true.

But how can they be true?

That God reconciles sinners to himself alone strongly defies all earthly logic.

On the face of it, this makes no sense.

Yet this is the chief doctrine by which all other doctrines come from.

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say, “your very life depends on how you think about this.”

The only way these verses make any sort of sense is by having a robust understanding of Christ and the gospel.

And to have a robust understanding of Christ and the Gospel, we need to understand the seriousness of sin.

And the only way to grapple with the seriousness of sin is to look at the attributes of God himself.

It all starts with having a biblically informed view of the character of God.

If our understanding of God is Ill informed, then sin doesn’t seem that bad, Christ doesn’t appear that glorious, and the gospel becomes just “Okay news that we’ve all heard before.”

And if we ever find ourselves in that place as a church, it would be better if we tore this place down and went our separate ways.

This is not a club, you aren’t listening to a TeD Talk, we don’t teach 7 tips and tricks to being a good person.

This is a church of God most high- the stakes couldn’t be any higher, the eternal life or death of people’s souls.

So we had better take care in how we think about and talk about our God.

Everything stems from this understanding.

So we begin with the knowledge that God is Holy, he is perfect, God is a righteous judge.

Mankind is sinful, and deserving of judgment.

But this holy God reconciles sinners to himself.

How can this be?

He’s under no obligation to do this.

No outside force compels him to reconcile sinners to himself.

In fact a holy and perfect judge shouldn’t reconcile the guilty.

Any modern day judge who lets the guilty go free and throws the innocent in jail we would recognize very quickly, that Judge is a horrible judge.

God himself condemns this kind of judge in the strongest terms possible-

Proverbs 17:15 (ESV): He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

If you’re going to be a good judge, your one job is to convict the guilty, and justify the innocent.

And there’s no question on which side of the courtroom, all of mankind stands: the bible tells us that all of mankind is wicked and guilty and deserving of death.

And that sounds so extreme to our ears, the death penalty for sin, even little sins?

And we think that way because we have this awful tendency of assigning thresholds to sin.

We put sin on a spectrum.

We feel the spark of justice when an evil warlord commits genocide but later get overrun and killed We say, their crime far exceeded the threshold required for the extreme punishment of death.

So yeah, justice was done there.

I’m ok with this.

We are also very comfortable in keeping the threshold for sin on the high end for someone else, if their sin hurts us.

But then we slide that threshold over for ourselves when it comes to gossip, not living with your wife in an understanding way.

Complaining.

Creating division in the church.

Or being anxious about the future.

We don’t see those sins as crossing the threshold for deserving death.

But God absolutely does!

All sin, whether adultery or being anxious or idolatry, or stealing a pack of gum, all of it is offensive to God to the utmost extent, and this offense creates for you a debt that can only be paid for by death.

This is the shocking seriousness of sin.

And it’s uncomfortable, it’s extreme, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is the objective reality in which we live.

You can say this doesn’t sound fair or just, but God’s word is the benchmark definition of those terms.

James 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death.

As a side note, while it’s true, that God hates all sin, some sins have greater consequences here in this life, one notable example from

1 Peter 3:7 (ESV): Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

This should cause every husband to walk out of here in fear and trembling.

God takes all sin seriously.

But God takes the sin of you treating your wife poorly so seriously that he will, in some way I don’t understand, interrupt his relationship with you and refuse to hear your prayers until you show honor to your wife.

God’s reaction to sin is severe and absolute and completely just.

Sin is breaking God’s law, he decides what constitutes as sin and what the just punishment should be for that sin.

God’s courtroom is not like traffic court, where going 50 over the speed limit gets a harsher sentence than going 10 over.

We have to rid ourselves of thinking God operates this way.

God’s threshold for sin is zero.

It is either perfect adherence to his law or death.

There exists no sliding threshold for sin.

This is pass/fail, and what’s more, you don’t even get to take the test.

You are born into failure.

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

and in sin did my mother conceive me.

This is the reality for all of humankind.

Born, steeped in sin, incurring a debt so massive we couldn’t ever hope to pay for it, and scheduled to appear before a judge who by his very nature is so just, he cannot and will not pardon the guilty.

So when we read that God reconciles sinners to himself, and our first response is, “oh that’s nice.”

Or, “I already knew that one.”

Then, we’re in trouble.

We’ve lost something.

The fact That God reconciles sinners should produce a deep sense of awe and reverence and cause us to ask in wonder, “how can this be?”.

Because on the face of it, it shouldn’t even be possible.

So costly was the debt of our sin, so great and terrible a price to be paid for it, so hopeless and pitiful and rebellious the people who incurred that debt, first, who could possibly pay it!?

And second, Who would even want to?!

Listen to this exchange between God and his Son, inspired and adapted from the writing of John Flavel a puritan preacher from the 17th century.

He writes:

Here you may suppose the Father to say when driving His bargain with Christ for you.

The Father speaks, “My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls, that have utterly undone themselves and now lay open to my justice.

Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them.”

The son responds, “oh my Father, Such is my love and pity for them, rather than they perish eternally, I will be responsible for what they owe.

Bring in all their debts, that I might see what they owe, bring in all the bills, that there will be no after reckoning with them.

From my own hands shall you require it.

I would rather choose to suffer the wrath that is theirs than they should suffer it.

Upon me, Father, upon me be all their debt.”

The Father responds, “but my son, if you undertake this for them, you must reckon to pay the last cent.

Expect no abatement, hope for no mercy for you will have none.

Son, if I spare them, I will not spare you.”

The Son replies, “Let it be so.