2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2
Do you ever look around as you come into church? What do you see? Do you see a building or do you see people? Is the building done? Are the people finished? Do you see progress and changes being made or do you see only the things that need to be done?
When we look at the building, we need to be aware that this building is not going to heaven. There will never come a day when we will gather before God’s great throne and see this building occupying a place of glory and prominence in God’s kingdom. God’s plan for this world is not to save concrete, wood and tile and turn them into church buildings so they can go to heaven.
His plan for this world, brothers and sisters, is to redeem for Himself a people, some of whom have lived all their lives in rum shops, while others lived in churches. His plan is to call them His own people, holy and beloved by God. The purposes of God never involve things, except to use those things in the lives of His people to make them more like Him.
God is most concerned that we reflect who He is to this world. He has told us to be holy as He is holy. We are to be like Him in His perfection all of His perfection. We cannot concentrate only on one area or another that we will work on in our lives.
God demands that we be totally set apart for Him. There can be nothing else in front of Him or held in higher honor by us as if He is served by our doing that thing. It does not matter whether that is a building, a program or a Bible Study method.
Holiness is not an option for us if we desire to go to heaven. The Bible is quite clear that without holiness we do not enter heaven because God will not allow imperfections into His presence. This building is not going to heaven, because it cannot be holy in the same way that God is holy. But if we are holy people we will certainly arrive in God’s great eternal kingdom.
Most of us however I think struggle a great deal with this concept. We probably do not wake up and say to ourselves in the mirror in our best Robin, the Boy Wonder voice saying, “Holy of Holies, Batman, I wish I could be set apart, sanctified and pure just like Peter, James, John and Paul in my Bible!”
We look at our own lives and we see just how far we are from being holy. For some of us, the more we live, the longer we live, the more unrighteous we will seem in our own eyes. Yet for others of us, it may be the opposite reaction, other people seem more unrighteous in our eyes. We feel that we have somehow achieved a higher plane by virtue of living longer.
But for most of us I think there is a struggle that occurs in our lives. We know we are to live a certain way. We know God doesn’t like some of the things we do. Yet we do them anyway.
We know that God doesn’t like some of our thoughts. We discover that we think some mighty nasty things if we really examine what happens between our ears. Yet we still continue to think those things all the time. We know full well that the thought is just as bad as the actual act according Jesus.
We also know that God has told us that all we have to do is mess up in one small area and we have messed up the whole thing, as if we pounded a nail into a pane of glass. Life isn’t a paint by the numbers picture where we can screw up and put the wrong color on the wrong number and if its small enough nobody will notice. No, life is more like the cutting of a fine diamond, one small mistake, one tiny chip against the grain and all that’s left is dust.
We know God wants us to live a certain way and yet we never feel we measure up. For a while we may think that we’re doing ok, but the more of life we experience, the more honest we are with ourselves, the greater the gap between what we know we ought to do and what we actually do becomes.
What’s up with that? Why does that happen?
I’m convinced it happens because God has designed us to be perfect as He is perfect and there is a perfect hole in our lives that we cannot fill with any amount of things, activities or thoughts. The more effort we put into being good the more we will realize that we are not good.
For those who follow Christ this all the more apparent because we have been made alive. God has given us a new birth through Jesus Christ and we are now supposed to live for Him with everything we’ve got. Yet the same struggles still occur.
I wish I could say this is something completely foreign to the life of those who follow Christ but I can’t. The greatest example of a man who would follow Christ and experience his life change from being a God hater to being a God lover is Paul, the very man who wrote the passage of the Bible we read a few moments ago.
As he sought to describe his life to a group of people who did not yet know him, all he could say was the good that I want to do, I do not do. The evil that I do not want to do, that I do. When I want to do good, I do evil. What a wretched man I am! Who will save me from this tormented life?
His answer was Jesus Christ. Only through Him can we truly be freed from the bondage to do wrong in God’s eyes. Without Him, our best efforts are as one man called them merely “splendid sins.” They are good works with nothing truly good about them.
If we are to be holy we need Jesus Christ to accomplish something we can’t do on our own. Be perfect.
If we have come to Christ, if we have heard His call to follow Him wherever He may go, the same call that He gave His first twelve disciples in the gospels, and if we have responded to that call, then something has happened to us that is too amazing to ignore, yet almost too difficult to describe.
God has made us holy, because Christ is holy. God accepted us through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross and His subsequent resurrection three days later. He not only accepted us, but He declared us to be complete in Christ. Because Christ is holy, everyone who commits their life to Him and follows Him is also holy in God’s eyes.
That is the key point of this message because it is the point of this passage in 2 Corinthians. Verse 21 of chapter 5 says, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21, ESV)
That’s a pretty remarkable statement! The man Jesus knew no sin. He was sinless! He was holy! He didn’t do anything wrong , not even once in His all too short life. There was never a day that He broke the law of God and so deserved the death that came to Him on the cross. That is simply amazing!
Jesus Himself knew that He was sinless. At one point in His life He was confronted by the religious leaders of His day about His teaching and whether or not is right to follow these men as they taught God’s law. Jesus turns them on their heads and calls them devils, not saints, even though they are devoted to the Law of Moses. He tells them, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.” (John 8:44, TNIV)
This is not a Dale Carnegie course in how to win friends and influence people. You don’t make friends this way. Yet, right after saying this, He asks His enemies an amazing question, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John 8:46, TNIV)
I doubt there is a single person in this sanctuary who would get away with asking that question to those who love us, let alone to our enemies. Yet, Jesus says it straight to His enemies. He says it to those who are looking for the slightest point of weakness in keeping the law of God to prove He was unrighteous.
He also says it in front of those who are closest to Him. He challenges those who live with Him day in and day out. He asks the question in front of the people who see Him as He really is, not just His public persona. Not one of us could stand up under that scrutiny. We may get our act together in public, but at home with the kids or our spouses, forget it. The imperfection is too easily seen. They know we’re not holy.
But neither those who stood against Jesus, nor those who were on His side, ever had any occasion to think that Jesus was anything less than holy.
That perfect life that He lived is now ours because He died in our place. As verse 21 says, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21, ESV)
The one who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. He stood in our place to take on all the punishment that God in His infinite fury at our rebellion could pour out. The perfection of Christ takes away our imperfection in God’s eyes. He is holy where we could only dream about it on our best days.
Think for a moment just how mad, just how absolutely angry, we get at those whom we love the most when they fail to live up to our standards. Now multiply that anger we feel by an infinitely greater God. God who is so far above us that we cannot understand His ways, yet in His absolute infinite perfection pours out His absolute infinite anger on Jesus who didn’t do anything wrong.
In that way God pays the price that we could never hope to pay. The one who was infinitely perfect becomes infinitely sinful, if only for a season in God’s eyes, so that full force of God’s wrath would not fall on us. Instead of wrath, we experience the full force of God’s tender-hearted mercy.
We need to see that the holiness of Jesus, was not just confined to His being without sin. We also need to see that He perfectly conformed to the will of His heavenly Father. Jesus said, “I always do what pleases Him,” (John 8:29, TNIV) meaning His Father.
Could any of us here make that comment with relation to our earthly fathers let alone our Father in heaven? We know the answer don’t we? None of us here could make that statement for either our earthly fathers or our heavenly Father.
Jesus’ holiness was such that He could not walk away from His father’s will. He loved to do it. It pleased God and so it pleased Him. Jesus was fully human in all ways of life, and just like us, He always sought His own pleasure, and the best pleasure He could find was to please God with His life.
Imagine having that kind of outlook on life. We find our greatest pleasure in pleasing God. We find that living the way God wants us to live brings us great joy and pleasure. We WANT to do what God says, not because we are compelled to do but because we want to please Him with our whole lives.
Isn’t there something inside of us that says, even longs to hear “Well done”? “Good job”? “Nice work”? We want praise from our fellow employees, from our friends, from our parents, even from our employers. We live to be praised. What could be greater than to hear God say to us as He said to Jesus, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17, TNIV)
The only way to do that is to live the way Christ lived. Always looking to please His father. That is the kind of holiness that God is calling us to this evening. That is the kind of holiness that Jesus lived every day. He sought to perfectly conform Himself to the will of His heavenly father so that He would hear the words of praise from God, “Well done.”
He becomes our example in holy living. What He did, ought to be what we do. The holiness of Christ is our example, our way of life.
What did He do? What example did He give us? We could look at the miracles, the signs and wonders that great things happened around Him. Too often we focus on those things exclusively; the healings, the forgiveness and mercy He gave to those who were down and out. The kindness He exhibited to children. But all those things and more, believe it or not, were sideshows to His real purpose.
He came to bring reconciliation between us and God. Verses 18 and 19 say, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself…that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” (2 Cor 5:18-19, ESV) We could not do this for ourselves. We were enemies of God from birth. So God sent Jesus to live perfectly according to His will, completely without sin so that we might be reconciled to God.
Paul makes the big point that we, who now follow Christ, have been given a new life and a ministry of reconciliation that matches that new life. We have new life because Christ in His perfection died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead on the third day. When He came out of the tomb, God said we who follow Christ also came up from the dead with Him. All God sees in us now is Christ. We are declared holy by God because Christ our savior is holy.
But we have been given the ministry of reconciliation because that’s what Christ did for us. We are not only declared holy, but now we are to live holy lives. We are to be reconciled to God so that we simply do what He wants us to do.
Paul also says that God had a reason to reconcile us to Himself. Verse 19 says, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Cor 5:19 ESV)
We have been reconciled to God so we might bring reconciliation to others as well. If God has made it possible for us to enter His kingdom, do we think we are so good that we deserve it and others don’t? We must bring the good news that God desires to be reconciled with all of His enemies, to those who have not heard it or do not understand it. We must be messengers of reconciliation with God because we were once His enemies ourselves.
This is why Paul says in verse 20 “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” (2 Cor 5:20, ESV) God did not give us this ministry to have it sit on the shelf collecting dust until we meet just the right person who seems ok and then let them in on the ultimate secret. We must tell everyone we can about this good news, “I was an enemy of God’s and He was going to destroy me, but now He has said I’m His child, would you like to hear about how He changed His mind towards me?”
But, I have to go further, the reconciliation God has called us to in holy living is not just a reconciliation between God and us human beings. It is also a reconciliation between people as well. For those who are in Christ “there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Col 3:11, TNIV)
When Christ brought reconciliation to us, He made it clear that the walls that separate human beings must come down as well. It may be across racial lines, economic lines, across even the hardest lines of all to cross, denominational lines. None of us holds a corner in righteousness. We all have someone with whom we must be reconciled.
If God is putting names in your mind right now, I would not be so quick as to dismiss them. Our ministry of reconciliation to a world that doesn’t know God often begins with how well we are reconciled with those whom we have disagreements or have broken from. If God has laid someone on your heart with whom you need to go patch up your relationship, do not harden your heart and risk losing the reconciliation that God offers to you.
Holiness is more than trusting Christ. Holiness is living the way Christ lives as He gives us new life. Being holy means recognizing that God has declared us holy if we have trusted in Christ for our whole lives, holding nothing back from Him.
Look around again. What do you see? Or rather, who do you see? Do you see people who need to get better? Or do you see people who have been declared holy by God?
The way we look at people can make a huge difference in how we relate to them. We may see needs for growth, but unless we see their needs with God’s eyes first, we will never be the ambassadors for reconciliation that God desires us to be.
It may be this evening that you realized that you have never trusted in Christ for His holy perfect sacrifice on your behalf. You have never thought of Him standing in your place taking the punishment that you so richly deserved at the hands of God. This would be a great day to receive the reconciliation that God is offering.
Verse 6:2 tells us that God says “‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor 6:2, ESV). It cannot say it any plainer than it does: Now is the acceptable time to speak to God, today, right now is the day of salvation.
What will we do with the offer of reconciliation? Reject it or accept it with all of its implications for our lives?
[…] — Will @ 12:30 am Mike of the History, Mystery, Liturgy blog has shared another sermon, The Holiness of Christ, with us. I could well imagine St. Augustine of Hippo nodding in agreement with this: We know God […]