Reconciliation

Let's open our Bibles at 2 Corinthians 5. We'll be reading from verse 11. Since then, we know what it is to fear the Lord. We try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it's also plain to your conscience.

We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God. If we are in our right mind, it's for you. For Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised.

So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. He has committed this message to us, and He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

How do you explain the gospel to someone? What introductory words do you use to explain this gospel? Or do you just put it out there? Does it really matter how you share the gospel with somebody? Is there a right and a wrong way of doing it?

Before we answer this question, perhaps we should ask another question. What is the gospel? I'm sure you would be able to answer the question. I'll give you a minute to think about it. How would you define the gospel and attach a verse to it from the verses that you have already memorised and that would help you to explain the gospel to someone?

I did not time it, but a minute can be long. Especially if you want to share the gospel and there's nothing to share. That's not what it's about this morning. It's about what should we share once God gives the opportunity to share His word of grace. So what is your definition of the gospel?

I'm not gonna ask you. And what verse did you attach to this gospel that you wanted to convey? How many of you used John 3:16? Yeah. A lot of us most probably would because that's the one we normally know.

You could have also used Romans 3:10-12 to fit in with our approach to our worship service. 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. I'm full of questions this morning.

Before we start to answer these questions, here's another one. This one might sound a bit strange to you. To whom are we supposed to share this gospel? Who must hear it? And I think the answer is on the tip of your tongue.

Surely, the unbelieving, unsaved, and lost part of humanity that needs to hear the gospel. But what about us as believers this morning? Don't we as believers, all believers, also need to hear and take action on the demands of the gospel? What Paul teaches in this part of Scripture should answer most of our questions. And contrary to what we normally think, it's not just the unbelieving people or the nations of the world that should be hearing the gospel.

Should time and again. As we go through this passage, we'll see why. So how do I explain the gospel? The reason for the gospel Paul gives in verses 10 to 13. We didn't read the preceding verses, but in the preceding verses, Paul has already talked about a heavenly reality that waits for the children of God.

Because God has destined us to spend eternity with Him, this life is only a tent dwelling. It will be broken down. What's important is that we should be ready when God decides to come and visit us and to break down our tent body. How do we prepare ourselves for when God comes? Paul gives us an answer.

The way to make sure that you are ready is by living your life for Christ. This hope of spending eternity with God should direct us in the way we live daily. It doesn't matter what you are going through, whether it's day to day living, whether you're going through a time of temptation, difficult times, uncertain times as our brother and his family are going to experience. It's grateful. It's good that God has already sent him to break the ground, but we don't love or enjoy uncertain circumstances.

Doesn't matter. In all and in everything, we should be living for Christ, Paul says. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him, he says in verse 9. What is Paul actually doing? He's prompting us to ask ourselves this question.

This is this morning. How do I live for Christ? How do I please Him? And we know if I please Christ, I please the Father as well or vice versa. Have you come to acknowledge what a wonderful God we serve?

He's not only the one that has predestined us for eternity, but if we read 2 Corinthians, it speaks about Him preparing us for this eternity that's awaiting us. Paul directs our attention to the fact that before an eternal life with God can become a reality, there's one event that will draw everything to a close, and that has to happen first. Each man, woman, and child needs to appear before the judgment throne of Jesus Christ. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. So perhaps this is where I should start off when I'm explaining the gospel to someone.

Beginning with the end of what is surely awaiting him and myself. At the end of your time on earth, there is going to be a judgment. Your question could therefore sound something like this. Did you know that one day when you die, you will be standing before the Lord Jesus in judgment? You could even support your introduction with another verse from the Bible.

The writer of the letter of the Hebrews wrote the following: And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. No, there's no second chance. There is no reincarnation. There is no sleep. There's no rest in peace.

There's no nothingness. The Bible is very clear on this. When man dies, judgment awaits. Mate, you're gonna meet your maker. And depending on how this conversation goes, you could throw in a sidewinder.

Therefore, God has highly exalted Him, Jesus, and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is another reality that the Bible teaches us. Either now or later, you will confess that Jesus is Lord.

Is that the gospel? Is this how I should be sharing the gospel by calling on the judgment that awaits? To tell someone that they are going to die, that there is a coming judgment, and that they will be acknowledging the Lord Jesus as Lord, whether now or later, is not the gospel. In our passage, instead of putting fear into people, Paul does it differently. He talks of his own fear for the Lord in verse 11.

Paul states it clearly that the fear for the Lord should be the driving force behind our sharing of the gospel. So he's got a different take on sharing the gospel than you would normally think or that we started off this morning in verse 11. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it's known also to your conscience. Paul's fear for the Lord doesn't drive him to use scare tactics, but rather he uses persuasive argumentation to attempt to sway the hearers of the word to accepting the gospel.

The pressing reality of appearing before the living Christ, experiencing His wrath, spending time in hell for eternity, it grabs Paul's own heart. Now, he's actually asked the question already. Is your fear for the Lord the driving force behind you sharing the gospel? Most probably not. Because we haven't experienced the Lord Jesus by sight.

We haven't seen Him yet. We know we are going to. We haven't seen Him in a vision like some of the Bible believers have. That brings us to another question. And with the next question, there is no denying.

Are you ready to stand before the Lord Jesus? Have you given it much thought lately? Normally, we start to approach the end of the year, that's the last thing in our mind. We're thinking of new year's resolutions, the positive things. But there's always this nagging reality.

We've already heard it. This tent dwelling is gonna be broken down. Are you ready? We should be ready. That's what the gospel is about.

That's why we should be listening to the Gospel as believers. Jesus, for the first time when I thought about meeting my Lord, the Lord Jesus, I was thinking about running towards Him and throwing my arms around Him. And as I grew in wisdom and thought about it, I came to no other conclusion than what happened to the other Bible believing Christians before me. Daniel, after being left behind by his friends when he experienced the visitation of the Lord Jesus, he was overwhelmed by what he saw. In his own words: and no strength was left in me.

My radiant appearance was fearfully changed, and I retained no strength. Paul was thrown to the ground by the fear when he was visited by the Lord Jesus on his way to Damascus. If you read the last Bible book, the Revelation of John, the same happened when John came to stand before the Son of God. John gives us a first person account. When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. This is the background to the passage we are reading.

It should be the background to understanding what the fear of the Lord is about. He's not our playmate. Though He's the Son of God, He deserves the same recognition and respect as the Father does. The thought that we and every man on earth are to appear before the King of Kings should spur us on to explain to every unbeliever what awaits. Not fear mongering, but bringing the truth of the gospel.

There's another reason why we should turn to Jesus, not out of fear, but what we will read in our passage and what we've been talking about this whole morning. The love of God, the Father, and the Son. As the Lamb of God, He came to save us, not to instil fear in us yet. It will be a different story when He comes back, not as the Lamb of God, but as the Lion of Judah. Our second main point: the gospel is meant to be told to the unbeliever.

In verse 14: For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded that this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And He died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who for their sake died and was raised. Now, we are getting closer to what the gospel is. He was compelled by the fear of the Lord, yet he did not use fear, but instead, what does Paul do? He speaks of love.

The love of Christ controlled the way he shared the gospel, the way he ministered, the way he lived. The Greek word, the verb control that is used in conjunction with the love of Christ, talks actually about being a prisoner, being taken captive. It conveys the thought that someone else is in control. He decides as to how it should happen, where, when, and how. The love which Paul is talking about is the love of Jesus Christ that he had for us when he came to earth to die for us, to save us.

Listen to His own words. Greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends. That's out of John 15:13. Now we are at the heart of the gospel. Yes.

There is a coming judgment. But next to that, we and all of humanity needs to know first that the Lord Jesus came in love. And in the same love for us, He made the conscious decision to lay down His life for us. After hearing what the will of the Father is, so the Father sent Him ahead and said, come and die for them which I have called to eternity. So when He came, He didn't just die for us since He came to reveal this love of the Father and the love that He had and still has for us.

It's the same love of Christ that propels, pushes Paul to share the gospel, and it should be the same love that we should have that propels and forces us to share the gospel. The reason why Jesus had to die, Paul makes known to us in verses 14 and 15. That one has died for all, and therefore all have died. And He died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who, for their sake, died and was raised. I'm going to attach another part of Scripture out of Romans 5.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person. Though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. To really understand the love of Christ apart from it being perfect is that He loved us and came to die for us when we were least deserving of it. Being a sinner means obviously that you sin, but sin we see is a rebellion against the will of God.

That's how we should be thinking about sin. Not just that I'm not doing what God the Father asked me to do, but I'm rebelling against God's will for me in this situation or in this decision. That's how God approached the sin of Adam and Eve. No differently. They were rebelling against Him when they decided to do what He told them not to do.

And we know the result of sin is that without God's intervention, we would live a separated life from God for eternity. At the beginning of human time, we were destined to live with God in paradise. But after Adam and Eve sinned, they and we together with them were banished from the presence of God, and we all died spiritually. Our communion with God ceased. Not only did our relationship with God change, but instead of living eternally, sin caused us to live a set amount of years.

And the older I get, the more this truth becomes an experiencing reality, growing to become old. And as the Scripture says, if you're lucky, 80, 90 years, and then we die of old age if we are blessed to live so long. When we share the gospel, we don't have to give an initial explanation as I did now. It's not what Paul's doing in the Scripture piece. Paul does not go into a long explanation either.

The fact that one person who lived before had to die for the benefit of others is what it's about. When you share the gospel, you should bring the person to realise they need Christ. They need the love and the forgiveness that He has brought. You don't have to bring them to understand within a theological understanding of salvation what it's about. Simple, clear, spoken love.

Yet Paul wants us to know with certainty why it was necessary for Jesus to die. So Jesus had to die so that we could live. Is that the gospel? Did I not miss something? I've left something out.

What is it? I'm gonna read this a fourth time. That those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who for their sake died and was raised. This sentence is very important in your sharing of the gospel. If you left this out, you've only shared half of the gospel.

Not the complete gospel. Why am I saying that? Yes. Jesus did come to die for our sins, to make us righteous before God. Yes.

He was resurrected after the third day. It was a sign for us that He did overcome the sin and the punishment that goes with sin and death. Yes. And in regards to what we've touched upon that, we can appear before the Lord Jesus without fear on the judgment day. But then follows the other half of the gospel that affects our day to day life.

More important, our day to day experience of a personal living relationship with God. Jesus did more than just die for our sins, and through that ensuring that we don't spend eternity in hell. He died so that we can be reconciled with His Father. And this is what should come with the first part of the gospel, the message of reconciliation. From 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. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Paul experienced the fear of the Lord personally, but he's also experienced this transition that he's talking about personally, being changed from one that's persecuting the church to one that is loving and growing the church through the spreading of the gospel.

Yes. Jesus died for you so that you can live, but He died for you so that you can live in a personal relationship with the triune God to know Him and love Him. That's the gospel. Therefore, Paul says we don't have to deal with somebody as we are dealing with him in the flesh, meaning a sinful human being. After the Holy Spirit, after we've shared the gospel, the Holy Spirit comes and He changes that person around.

He makes him a new creation. Somebody different. If unbelievers have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, they need to hear this wonderful news. They too are a new creation. So why do you need to hear the gospel as a believer?

What will he be testing or she be testing the moment they hear they're a new creation? For sure they will be looking at you. Is there truth in the gospel you're bringing me this morning, this evening, or this night? You say that this God loves us, that He's died for our sins, that we won't have to stand in judgment, that I can also be not a sinner, but a changed around new creation, a child of God, a holy child of God that has been justified, that is righteous before God, that will be glorified. But do I see it in you?

Yeah. I did hear it in your words. I did see it when you were working with me at work or when you were my neighbour. In short, the message of the gospel is reconciliation. What I've already talked about is what follows.

That's the fruit of reconciliation. So to come back to our first question, what is the gospel? What's the definition of gospel? It's the message of salvation through reconciliation or just in one word: reconciliation.

That's what the Lord God our Father did through His Son for us. He reconciled us with Him. So what does reconciliation mean? It means there were two parties and they were separated. In between them, there were blockages.

Normally, when we talk about reconciliation, it means that both parties are guilty, evenly perhaps guilty. And both of them have to work to get not with our God. We're the only one that's guilty. We're the one that's brought these blockages between God and between the Father and us. What are the blockages?

Sin and death. The same as what Adam and Eve experienced and what we're experiencing now. So reconciliation means God the Father stepped in through His Son and He took these blockages away. So through that to reconcile us with Him. Paul uses a word, and I don't know whether you've thought about it until this morning.

Perhaps it hit you right between the eyes this morning that you are an ambassador. What does an ambassador mean to us? It means you are a representative. And that catches on to what I was saying earlier. If I share half of the gospel and I don't get past the sin to reconciliation, I can't be the representative like what Paul says they are being made.

We cannot be representatives of the Father since there's only one appointed, and that's the thing we should realise. When Paul says this, he says, are you a representative of the Father or are you a representative of the Son? We can't be the representative of the Father because He is the one. There's only one mediator like Acts 4:12 says. Only one name given through which man can receive salvation.

But what did Christ do when He died for us on the cross? He made us and He's telling Paul this. I'm appointing you as an ambassador, the representative of me on earth. Because through you, I will be telling them about my love and what I've done for you. Normally, when given a responsibility or a task, the one who hands out the task could ask his recipients, are you up to the task?

We don't like to hear that as an employee when your employer asks you, are you up to the task? Because already in that, he's saying, I am second guessing whether you can do it. That's not what Paul is saying when he's speaking to the Christians in Corinthians. Instead of that, Paul is doing something else. He's not asking, but instead he's what?

He's making an appeal. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Perhaps we read this passage wrong. Can it be that a believer must be reconciled with God as an unbeliever? This is the full gospel.

Yet although Jesus Christ died for us, we still do sin. We still need to be reconciled after each sin with our God as the unbeliever. Paul is asking them, appealing to the Christians to make serious to seriously think about it and doing it in their relationship with the Lord. I said early on, it's a question that needs to be asked time and time again, and I'm gonna ask it this morning. At the end of 2013, with everything that we've already talked about, are you truly reconciled with God?

Inward and indeed, that means, yes, there shouldn't be any sin in your life. Because Jesus came to die for us on the cross so that we can be freed of that, of Satan's hold fast on our lives. Remember I said the second part of the gospel is your living personal relationship with God through Jesus. So when we start this new year, 2014, we're actually not ending it off. We're still living in this personal reconciled relationship with God.

So let's conclude. What is the gospel? In one word, it's reconciliation. God the Father has reconciled us with Him through His Son Jesus Christ by sending Him. And He coming willingly because He loves us.

But with the same love, He spurs us on. And perhaps this is the new year's resolution. I've got Maoris living next door to me, and they've given us an appeal. I've spoken to another pastor that's ministering where we want to go as a congregation, up Akumaras way, Little New Zealand. And when he told me he's got a heart, a love for the Maoris, my mind sank.

Because will they do the same with me when I try to share the gospel with them as they've been doing to us last night again? Not as loud as last as the previous nights, but this is what it's about, brothers and sisters. The love of Christ that has to change us, and we can only pray for it. Let the Lord Jesus change our hearts because we fear Him. Lord Jesus, come and change our hearts.

Give us Your love. You didn't distinguish and said, I'm going to die for the Australians or the Maoris or the Zulus. When You came, You said, I'm gonna die for them all. Because amongst them, they are the chosen ones that have been given to me. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that You came with a perfect love.

And as Your word says, You want everyone to repent and turn around. Thank you that we may say in this moment, by grace through faith, faith in You, we are saved. Thank you that You have brought us around, that You have reconciled us, firstly with You and with our Father. Yes, Lord Jesus. 2013 has been a year where in some instances, through some sin, we can only bow our heads in shame.

But also 2013 has been a year where we had countless opportunities of reconciliation, where we could have turned around and reconciled. For sure, Lord, if we didn't do it this year, You'll bring it around again next year. Give us Your love to ask for reconciliation. That's what You ask of us. Whether they accept is up to them, but we've done what You've asked us.

And yet, Lord Jesus, we want to do it. We want to please You. We want to glorify You as we've read. Whilst we live in this world, we shouldn't do sin. So that when other people talk bad about us, they can actually glorify You because they know that our deeds before You are true and good.

Bless this congregation, Lord Jesus, as they prepare to become ambassadors in Upper Kumara, where they'll be ministering to people from different countries, different beliefs, yet they still need to hear about Your message of reconciliation. Give us the same commitment like Paul had and all the other disciples and apostles. We know the time is drawing too close. A judgment is coming. Yet again, saying that, thank you, Father.

That we won't stand in judgment. We live the life You have called us to. Thank you, Father, that You've reconciled us through Your Son. We glorify You as a congregation and as believers, and we do it in the wonderful name of Your Son, our Lord Jesus. Amen.