08 New Creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:12-21)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the eighth talk in my series on 2 Corinthians. We will be studying 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 12 to 21. Have you ever felt judged because you didn't fit someone's picture of a good Christian? In this episode, we'll learn how Paul responded to that kind of criticism and what it means to be new creatures in Christ. I'm so glad you joined us today. Paul has been repeating three themes through this section. These will be familiar to you if you've been listening to the series. First, Paul is not adequate to produce the results that his ministry has been producing. He is just a man, he's a weak man, he's not wise or powerful, he could never have made up the gospel himself, and he is not capable of producing the results that it is producing. Second, Paul speaks with openness and integrity. He's not a salesman, his goal is not to manipulate anyone into buying the gospel. Instead, he sincerely speaks the truth as if he were standing in the presence of God. And third, he claims the gospel is superior to the old covenant because through his spirit God is transforming his people. Paul makes this claim that his ministry is greater or outshines the ministry of Moses, but he also wants to make clear he's not bragging about himself. His job is to preach the gospel, and because the gospel is incredibly important, his ministry is important, but not because he personally is a big deal, it's because the message is a big deal. We looked at the first part of chapter five in the last podcast, just to set the stage for you. At the end of chapter four, Paul explained why he didn't despair. First, he doesn't lose heart because he knows the reaction to the gospel is not about him, it's about the gospel. He faithfully preaches the gospel message, and some people will accept it, others will reject it, and that's just the way it's going to be. Second, he doesn't lose heart because he knows the outcome of all his sufferings will be eternal life. He knows that God is teaching him through those sufferings. He's learning to focus on the eternal glory that awaits him and not on his temporary trials and tribulations. And he continues that theme in the opening verses of chapter five. He faces constant suffering and the threat of death in his ministry, but he faces the threat of death with courage because he knows that life in this earthly body is not his ultimate goal. It's not even the best life. Here in this world, he's apart from Jesus and he knows it will be better when he can leave his body and go to where he will be with Jesus forever. And he talks about how he fears God more than he fears other men, and he makes it his aim to please God. So that brings us to where we want to pick up in chapter five. I'm going to start with five eleven, which we looked at in the last podcast, but just to set the stage. So let's start with chapter five verses eleven through thirteen. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not committing ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God, if we are in our right mind, it is for you. As we saw last week, Paul conducts himself in the light of his future hope. He knows that his sufferings today are temporary, and he has an eternal life filled with glory ahead of him. Therefore, Paul does not fear men or what they can do to him. He fears God, and when he's trying to decide how to act or how to proclaim the gospel, his only concern is pleasing God. And at the end of 511, he expresses his hope that the Corinthians would look at him the same way. He wishes they would see his sincerity, and that would be obvious to them. He continues then in verse 12, we are not committing ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not what is in the heart. He returns to this language he used in chapter 3 about a letter of recommendation, and he says in verse 12, I'm not trying to convince you of something that you have no reason to be convinced of. I'm not starting from scratch. I have no need to recommend myself to you again like a stranger. You know me. I've been ministering to you for years, and you have every reason to know that I, Paul, am a faithful minister of a powerful gospel. Why am I writing you? I want you Corinthians to understand the spirit and the attitude behind this letter. So he's not recommending himself like a stranger who would give his credentials or a letter of recommendation to introduce himself. The Corinthians know him. He's giving them an opportunity to be proud of him. He's reminding them and clarifying for them how he worked among them and why he did that work. When they stop and think about how Paul acted among them and how he treated them, it should make them proud. They should rejoice and brag about how Paul sacrificed to bring the gospel to them. Now there's a reason he wants them to be proud. He's not saying this out of the blue, like, gee, I'd feel a whole lot better if he were just proud of me. He's saying this because some in Corinth are not proud of him. They criticize him and reject him, and this will become clearer as we go through the letter. Paul reminds them what's true about himself so that they have an answer for those who are criticizing him. Some in Corinth judge him by his outward appearance and not by his motives. They are more concerned with how he proclaims his message than the content of the message, and they find Paul's presentation boring and unimpressive. Paul wants other Corinthians to be able to answer that criticism. They need some way of responding to all the bad things that are being said about Paul so that they can regain their confidence in Paul as an apostle. Now Paul says his critics judge him on the basis of what he calls appearance. Paul doesn't fit their definition of a good speaker. He's not sophisticated or impressive to the elites in their town. They judge him by the external standards the world uses. Later in the letter, he's going to spell that out a bit and say that his personal presence is not impressive and that they find his speech contemptible. I think that's part of what he means here by appearance. He's just not a charismatic and entertaining speaker in their eyes. And in their opinion, other people are better speakers, and they think Paul should strive to be more like them. And Paul urges the Corinthians not to judge on that outward appearance, but by his content and his motives, and he wants the Corinthians to be proud of his sincerity and integrity. Now he says something kind of strange at this point, this is 513, for if we are beside ourselves it is for God, if we are in our right mind, it is for you. Now what does Paul mean by if we are beside ourselves? The Greek word there literally means to stand out from or to stand outside of oneself. So it means to be put out of position, to be displaced, or to be removed from its place. Hence the translation beside ourselves. The New Testament uses this word in ways that are related to the human mind. So it's more metaphorical, meaning to be amazed, to be astonished, or to be so astounded that you almost fail to comprehend what just happened. It can also mean to become insane, to be out of your senses, or to be beside yourself in that sense. Let me give you some examples of how this word is used in the New Testament. This is Matthew 12 23. It says all the crowds were amazed and were saying, This man cannot be the son of David, can he? That word amazed is our same word. There you see this idea of they don't believe what they're seeing. They're so astonished they're like, Well, this can't be the son of David, can it? And then in Mark two twelve, this is after Jesus has healed a paralyzed man and the paralytic gets up and walks, it reads And he got up and immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone, so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying, We have never seen anything like this. Again, that word amazed is the one we're looking at. Then later in Mark, he describes how Jesus' family, his brothers and sisters are reacting to his public ministry. And Mark 3 21, when his own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of him, for they were saying he has lost his senses. That lost his senses is our word. And you can see there it has more the connotation of he's out of his mind. So back in Corinthians, there's a lot of discussion about how Paul is using this word. To sort it out, it seems to me that we need to understand this phrase in light of what Paul just said. Whatever he means, he is furthering his discussion of the fact that some people are judging him by outward appearance and not by his heart, by his content, or his motives. He's saying there are those who judge by appearance, but if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. To me, that context suggests that he's referring to things his critics are saying. There are those who judge by appearance, and they would claim Paul has lost his senses, Paul is beside himself. Obviously you don't need to listen to him, he's crazy. Now I don't want to get into the weeds of the grammar, but there's also a lot of discussion about the verb tense here. The tense in Greek is the aorist, which is often translated as simple past tense, but if you know Greek, you know it's perfectly acceptable to translate the aorist with an English present. And I don't want to go into all those details. I just want you to be aware there's some discussion of how we should translate this phrase because of the tense. And interestingly, we have two verbs in this sentence, and they have different tenses. We are beside ourselves is in the aorist, and we are of sound mind is in the present tense. So it's quite possible that this should be translated if we were beside ourselves, it was for God. If we are now of sound mind, it is for you. Suggesting that Paul did something in the past that could be characterized as crazy or beside himself. Okay, so how are we to understand this phrase? Some argue Paul is talking about having an ecstatic experience like speaking in tongues. They point back to his discussion in 1 Corinthians about speaking in tongues and claim, see, Paul says, if he were speaking in tongues, that's just between him and God. That's his private talk, but when he's teaching for public benefit, he wants his words to be intelligible so he's in his right mind. I'm probably not explaining that interpretation very well because I really can't see how it makes any sense of the context. The immediate context is the way some Corinthians judge him according to externals. Paul is not measuring up to some standard that they have, and to start talking about his past experience with speaking in tongues would be totally out of the blue and not fit the argument. Other people think that Paul is speaking about some criticism of his past preaching. So, judging by externals, at some point in the past, Paul was so passionate as he explained the gospel that they thought he was crazy. Maybe he was so fanatical about the gospel that he appeared to lose his mind. And he answers, if it looked like he was crazy, it's because he was being true to God. If he was speaking clearly and quietly, it was so they would understand him. Something like that. Is Paul talking about some specific event in his past? Well, it's possible. Paul had a lengthy history with this church. Maybe he's referring to something in the painful visit that didn't go well. Perhaps he got so worked up about preaching the gospel they thought he'd gone mad. Maybe they accuse him of being crazy because he keeps going to places to preach the gospel where they beat him up and try to kill him. And they think, well, what kind of man risks his life to preach a sermon? Why would he go preach to a crowd that's likely going to stone him? That's kind of crazy. Well, in the end, I don't think we can definitely say what this phrase points to or what, if any specific event Paul had in mind. In the context, at least it requires it refer to something about the way the people in Corinth judge him by external factors. Paul wants them to know that whatever external thing caused them to call him crazy, Paul's commitment to following God was behind it. Whatever he said or did, he said it because of his desire to be faithful to God. In contrast, Paul is reminding them that when he is teaching them, like now in this letter, he is of sound mind. No matter what external factor they find objectionable, he is speaking from a sound and true mind. So I would summarize verses 11 through 13, something like this. Paul's hope is that when they look at his life and his ministry, they will see the sincerity and depth of his understanding. In the past he may have said or done something that looked crazy or out of control to them, but the one who judges Paul rightly is going to see past that weakness to see the truth of the gospel and the sincerity of the way he proclaims it. All right, let's go on to the next section. It has some difficult phrases. As we walk our way through them, keep in mind what Paul has been talking about. The topic on the table is this idea of judging by appearances. Because I think that's still the topic. People often come to this next section of the book and they look at it in isolation and derive all sorts of theology from it. But I think you have to keep in mind the basic point that Paul is making in the context of chapter five. So let's look at verses fourteen through seventeen. 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. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, for 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. And notice in five sixteen he says, We regard no one according to the flesh. That's exactly what he's been talking about up to this point. And that indicates he has not changed subjects. He's correcting those who would judge by external appearance. They're looking at the flesh, they're looking at the outward things about a person in his natural state, and Paul is correcting that. He's saying there's something about what Christ has done for us that now makes it foolish to judge each other by the flesh. Okay, so let's walk through this. 514. For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. Now again, I think he's talking about himself here. I think he's saying the love of Christ controls me, Paul, whether I'm beside myself or in sound mind, my actions are determined by my understanding of the love of Christ. In other words, his understanding of the love of Christ and its purpose informs the way he lives his life and conducts his ministry. Christ's love led him to die for us in order to bring about a certain result. And if you take a sneak peek at the end of the section, you'll see that Christ died so that we might be new creatures, creatures who cannot be judged merely by looking at outward appearance. Let's bring in verse 15. 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. He's saying, if he died for all, then all died. Whatever benefit comes from his death, that benefit goes to everyone. Now, for my study of scripture, I have formed a very specific picture of what the Bible says about the salvation that comes to us through the death of Christ. And that theology informs how I take this phrase. If you have a different theology about what was accomplished on the cross, then you're not going to buy my interpretation. But so you know where I'm coming from. This is how I understand what the Bible teaches about the salvation of Christ. Because of sin, all of us were alienated from God and under his wrath. We don't deserve forgiveness, we don't deserve mercy. In fact, we are guilty and we deserve condemnation. Justice demands that we pay the price for our guilt, and the price is death. Jesus died to reconcile us to God. He paid the price for our guilt by dying in our place and taking the punishment we deserve so that God could forgive us and we could be reconciled to Him. Now we call that justification. And justification has a two-part result. Right now, those of us who trust in the blood of Christ are forgiven and reconciled to God. And because we are reconciled to Him, God gives us His Spirit to change us from the inside out. Our choices, our values, our goals, our wants, our desires, they all start to show the mark of the Spirit. We start seeking God and wanting to be holy as He is holy because of what the Spirit is doing in our lives. And God is doing this work in His people today to ensure that we belong to Him and we will arrive at eternal life, which is the second benefit that comes from being reconciled to God through Christ. The second benefit is that when the day of judgment comes, we will not be condemned, rather, we will enter into eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus' death brought these two things about by reconciling us to God. And I might remind you that Paul has been talking about that first benefit throughout this letter. When he talks about the new covenant, he talks about the Spirit writing the law in our hearts, and the Spirit is the down payment or the seal of our hope. He's referring to this benefit brought about by Christ's death. So in verses 14 and 15, I'm inclined to see Paul still talking about this first benefit brought about by Jesus. Jesus died to reconcile us to God, so that God would give us his spirit, and the result of having the spirit is that we become people who live for the one who died and rose again for us. When Jesus literally physically died on the cross, we metaphorically died to sin. Sin no longer controls us the way it used to control us, because now we are reconciled to God and God has given us his spirit, and he is writing the law on our hearts and removing the rebellion that is there. Then he immediately says that this change means it is no longer appropriate to assess believers by what we are in the flesh, because if we belong to Christ, we're new creatures. Look at sixteen and seventeen. Therefore, from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh, even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him in this way no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away, behold, new things have come. Now I would Argue Paul's picture here is not just, hey, you ought to live for Christ because he died for you. His death ought to inspire you to have a new and better attitude. You know, it's the logical thing to do to appreciate what he did for you and clean up your life. And there are some who read the text this way, but I think his point is more profound. I think he's saying, because Christ died and reconciled us to God, we are new creatures. Therefore, you can't judge the new creation the same way you judge the old creation. The flesh is not enough to explain who you are anymore. And this is language that he's been using throughout 2 Corinthians. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of the new covenant. The new covenant is the work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of his people. So to recognize a person according to the flesh is to judge them according to their natural external abilities like status, intelligence, importance, appearance, contribution to society or winning personality. All those things that we use to decide if someone is worthy or unworthy. And Paul is suggesting that believers have become more than that, that those external features no longer define believers. The spiritual change happening in believers transcends the importance of any worldly attributes or accomplishments. And Paul is saying, I don't think about people that way anymore. In fact, remembering we here means himself. In fact, I think he's saying, I used to judge Jesus that way. I looked at him the way the world looks at him and judged him accordingly. And well, he was a poor traveling peasant who got himself killed for being a troublemaker. That's who Jesus is in the flesh, and that's how Paul thought about him. But then Paul came to understand the truth and he can see past the worldly idea of Jesus to the incredible significance of his life and death and what he did for us. So Paul used to have this external standard, but he abandoned it. He doesn't think about Jesus that way anymore, and he doesn't think about Jesus' people that way anymore. The way to evaluate them is not by their place in the world or their talents or their wealth. The way to evaluate them is by who they are becoming in Christ. Now, notice I think there's a kind of double message here in what Paul is saying. I feel pretty confident that he means I, Paul, when he uses this plural pronoun. He's saying I Paul, recognize no one according to the flesh. He doesn't pay attention to the flashy worldly accomplishments or the social status of people anymore. That's not how he judges them. But why is he bringing this up? Because he wants the Corinthians to do the same. He wants them to abandon judging him by external worldly standards. So he's saying, My understanding of the gospel has led me to stop judging people by external appearances, and I want you Corinthians to do the same toward me. So here's how I understand what Paul's saying in these verses we just looked at. The way I Paul see the world is constrained by my understanding of the love of Christ. Out of love Christ died for us so that all could receive the benefits of his death and be reconciled to God. And the purpose of his death was to make us the sort of people who live for the risen Christ. God's people have been made new. It makes no sense to evaluate them merely by what they are on the outside, by their status, their talents, their weaknesses, quirks, wealth or achievements. God has made them new creations. I don't judge people by their earthly fleshly status, and I don't think you should be judging me that way either. Now he goes on, let's look at eighteen through twenty one. 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. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. He's been talking about all that Jesus did for us, so now he backs up and he says, Look, this all came from God. Jesus did not have to go convince God to forgive us. Jesus didn't twist God's arm into accepting his sacrifice on the cross. God himself wanted us to be reconciled to him. God sent Jesus to accomplish this reconciliation. This is all part of God's plan. But notice that once again, most of the language here is about Paul and his ministry. He talks about entrusting to us the message of reconciliation, being an ambassador for Christ, God making his appeal through us. Paul is talking about himself there, because as we've seen, this whole letter is about how you, Corinthians, should be thinking about me, Paul, and what attitude they should have toward him. And we see a pattern here. Paul talks about himself, and then he talks about how his task is to persuade others to join him in that same thing. So I think he's saying, first, God reconciled Paul to himself through Christ, and then God gave Paul the task of proclaiming this reconciliation to others. And what was that message of reconciliation? That God is reconciling his people to himself through Christ. God will forgive us and adopt us into his family, and he brought all this about through Jesus and his death on the cross. But as always, in this letter, the subject comes back to Paul. Paul says, Therefore, I am an ambassador of Christ. It's as if God were entreating you through me because I represent him. I beg you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. If Jesus Himself were standing right in front of you, his message would be the same one I'm proclaiming to you. Be reconciled to God. That's my job. That's what I've been called to do. I have been deputized by Jesus to go out and speak for him and proclaim the message to urge people to find reconciliation with God. And then he articulates that message further in 521. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So on the cross, Jesus took upon himself the sins that were not his. On the cross, he, the righteous one, became sin. He took our guilt upon himself. What was happening to him is what ought to have happened to sinners like us. So the righteous man was treated like a sinner so that sinners could be treated like they were righteous. Now, whenever we come to this word righteous, we have to ask, are we talking about justification or are we talking about holiness or moral perfection? Do we become the sort of person God can forgive because we are justified by Christ's death, or do we become the sort of person who is now morally perfect because of Christ's death? I think in this context, justification makes way more sense because he's been talking about reconciliation. And justification is another way of describing reconciliation. He became sin so that we might become reconciled to God. Paul wants the Corinthians to see him clearly. Instead, he's trying to convince them those are the wrong kinds of standards to use and they ought to evaluate him rightly because they know him well. And he has given us two reasons why they should abandon those external standards. First, the gospel itself implies we shouldn't be judging each other that way anymore. All those worldly standards we used to use to measure each other just don't apply because those who belong to Christ are new creations. The Spirit of God is at work in us, making us different and new and different kinds of people. Second, Paul says they should see him as an ambassador for Christ. He has been sent to represent the king to them. God is reconciling his people through Christ, and Christ sent Paul as his ambassador. And the Corinthians should think about Paul that way. Think about him as one who has been charged with proclaiming the king's message, and that message is be reconciled to God. And as we're going to go on to see next time, there's an urgency to this request. If you dismiss Paul because of worldly standards, you risk dismissing the gospel. And it's important that you deal with the gospel. Who cares if Paul is impressive by worldly standards? He is the ambassador for the Savior of the world. All right, so how do we apply this to ourselves today? You and I are not apostles. Christ did not choose us to be his ambassadors in the same way that Paul is talking about here. We can proclaim his message and we can give testimony to what we have heard, but we have heard it from the ambassador. We don't have the same kind of role as Christ's representative that Paul had. But it is true of us, just as it was true of Paul, that as believers, we are new creations in Christ. Each of us has our unique personality and life experience that makes us who we are. And becoming a believer doesn't erase all that. I think that's clear in what Paul is saying. People are still judging him by all those old things, by his personality and such. If he was personally unimpressive before he became a believer, he is still personally unimpressive after becoming a believer. And the Corinthians are pointing that out to him. And this is where Paul's message has a wider application for us. Those of us who belong to Christ have something new, the work of the Spirit of God. It's the sort of thing that Jesus was talking about in John 3, where he talks about the Spirit being like the wind. You can't see it, you don't know where it's coming from or where it's going, but you can experience its effects. You can hear it and see the changes it causes. In the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes the work of the Spirit. He says, You can see it in those who are poor in spirit, humble, merciful, hungering for thirsting and righteousness. Paul describes the Spirit's work in Galatians when he talks about the fruit of the Spirit is love, patience, joy, gentleness, kindness. Both those things are still true of us believers. We are who we are and we are still sinners. Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses. We have things that both annoy and delight our family and our friends. But as believers, something else is true of us as well. The Spirit is changing us. The Spirit is making us new creatures, and those changes will become real and visible and tangible. Whenever another believer hurts or offends me, I should recognize two things are true of that person. That person is still a sinner and therefore will sometimes act badly, and I should not be surprised by whatever the offense was, I should be forgiving, but that person is also a child of God who is learning and growing and changing, and I can forgive them and pray for them because I am in the same place. Those same two facts are true of me. Now all of us are inclined to judge each other by externals, not just our appearance, but this whole set of values that we use to measure who's worthy and who isn't. We judge ourselves, we judge others by those qualities that the world tells us are valuable, and then we're either happy with ourselves or unhappy with ourselves to the extent that we do or do not have those qualities. But the gospel tells us that's the wrong standard by which to judge. The gospel tells us what is truly valuable in this life, and it's what Paul's been getting at here. Like Paul, we should learn to look at others and say, When I look at you, I don't think about how impressive you are by your status in the world. I think about how the Spirit of God is at work in you, making you a person of God, and I am grateful for that. I rejoice with you about that, and I boast with you about that, because that is worth celebrating and seeking. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. The blog version of this podcast is on wednesdayintheword.com slash 2 Corinthians 8. You can hear all the episodes in the series on my website and find many other episodes and series there. There's no charge, no spam, and no ads. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please take a moment to write a review on your favorite podcast platform. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and maybe where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast. You can hear his music and find his TVs on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.