2 Corinthians 5.11-21
A final sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 24 July 2022
Notice
The Poor and their Possessions: Possessions and the Poor in Luke-Acts is now in print and available from Wipf and Stock. I will be getting copies to all the folk who helped with the crowd funding exercise. Otherwise, email me and I can arrange a discount copy. I am not sure yet of the exact cost but not more that AUD 30.00.
Lorraine and I completed our time at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral last Sunday. Dale and Joy Appleby take over for the next month, then Lachlan and Bec Edwards. The people we left behind are on our hearts.
On Monday we will set out in a hired campervan to visit relations and friends in the east, and attend the Australasian GAFCON in Canberra. So no more sermons for a while. The plan is to devote the remainder of the year to advancing a writing project: The Mind of St Luke.
Holy Cross
I want to speak today on the subject of “Holy Cross”, not just because this is our Diamond Jubilee weekend at Holy Cross Cathedral, but because it is also the most frequently, and heavily disputed doctrine of the Christian Faith. I do not know why the founders of this cathedral chose the name “Holy Cross.” It was controversial at the time. It is not an Anglican name and has some history. When Constantine’s mother visited Jerusalem shortly after the Emperor’s conversion to Christianity they showed her the place where Jesus died and was buried. They were not far from each other. She gave orders for a church to be erected over the double-site. It is still there seventeen hundred years later. When they excavated to lay the foundations they uncovered a pit full of old timber. There was great excitement that they might have found the true cross. Cathedrals in the middle-ages collected relics, and people believed they got grace by visiting them. They say that at one point there were enough fragments of the true cross to make five crosses. An Englishman declared he did not worship the cross, but the Christ who died on the cross. It cost him his life. But that is also our faith. The worship of relics was done away with at the time of the Reformation. We worship the King who died on the cross.
“Christ died for our sins,” is something often said in the New Testament. What it means is that Jesus died in our place, carried our curse, suffered the penalty of death deserved by us in our place, and cancelled out our guilt. This is foolishness to some, blasphemy to others; the attempts to rewrite Christianity to avoid this teaching have been many. One Australian bishop, after he heard it explained by an English evangelist pronounced it blasphemy, and forbade his clergy ever to preach it. The attack comes from within the church as much as without. A recent Christian writer accused those who believe this teaching of representing God as a “cosmic child abuser,” as though Jesus was a child when he shouldered the cross, and was forced into it unwillingly by a cruel Father. Such attempts at producing a revised Christianity would be laughable, if they were not so serious, for they strike at the very heart of the gospel which saves people. If you doubt that substitutionary atonement—that means Jesus died in our place—or “penal substitution”— meaning Jesus died to fulfill the demands of God’s broken law—is part of Christian belief, just think of some of the old hymns.
Rock of ages cleft for me
Let me hide myself in thee.
Let the water and the blood,
From thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure.
Cleanse me from its guilt and power
“The double cure” means Jesus’ death deals once and for all with my guilt, as well as gradually now, and one day fully, with sin’s presence and power.
Today we will look at a passage from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians 5.11—21. I will make four observations.
The context of this passage is a fascinating study. It is part of Paul’s lengthy defense of his ministry, and he gives this explanation of his motivation for preaching.
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded 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. 2 Corinthians 5.14–15
What is your own chief motivation? Is it to be safe? To be comfortable? To be liked by people? To be admired for your knowledge, for your sporting ability, for your success in some venture? To accumulate more and more? We get a peep into Paul’s heart in this statement—the force which drove this preacher to nations, which made him a public enemy of his own nation—which he still is—involving him in beatings and imprisonments and ultimately execution: “The love of Christ controls us.” Christ’s love for him, and his consequent love of Christ .
Paul goes on to explain the heart of that love. How do you know someone loves you? You might think of an incident in your own life: “It was when he stood up for me in public that I knew he loved me.” “The love of Christ controls us,” says Paul, because we are convinced that one died for all …” My student, Hope, went into the surf to rescue a young woman who was in difficulties. They both drowned. How would she have felt if she had been saved, but he died? How would she live the rest of her life? One died for one. But one died for all, says Paul. Imagine we are flying somewhere and there is a fault that can only be reached by going into the unpressured, unheated part of the plane. Someone gosס down and fixes the fault, but does not survive. One dies for all. How do the rest feel? How will they live the rest of their lives?
But how is it that Jesus died for “all”? Some say he died to move us by his example. His loving sacrifice does move us, but this does not go anywhere near what Paul is saying here. He died for all by dying the death we all deserve and offering it to God in our place. Someone very close to me, who just could not accept this, exclaimed, “How is it just that one person should suffer for another person’s crime?” I heard a Muslim leader say the same. And yet that is what the Bible affirms. It was an Archbishop of Canterbury a thousand years ago who said that we must just accept the teaching before we can understand it—accept it because it is God’s word. Then we can set to trying to understand it. Faith comes first, and then seeks an understanding of what it believes.
It sometimes happens that someone dies for another, even that one should die for many. But never would we say, “Therefore all have died.”
This is a clue to the fact that Jesus died as our representative. Because he died in our place and representing us, we can say, “all have died.” I was guilty, I deserved to die, but Jesus took my place as my representative, and now I can say, “I died—in Christ, two thousand years ago, on that cross.” This is much more than just substitution.
But how can it be so? How can one person pay out the crime of another? There is an old story that helps a little: two student friends, one of whom became a lawyer and then a judge, the other a drunk and then a thief met one day as judge and accused, and recognized each other. The thief thought the judge would let him off lightly because they were friends. But the judge gave him as large a fine as was possible. As the thief was taken out of the courtroom, a clerk came over and gave him a cheque for the whole amount signed by the judge. One man bore the penalty deserved by another. This can happen with a fine, but we would never allow someone to go to prison for another’s crime, let alone to death.
The reason it is different with Jesus lies in who he is—or what. He is the Christ—the King appointed by God to rule the human race for ever. Paul says, “The love of Christ controls us.” And later in verse 19:
In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
He does not say Jesus, but emphasizes his office. To us it is just a name, but to Paul is was a title meaning God’s King. It was as our king that Jesus was able to carry out what may be thought of as a gigantic class action: “One died for all, and therefore all have died.” Jesus stood in for us and took all our guilt—the guilt of the human race—upon himself. “God made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Something big happened at the cross.
God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. 2 Corinthians 5.19
In Christ God brought about a great reconciliation, what in old English would be called an “at-one-ment,” an atonement, though this word has changed its meaning and now indicates the means by which an atonement or reconciliation is made. Christ’s death brings God together with his estranged world.
Yet in the days following Jesus’ death and resurrection the world was no less hostile to God than it was before. Even today, two thousand years later, the world is still against God. There are many more unbelievers than there are believers. How can Paul say God has reconciled the world to himself? We have to realize that there are two sides to any reconciliation: we have to approach God, but he must accept our approach. We naturally think that if we give up our rebellion and are ready to reconcile, God will automatically receive us. But that is not so. Our rebellion has created a problem—many problems. There is the grief and anger it has caused in God, the damage it has done to others, and the disturbance it has caused in the universe. God made us in his own image and gave us his world to rule and enjoy. And this was done in the presence of the heavenly powers, some of whom bitterly resented it and set out to prove that humans were not up to it—not worthy. When Adam fell without a struggle, God’s plan, and human beings, became a laughing-stock among the rebel angels. Later, when God chose Israel and made them his friends, and gave them his law to keep them in relationship, they threw it back in his face—flouted his law, and fell into condemnation. The law demands it be carried out. It is not just a matter of us walking back when we are ready. The angelic world is waiting for God to carry out the death sentence he himself has declared against us. The reconciliation that God brought about in Christ is first of all the reconciliation of him to us. He dealt with his own anger. He dealt with the broken law. He removed the sentence of death against us, and dealt with the objections of the angelic world. This is made clear in the second of the Thirty Nine Articles subscribed to by all Anglican ministers:
The Son … took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person … who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.
Many object to this. They say we need to be reconciled to God, not he to us. But the article has it right. At the cross God did something in Christ that dealt with everything that on his side prevented our acceptance. Remember those fearful words that he spoke to Adam: “In the day that you eat of it you will surely die. (Genesis 2) How can we live when we have defied God and disrupted his universe? Or those words spoken to Israel through Moses: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life …” but they chose death. (Deuteronomy 30.19) Or his words against all of us through the prophet Ezekiel: “the soul that sins will die.” (Ezekiel 18.1) All this was dealt with at the cross.
What Jesus did at the cross was cosmic: it affects the human race, the spirit creation, the world, and the universe. It vindicates or justifies God in having made humans in the first place, then restraining his judgement, and allowing the world to go on, forgiving sinners from Adam down to the one I hope and pray will return to him today. And the cross makes possible the resurrection of the dead and the coming of a new world—since death was the penalty God laid on mankind for our rebellion.
That is why Paul can say, “… if anyone is in Christ—new creation!” It is almost a shout.
A new world, a new creation expands from the cross. This is why the New Testament speaks so often of us being “in Christ,” and makes what we are discussing gospel. The gospel is God’s announcement that his kingdom has come; that repentant rebels will receive full amnesty. The awesome thing is to learn that God’s kingdom is ruled by a crucified king. People die for their king, kings do not give their life for their people. When we are in Christ we are under the king, and all that he did and does, he did and does for us. The important thing is to get out of the kingdom of darkness and get into Christ, to be forgiven and become part of the new creation. (Colossians 1.13–14)
That is why Paul beseeches the Corinthians: “Be reconciled to God.”
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ,God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5.20)
This means returning like the prodigal son to his father: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, and am no longer worthy to be called your son …” The father threw his arms around his son: “This one was dead and is alive again; this one was lost and is found.” (Luke 15) May that be said of you.
If we ignore the superstitions that have sometimes clustered around the cross itself, and think of what the New Testament says about the death of Christ, we realize that at Holy Cross we are where we want to be, under the cross, part of God’s new creation, with a future of eternal joy lying before us—because of the cross.
If anyone is in Christ—new creation!
God made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.