New Creation and Reconciliation
Who’d like a new body? I’d say put your hands up but I wouldn’t want you to pull a muscle in your eagerness. Well today we follow up on what we heard last week, from Howard, of the reality of our hope of eternal life, of the fact that Jesus’ resurrection assures us of our own resurrection and, what’s more, that the presence of his Holy Spirit within us assures us that we’re already experiencing that eternal life with God, even if that is limited by our mortal bodies. Today we’re thinking about what that experience of God’s presence with us might mean for us in our present circumstances.
Paul begins this section reminding us that we remain always confident, not of our own strength or ability, but of God’s promise. One thing about Paul is that he understands what it’s like to struggle with life as a Christian. You’ll remember, if you were here 2 weeks ago, how he used that metaphor of having a great treasure in jars of clay. The jars of clay, of course, are us; our weak bodies and our less than perfect willpower.
How many of us feel like we’re doing a great job as Christians in the world? My guess is not many. And it’s not that life as a Christian is hard – in Australia at least. I mean, who of us has had to overcome the struggles that Paul describes in the next chapter: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger, etc. I mean for me hunger is having lunch an hour later than normal! No, one of the challenges that we have here in in Australia is that life as a Christian can actually be pretty easy, in most cases at least; - as long as we’re willing to ignore the unfair criticism Christians often receive in the media. But then we look around and realise that we’re not really having much impact on our world; in fact our influence in the west is about as low as it’s ever been; and perhaps that’s what might lead us to lose heart, or perhaps to long for Christ’s return as Paul clearly does.
So what are we going to do about it? What does Paul suggest here? He says whatever circumstance we find ourselves in there’s one imperative that’ll motivate us. Can you see it there? He says we make it our aim to please Christ. It’s what you do when you love someone isn’t it? “Happy wife, Happy life” has a certain ring to it but it’s not actually the motivation we need in a strong marriage. We seek to please our spouse, if we have one, simply because we love them and want to give them whatever they need. We do the same for our children or our parents, our friends.
So what does pleasing Christ entail? What does he suggest?
He first reminds us that we’ll all appear before the judgement seat of Christ to answer for what we’ve done in the body. So he isn’t talking about attaining some level of spiritual enlightenment through meditation and spiritual disciplines as some people might suggest. Rather he’s talking about the things we do with our bodies; the places we go; the words we say; the efforts we make to change the world for the better.
Remember the parable that Jesus told of the Sheep and the Goats, where those who were commended by Jesus were those who provided comfort to the downtrodden, a glass of water to someone who was thirsty, who welcomed in the stranger, visited those who were in prison; ordinary acts that present Jesus to the world.
But it isn’t just those simple acts of kindness, of service, that that he’s talking about. He has something else in mind. He says that one of the prime areas of service that will please God is the effort to persuade others. Persuade them of what? To be better people? To be more loving; more generous? To be more like the sheep in Jesus’ parable? They’re all good things to persuade people to be but that isn’t what he’s thinking about. No, he goes on, after a short bit of explanation of his motives, to say: “14For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.”
If there’s one thing that will please Christ it’s if we can manage to persuade others that Christ came to give his life for their sake; to bring them back to a living relationship with him.
Can you see that this simple statement encapsulates both our message and our motivation. Let me read the full statement: “14For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. 15And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”
New Creation
This isn’t just a statement of theology that we can nod our heads to and move on to something more interesting. It’s the heart of what we believe and who we are. Because Christ died for all, so all of us have died. Because Christ died for me, I’ve also died with him. But I’m not dead now. No, I’ve been raised with him. I now bear his life in my body. My life is now hidden with Christ. I’m now “In Christ”; that phrase that Paul uses so often to incorporate this idea of the new person we’ve become. In fact he creates this little meme, this headline: “In Christ, New Creation”. Our dying with Christ means the death of all that went with that previous life. Our being raised with Christ means we have a whole new perspective on life. From now on, he says, we regard no-one from a human point of view.
Can you see how that might make a difference to your life and to the life of those you come across? How can you possibly be racist if you’re seeing people from God’s point of view? I remember someone saying during the Gulf War that the most important thing you can say about Saddam Hussein is that he’s made in the image of God. Those people we see in the street who look so different from us are people made in God’s image just like you and me. They may look different or dress differently but they’re people that Jesus died to save. When God look at them he sees his precious sons and daughters and longs for them to return to him like the prodigal son did.
Now this doesn’t mean we ignore how people behave. There’s been some discussion in the Age lately about Evangelical Christians in America and their devotion to Trump following a Tim Costello article expressing his frustration with Christians who continue to support someone who acts in such an ungodly way. In fact if we saw that sort of behaviour from God’s point of view we’d have great difficulty supporting him I would have thought.
But as you think some more about what he’s saying here you realise that there’s even more to it than just how you see others. To look at the world from God’s point of view entails a totally radical reshaping of our worldview. How could I maintain a 21st century preoccupation with my own personal needs over all else if I’m looking through God’s eyes. NIMBYism is totally opposed to the way God operates.
I wonder how Christian politicians can handle the pressures of political life when so often policies are developed with the aim of remaining in power rather than what will be the best for the nation or the state. And I’m talking about politicians of every flavour and colour I should add.
Similarly arguments over the environment are often shaped by people’s particular personal desires and motivations rather than by what’s best for the planet. If you pay attention to the newspapers you’ll probably even see arguments for fighting climate change on the grounds of economic success rather than because it’s necessary to sustain the earth.
One of the reasons I’m a committed egalitarian as a Christian is that this idea of us all being “in Christ” means we mustn’t differentiate among people on any other grounds because when we look at another person, whether they’re male or female what we now see is Christ who fills that person and makes them new by being in them and them in him.
Reconciliation
There’s a second arm to Paul’s argument here as he goes on to drop this showstopper: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, -- and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”
We’ll be thinking about reconciliation in a couple of weeks’ time during NAIDOC week. We’ll be thinking about the need for a coming together of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians to build relationships, respect and trust, to repair some of the damage done to indigenous people over the past 230 years. Again, Christians should really be at the forefront of that campaign shouldn’t we? For us, the motive for reconciliation arises out of that greater reconciliation that Jesus has brought about, whereby God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting our trespasses against us. Again when we look at our indigenous brothers and sisters with our new eyes we see people whom God has loved and cared for, for 60,000 years, people for whom Christ died.
And don’t miss the trajectory of that work of reconciliation. It begins with God - while we were still sinners we read in Romans 5. There’s no sense in which the gospel tells us that someone needs to reform their life before they can become a Christian; even if they might need to do something about their life afterwards. But God doesn’t love us because we’ve turned over a new leaf. Nor does his love for us cease when we do the wrong thing. No, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself before any of us responded to his invitation.
But there is an implication in this that we can’t ignore: that is that God is now entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. He calls us to go to those around us and speak as his representatives, sharing his invitation to become one of his friends and followers. So does that mean we should all be doing a course on personal evangelism? Well that might be something that some of us would find helpful but I don’t think it needs to be that difficult. Look at how he puts it. He says: “we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.” Then he adds: “we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God”. There’s a connection there you see. If we’re truly reconciled with Christ it’ll change who we are. Then the way we live, the way we relate, the words we use, the things we do for people will speak for themselves.
Imagine what a difference it would make if everyone who called themselves Christians were always seen to be acting like Christ. People would be coming to us and asking us what makes us different? It’d be like the old Just Right ad – “I’ll have what she’s having!”
But it’s a high bar to set ourselves isn’t it? Can our poor efforts at living like Christ make a difference? Well, again, the text helps us. You see it’s God who makes his appeal through us. Yes, we may need to lift our game, both as individuals and as a church, but it’s God who does the convincing in the end. It’s God’s Holy Spirit working through us who will make the connection with people. We just have to be ready to respond when the opportunity arises to explain how God makes a difference in our lives. You might like to think about that later. How does God make a difference in your life? Is that something that others might be interested in knowing at some stage?
So what have we discovered or rediscovered today?
First, we are not what we were. Remember the headline “In Christ: New Creation”. As such we no longer see things through human eyes. We now have the eyes of Christ which changes our focus entirely. If that’s not the case for you, perhaps you need to think about how you might change the way you see things, to be closer to how God sees them.
Second, as God’s new creation we’re called to be his ambassadors, given the task of passing on God’s message of reconciliation to the rest of the world, with the assurance that God is the one making his appeal through us.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you’ve created us anew, that we’re being renewed daily by your Holy Spirit. Father, change us to be like you. Give us new eyes so we can see the world the way you see it. Help us to show the same grace and generosity towards others that you’ve shown to us. Grant us the reconciling power of the Lord Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Give us the courage to act as your ambassadors so others may come to know you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Questions:
How might being reconciled with God change the way we see things in the world around us?
How does God make a difference in your life and how might that encourage others to want to be his disciples?
