“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 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……For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” II Corinthians 5:17-19,21
There are 3 things we will cover in this passage that Paul gives here about being reconciled to God. We are basically talking about the Gospel today. God reconciled us to himself through Christ, bear in mind that it is an understanding of the Gospel that Paul is telling us will move us to become “Ambassadors for Christ” and will move us in the “ministry of reconciliation”. Our fallen status, the provision God made for us, and the power of God in our salvation are what will propel us to share the Gospel with all of the people outside these walls that are on their way to Hell.
First we notice that we are in need of being reconciled to God. Dictionary.com defines the word reconcile as to compose or settle (a quarrel, dispute, etc)… to bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent. In other words to understand what Paul is talking about we have to understand that without Christ we are no where near in right standing with God. I am sure you have heard this over and over, but here it is again. “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” -Romans 3:10-11- There is none righteous. “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”-Romans 3:23 There has not been a single person born on this earth that is not tainted with sin, and the bible even lets us know that we were that way from birth. Look at David and what he says in this beautiful Psalm of repentance. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”-Psalm 51:5 He says that he was conceived or born in sin and Solomon also speaks of the evils of a child when he said, “This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.”-Ecclesiastes 9:3 Solomon said that the “hearts of the children of man are full of evil”. We are born and live our lives full of sin. St. Augustine makes a very interesting reference to children being born evil when he says,
“It can hardly be right for a child, even at that age, to cry for everything, including things which would harm him; to work himself into a tantrum against people older than himself and not required to obey him; and try to strike and hurt others who know better than he does, including his own parents, when they do not give in to him and refuse to pander to whims which would only do him harm. This shows that, if babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength.” -St. Augustine-
We are totally and utterly sinful from birth and Paul says in this passage we are ungodly and after looking at what the Bible says that would almost seem to be an understatement. We find it taken a step further in the book of Genesis as God is about to wipe out the earth, we find some very interesting statements concerning just how evil mankind is. “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” –Genesis 6:5 It says that every intent of man’s heart was only evil continually. Everything that he had ever even intended to do was “only evil continually. Did God wiping mankind off the face of the earth change that. Well, after the flood subsided “The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” –Genesis 8:21 There is no change in the amount of evil in a person’s heart. In chapter 6 before the flood, “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” and after the flood, “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth” Every intent of any human beings heart is “only evil continually” and this makes more sense to us if we understand that even our greatest works are considered filthy rags before God. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” –Isaiah 64:6 That word “polluted garment” has a very strong connotation. It is actually terminology for the rag a woman would use during her time of the month. Literally, our righteous deeds are like a dirty feminine product before God. The best things that we have ever done are like a dirty feminine product before God. The problem is not just that we have sinned, it is that without Christ we have done nothing but sinned and God has been transgressed. It is His law we have broken time and time again and God is the one that has been offended and “He has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness” Acts 17:14. “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied His bow;” Psalm 7:11-12, and God’s punishment is beyond what we could ever realize and His judgment should be the terror of every soul without Christ. If a person does not repent, or turn away from their sins, and place their trust/faith in Christ then God’s righteous anger will be poured out on the person whose sins have not been forgiven for eternity.
The thought of this is horrifying considering that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that the judgment” Hebrews 9:27, but God, who is the one who has been transgressed “reconciled us to Himself”. What was the method of being brought into right standing with God? It says it is “through Christ”. God reconciled us through Christ. This is the Gospel message. We broke the law of God and offended Him and though we should be sent to Hell for all eternity, God sent His Son to the cross to take the punishment that was due us. God poured that punishment upon His Son that was meant for us. Who killed Jesus? God did. “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” –Isaiah 53:10- “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” –Acts 2:22-23- God put His Son on the cross and killed Him for the sins of His people. That is the meaning of the cross, it is the means by which we are redeemed. When Paul is explaining the cross to the church in Rome He says, “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood”-Romans 3:25 God placed His Son on the cross and then killed Him to redeem us from our sins. That word propitiation means according to dictionary.com, The act of appeasing the wrath and conciliating the favor of an offended person. God was the offended party and His fierce anger and wrath was poured out on Jesus instead of you and God did all of this to reconcile us to Himself, and then as verse 19 in our text states that God is not counting our trespasses against us, and therefore we are made right with God through this transaction.
Now that we have talked about our being reconciled to God, the last thing we will talk about is the power of God in our salvation. What I am referring to is in verse 17 of our text “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come”-II Corinthians 5:17- Not only has God poured His wrath and fierce anger on His Son so that you could go free, but He now makes us a new creature with the ability to love and follow Him for the rest of our lives. Paul uses the word “if” here, which can be turned around and said in the negative. If you are in Christ you are a new creation, if you have not been changed you are not in Christ. It is really that simple and that plain. The thing you must understand is that this change that happens in your life brings about results. God imparts in us new life, and the ability to follow Him and the Bible is very clear that we will follow Him. There is no such thing as a worldly or carnal Christian, they don’t exist because God has worked a miracle in that person and results will happen because of the magnitude of what has happened. The Christian has been made a new creation. The Christian is made new when they repent and give their entire lives to Christ. No longer do they constantly desire the things of the world rather than God and the things of God. Their lives are no longer characterized by sin and evil, but by righteousness and obedience to God. This is a beautiful transaction. We give our tattered, evil, sinful life to Christ and He brings us in and makes us new, gives us the ability to follow Him; breaking our bondage with sin and giving us eternal life even though we were such an evil wretched people. John Newton understood this completely when he wrote Amazing Grace. Think of those lyrics, “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me” That word wretch in the dictionary means a person of despicable or base character. God sent His only Son down to save people of base and despicable character. He did that to save us from our sins and to also save us from the punishment of sin.
“Christ Jesus did not come in order that you might continue to sin and escape the penalty of it; he did not come to prevent the disease of being mortal, but to take the disease itself away. Many people think that when we preach salvation, we mean salvation from going to hell. We do not mean only that, but we mean a great deal more; we preach salvation from sin; we say that Christ is able to save a man; and we mean by that that he is able to save him from sin and to make him holy; to make him a new man. No person has any right to say, “I am saved,” while he continues in sin as he did before. How can you be saved from sin while you are living in it? A man that is drowning cannot say he is saved from the water while he is sinking in it; a man that is frost-bitten cannot say, with any truth that he is saved from the cold while he is stiffened in the wintry blast.”-C.H. Spurgeon-
God was offended by our lives, we transgressed and angered Him over and over and if we have not given our lives to Him His wrath and anger is still pointed at us, but He offered a way out. He killed His Son on the cross so that this did not have to be our fate and then performed a miracle in our lives so that we would be made new and able to follow Him and if we are truly saved our lives will be marked by good works.
“He will render to each one according to his works; to those who by patience in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury” -Romans 2:6-11-
Dwain Minor