START WITH SCRIPTURE:
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
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OBSERVE:
All letters are written as a kind of dialogue in which the reader only has one half of the conversation. That is especially true in the case of 1 & 2 Corinthians.
In this key passage, we have a snippet of the Apostle Paul’s explanation of his ministry and message to the Corinthians.
He declares to the Corinthians that:
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.
He is describing a change of perspective that can only be explained spiritually. As we recall Paul’s own biography, we can certainly see the source of his dramatic change of perspective. Prior to his conversion, he was legalistic, arrogantly convinced of his own righteousness, and determined to destroy any who disagreed with him. Following his conversion, his basis for hope was grounded in grace, he knew he depended on the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ, and his one goal was to reconcile others to God.
All of this is because he himself had become what he describes so eloquently in this passage — a new creation.
The spiritual change that occurs when someone comes to true faith in Christ is so radical that it can only be described in this way:
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
The renewal of one who is in Christ is so complete, it is like a new world. Not only has their perspective on life changed, everything has become new!
So radical is this change that Paul says elsewhere it is like a death and a resurrection:
Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).
The source of this radical change is from God. This is in stark contrast to Paul’s previous life, when his life and character all depended on his own legalistic accomplishments and achievements.
Paul expands on the source of this newness of life:
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
There is a lot of meaning packed into this long sentence. First, that the new creation derives from God, through the reconciling work of Christ. This has to be unpacked.
Reconciliation means to bring two different sides together, as when we might say we must “reconcile” the numbers in our bank statements — to make the numbers of two columns square with one another.
In this case, the metaphor of reconciliation goes even deeper. The root of the Greek word for reconciliation means to literally “exchange one thing for another.”
This has poignant meaning in this passage. As we will see in verse 21, Jesus himself is the agent of exchange between ourselves and God. Because Jesus offers himself as the agent of reconciliation, he takes our sin upon himself and gives us his own righteousness. Therefore the believer is counted as righteous, and united with God.
A second powerful message embedded in this passage relates to the nature of Jesus. When Paul says that:
in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
he is saying that Jesus is not merely an agent of God, he is God.
Paul makes this clear also in Colossians:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation . . . For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:15,19-20).
Paul tells the Corinthians that a crucial effect of Christ’s ministry of reconciliation is to make Paul and his cohorts ministers of reconciliation as well. Paul uses a term borrowed from statecraft:
So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Paul depicts himself as a representative from the heavenly kingdom, speaking on behalf of God to the “enemies of the state” whom he entreats to become citizens of that same heavenly kingdom.
Finally, he returns to the character of Christ and frames this profoundly paradoxical statement:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
It has been established that Christ is one with God. And here we are reminded of his sinless nature. But the astonishing claim is that the one who is without sin has become sin, so that believers might become righteous.
This returns to the imagery of reconciliation as a trade, an exchange. Christ trades his righteousness to the believer, and the believer trades his/her sin to Christ!
Without saying so, Paul has touched on the deep mystery of the cross. On the cross, Christ becomes sin as the perfect sacrifice. This is a fulfillment of the foreshadowing of the sacrifices that were required in the Old Covenant:
When anyone offers a sacrifice of well-being to the Lord, in fulfillment of a vow or as a freewill offering, from the herd or from the flock, to be acceptable it must be perfect; there shall be no blemish in it (Leviticus 22:21).
The background of Paul’s thought-world is Jewish. The sacrifice that is acceptable to God must be perfect; only God is perfect; therefore, Jesus must be God. And only Jesus is capable of becoming the perfect sacrifice that takes sin on himself and conveys perfect righteousness to those who identify with him by faith.
APPLY:
What a message with which we have been entrusted! That God has entered into this world through Christ and recreates us. This re-creation is grounded in Christ’s work of reconciliation, through this profound mystery — that the sinless one has become sin and given us the greatest exchange possible.
And what a trade! He takes our sins, and gives us his perfect righteousness! This is the real miracle of reconciliation — that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us not because we deserve it, but because of the unbelievable love that he has for us!
It would be as though we gave him filthy toilet paper, and he gave us precious jewels in exchange! There is no greater “bargain” in all the universe!
And more than that, as Paul points out, we as Christians have the opportunity to participate in this ministry as we, like Paul, become ambassadors for Christ and ministers of reconciliation.
What a miraculous bargain! What a momentous message to share!
RESPOND:
One of my earliest sermons more than 30 years ago was based on this passage. I remember finding an excerpt from a story that seemed to my mind to illustrate the new life that comes through faith in Christ.
It was a children’s book by Margery Williams called The Velveteen Rabbit. The scene is set in a children’s nursery, where stuffed animals have consciousness and can talk.
The Velveteen Rabbit is worrying about what for him is an existential question — “What does it mean to be real?” So he asks one of the older creatures in the nursery, the Skin Horse:
“What is REAL?”
The Velveteen Rabbit mistakenly thinks that being REAL means having mechanical parts and things that make a stuffed animal move. The Skin Horse corrects his misunderstanding:
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
When we come to Christ in faith, we are reconciled to God and are made new creatures in Christ. We have become REAL.
Lord, I am flabbergasted by the mysteries of your grace! That you would empty yourself and become one of us, even taking upon yourself my sin, and giving me your righteousness in exchange, so that I might become a new creation! No words can express my gratitude. My prayer is that you might use me as your ambassador so I can share with others what you have done for me. Amen.
PHOTO:
“My Life for Yours” by John is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
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