1.
Please
pray with me. May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock,
and our Redeemer. Amen. In our lesson from 2 Cor. 5:16-21 the Apostle
Paul is speaking about a divide that spans all of humanity that tears at the
heart and soul of all people. We can see the evidence of this divide
everywhere. It’s said that "The paradox of our time in history is
that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but
narrower viewpoints; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more
conveniences, but less time; we have multiplied our possessions, but reduced
our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often." It’s
a time when there’s much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom. So, when the world has never been more
interconnected (internet and social networking) the sad reality is that we’ve
never been more separated. Overcoming these divisions, that's the
reconciliation that Paul is talking about. Bridging the gap, the one that
divides heart and soul from God, from your relationships with others, a gap
that even divides you and me from ourselves. That's the gap that Paul is
speaking about. That's why Paul says,
"That God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto Himself, not counting man's sins against them." The message is entitled, “The Ministry of Reconciliation,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Paul
begins by saying in 2 Cor. 5:16-17, “16From
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. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a
new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Paul’s declaration collides with the
spirit of our age, a spirit that revels in shallow, fleshly regard. If I’m to
judge by the reading material available in most barber shops and doctors’
offices, People, 17, and Vogue Magazines
are the devotional literature of our day, and they’re read with a reverence
that amounts to a religious longing. How we look has been elevated to a moral
virtue. For example, in the past good girls were defined in terms of
traditional moral categories, today good girls are categorized as to how they
take care of their bodies. Good girls eat one apple a day. Bad girls eat
hamburgers. Good girls work out. Bad girls don’t. The right look is everything. “It’s all about
image.” People evaluate one another
according to their wealth, their position, their connectedness, and their fame
or infamy. It makes no difference how it’s attained, it’s said—whether as a
porn star or as a moral crusader.
3.
As
Christians we must be done with such carnal & worldly distinctions. If we
aren’t, we deny that when Christ died for all, all died in him, and we revive
distinctions that were put away in Christ’s death on the cross for the
forgiveness of our sins. What were some
of the Corinthians saying about Paul which he needed to react too? Maybe some
accused him of favoritism. Some rejected his apostolic authority because of his
former life as a persecutor of Christians. But, here Paul wants to set the
record straight. Yes, he once regarded Jesus from a worldly point of view as a
heretic and a blasphemer, a danger to Israel. But, no more. In the same way, he
now regards all people from a heavenly rather than an earthly perspective. Once they became Christians, they became what
Paul became when he was converted: new people. Something had changed in them,
so that the preacher simply couldn’t think of them in an earthly way—according
to their social status, wealth or poverty, race, nationality, or the like. What
had happened is what Paul speaks of next.
4.
2
Corinthians 5:18-19 says, “18All this is
from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation; 19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the
message of reconciliation.” “All this”—the love of a Christ who died
and rose for all, the miracle of being transformed into a new creation who can
now live for Christ, a new perspective on life that views Christ and people
from the vantage point of the cross and empty tomb—all this, says Paul, “is from God.” Paul describes this work of God with the word
reconciliation. God, says Paul, “reconciled us to himself.” This is the
first of 5 times in verses 18–21 that the word reconcile or reconciliation
is used. The basic meaning of the word
is “to change.” The earliest use of
this word in Greek was for “the business
of moneychangers, exchanging equivalent values.” Then it came to mean a
change in relationship on the part of people, from a hostile relationship to
one of peace and friendship.
5.
Paul
uses this word in that way in 1 Corinthians. Writing on the subject of marriage
and divorce, he says, “A wife must not
separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else
be reconciled to her husband” (7:10, 11). These 2 parties at disagreement
with one another, husband and wife, should be restored to a right relationship
with each other. They should be reconciled.
Paul uses the word reconcile
in a somewhat similar way in the verses before us. In this case the 2 parties
are God and all of humanity. It’s obvious that the problem here was caused by
only one of the two parties. Using this same word in Romans 5:10, Paul writes,
“When we were God’s enemies, we were
reconciled to him.” We were enemies. God was and always has been love. If a
change in relationship were to occur, God would have to take the initiative.
This is exactly what happened: God “reconciled
us to himself.” He took it upon himself to change our status from enemies
to friends.
6.
How
did he do it? “Through Christ,” says
Paul. In the Romans passage just quoted, Paul explains how God reconciled
himself to us through Christ: “We were
reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” God has done something
else besides reconciling us to himself through Christ. He also “gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” “The
ministry of reconciliation” is the way by which God gets the message of
reconciliation out into the world. God has made us missionaries, we would,
perhaps, say today.
7.
2 Corinthians 5:20-21 says, “20Therefore, we
are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on
behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21For our sake he made him to be sin
who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Here the Apostle Paul connects the
doctrine of individual reconciliation with both universal reconciliation and
the Office of the Holy Ministry, the Office of the Pastor in the Christian
Church. Through those who preach and teach the Word, God makes his appeal to
those whom he has reconciled to himself: “Be
reconciled to God.” God and the preacher are of one mind in this. The
Office of the Pastor is the link between the universal and the individual.
Jesus accomplished the universal, and through the preaching of pastors God
brings about more believers. Since this is the case, the ministry truly ought
to be held in great honor by all Christians. Many in Corinth weren’t doing so,
and many today follow their lead. Pastors are God’s tools to bring about, out
of universal reconciliation, the personal reconciliation of the sinner to God.
8.
The
force of Paul’s argument and the example of his pastoral heart for his people
has given me much to reflect upon as to what my heart must be for my call here
as your pastor and has brought to mind the example of Charles Simeon. Simeon was the man who almost single-handedly
brought the evangelical resurgence to the Church of England. Fellow of King’s
College Cambridge, he’d secured the pulpit of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, where he
preached for over 50 years. For the first 10 years of his ministry, his unhappy
parishioners chained their pews closed, so that all listeners had to sit in the
aisles! But Simeon persevered. His twenty-one volumes of sermons—Horae Homilaticae (Hours of Homilies)—set the standard for preaching in the following
generations.
9.
I
say all of this because Simeon was a passionate preacher of the Word with a
heart for his people. When Simeon died, one of his obituaries carried this
remembrance of calling his hearers to faith:
“And after having urged all his
hearers to accept the proffered mercy, he reminded them that there were those
present to whom he had preached Christ for more than thirty years, but they
continued indifferent to the Saviour’s love; and pursuing this train of
expostulation for some time, he at length became quite overpowered by his
feeling, and he sank down in the pulpit and burst into a flood of tears.”
10.
Pulpit
tears aren’t my normal custom, and I suspect they weren’t Simeon’s either. But,
they revealed the right emotion considering the tragedy of receiving the grace
of God in vain. At times in the moments
after an infant baptism when I’ve held the baby in my arms and have led the
parents and baptismal sponsors in solemn vows to raise this child in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord,”
I reflect on the sad events that have followed similar occasions in the past. Sometimes
the parents and sponsors neglected to raise the child up in the knowledge and
faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
What a tragedy! At other times,
the parents loved the child and prayed for him or her. No parents are perfect,
but they did raise that little soul in a godly home. The child grew up in the
church through awkward junior high years and then high school and went off to
university and a career, but at present wants nothing to do with Christ’s
church. The grace of God (the prayers, the preaching, the love of the Body of
Christ) has been until now in vain. And some appear as if they will continue through
life without ever truly responding to the Word and Sacraments. Such a waste.
Such sorrow for a soul that’s running away from God and refusing His grace and
reconciliation in Christ. I pray that the grace of God won’t be in vain. So I appeal to you dear friends in this
ministry of reconciliation on behalf of Christ, don’t receive the grace of God
in vain. Look! Now is the day of salvation. Amen.
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