2 Corinthians 5–7

0:00 Over the course of 46 years of life, you find yourself soaking up all kinds of information. Some of that information is useful, and some of it is utterly and completely useless. But it's super interesting. I've gathered up all kinds of useless but interesting information in my 46 years. I also gathered up some useless but interesting information from Google just this morning. Let me give you some really interesting stuff. that is still mostly, utterly useless.

0:35 On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pins every year. It's not totally useless, is it? Like, get your pins out of your mouth, all of you. Only one person out of every 2 billion people will live to be 116 or older. Odds are against you. It's possible to lead a cow upstairs, but not downstairs.

1:10 A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue. Did you know that? A crocodile is literally incapable of sticking out its tongues. Makes me feel sorry for those pre-teen crocs when their parents tell them to do their chores. More useless but interesting information. Americans, on average, eat 18 acres of pizza every day. 18 acres of pizza every day. Here's one.

1:42 The housefly, normal little housefly, hums in the middle octave key of F. If you yelled, this is another useless but interesting bit of information, if you yelled for eight years, seven months, and six days, if you yell, like scream, non-stop, for eight years, seven months, and six days, you will have produced enough sound energy to heat one single cup of coffee. Useless, but interesting.

2:16 Here's another piece of useless but interesting information. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Oh, is that true? Can you just take that little bit of information, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and put it at the end of a list of useless but interesting factoids like I just gave you? I mean, everybody in the room wants to say no, right? Everybody in the room is recoiling from me saying anything like that.

2:46 And yet, I do wonder if for a whole lot of Christians, the fact that Jesus is risen from the dead really is just a useless little factoid piece of information. Something to think about here and there, something to celebrate once a year on Easter. But for the most part, the fact that Jesus sits ruling and reigning at the right hand of his Father now, resurrected from the grave, for a whole lot of Christians, just doesn't seem to have a whole lot of feet. Doesn't seem to have a whole lot of feet in their lives, doesn't seem to have a whole lot of feet in their churches.

3:18 It's just something we say, and then we say it again and put indeed at the end of it. Is it just useless information? Interesting, but useless information that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead? Or does that bit of information have feet? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today as we continue the study that we've been in of 2 Corinthians. Let me invite you to take a Bible and turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. That's where we're going to at least start. We're going to be making our way through a pretty good chunk of text this morning.

3:50 If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles, you'll find 2 Corinthians chapter 5 on page 966. So let me invite you to turn there. This book of 2 Corinthians is not really a book. We've said this every week, but it's important to say it again and again. It's not a book. It's not a treatise. It's not a theological set piece. It's a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote in about the year A.D. 55 to a church that he had planted some five years earlier and with whom he had been in a fight for about the last year. Apparently a sizable chunk of the Corinthian church had set themselves in opposition to Paul and were questioning whether he was fit at all to be an apostle. So this book, this letter, is written to do a couple of things. It's written on the one hand to just rejoice with what looks like the bare majority of the church that is still very much with Paul, right? They've repented of their sins, and they've decided that, yes, we're going to stop this opposition to Paul, we're going to stop this warfare against him, and we're going to re-embrace him. Paul wants to celebrate that with the bare majority of the church. But there's a sizable minority that he

4:53 has another goal with in writing the letter, and that is to plead with them and even to argue with them against their opposition and essentially say to them, look, look, guys, all of the things that you're saying about me, all of the reasons that you've got for saying I'm not fit to be an apostle, They're not valid for this reason, this reason, this reason, and this reason. And so throughout the main body of the letter, that's what Paul is doing. He's making his argument for the legitimacy of his apostleship. For the last couple of weeks, we've been in the main body of the letter in which Paul has been defending his apostolic ministry against those in the Corinthian church who have been opposing him.

5:28 The body of the letter runs from about the middle of chapter 2 through the end of chapter 7. And we've spent a couple of weeks looking at that main argument and defense by Paul for his apostleship. So last week we looked at chapter 4 in which Paul pretty much is dealing with this argument from his opponents. In which they say, Paul, you are just an utterly unimpressive guy. You're not that gifted. You're not that great an orator. You seem to suffer too much. You're just not that impressive a guy.

5:58 Why do you continue on insisting that you're an apostle and insisting on doing this work of the ministry that you're doing? Why do you do that when you're so ungifted? And so in that chapter, Paul gives four arguments for why he doesn't ultimately lose heart, even though he has to continue to work through sometimes almost unbearable suffering. Well, if you remember from last week, the last of those four reasons was that Paul says at the end of chapter 4 that he keeps going because he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this life is not all there is.

6:31 So the sufferings and the hardships and the afflictions of this life are not all there is. And one day, he says at the end of chapter 4, all of these present sufferings that I'm having to go through in the proclamation of the gospel and in living the Christian life, all of that's going to give way to the glory of eternity. The things that I can see now, the suffering and affliction, all of that is going to fade away. and the things that I cannot see now, the glories of eternity, are going to come into view. That's what he was doing at the end of chapter 4. Well, today we're going to look at two chapters of the letter.

7:03 We're going to look at chapter 5, and we're going to look at chapter 6, where Paul presses that idea of the glories of eternity, right? The weight of glory that's coming, you know, that our sufferings are producing. He takes that idea of the glory of eternity and pushes it even further. not just the idea that it's out there and it encourages him, but now he's going to talk about how it functions in his thought, not just to encourage him, but to drive him on in the ministry that God has given him.

7:34 So it's not just the goal now, the glories of eternity, or not just the goal now at the end of eternity. Now the glories of eternity are the fuel of everything that Paul is and does. So let's see how he makes that argument. Look with me at chapter 5, verse 1. Well, actually, just to get it right, let's back up to chapter 4, verse 16. We'll start there because that's really where the break is. Chapter 4, verse 16. So we do not lose heart, he says. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

8:07 For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

8:46 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. 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. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

9:18 But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending 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. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, 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.

9:54 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. And therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. 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 him, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. And therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

10:28 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. We'll stop there. We'll read the rest of chapter 6 when we come to it a little bit later. If you look at it and sort of, you know, look at what we just read in 5, look at what's talked about in 6, this is kind of a funny text because chapter 5, as you can tell by reading it, is just a tightly packed little theological treatise, isn't it?

11:01 Every phrase of it is tight with meaning. And honestly, there are a number of really thorny exegetical questions in it. So questions like, you know, what exactly does Paul mean by that phrase? Or how is he using that idea? Or what does that mean? There's just a lot of questions that Christians have wrestled with in chapter 5. Not so much in chapter 6. In chapter 6, it's like everything just opens up. And you just kind of flow like a water slide from the beginning of 6 all the way down, you know, through the end of the chapter. It's easy. There's nothing there.

11:32 So if you're a normal, regular attender of 3rd Avenue, this isn't going to surprise you at all. But points 1 and 2 of this sermon, which are about chapter 5, are going to be thicker and longer than point 3, which is about chapter 6. That will not surprise you at all. So here we go. I hope reading all of this, you can kind of see the main contours of Paul's argument here. So he starts with this meditation. It really begins in 4.16. He's got this meditation on the coming glory of eternity.

12:03 You look at 16 to 18, chapter 4.16 to 18. It really could be about anything. The glories of eternity could be anything you can think of. It could be the golden streets. It could be the river of life. Whatever you can think of, it'll fit because Paul doesn't specify what he's talking about. By the time you get to 5.1, though, it's clear that what he's talking about is not the golden streets and not the river of life. It's the resurrection body. That's what he's talking about. The glorified, immortal resurrection body that Christians are going to be given at the end of time.

12:36 So he's longing for the day when this earthly body, with all of its frailty and pain, all of that is embraced and swallowed up and transformed, he uses all those words, by a new body. Immortal, unfading, glorious resurrection body that's fit 100% for the new heavens and the new earth. So that's what he talks about in the first 10 verses of chapter 5. In 11, he says that this idea of the resurrection, the fact that he's going to live in the last day, means also that he's going to be in the presence of Christ.

13:09 And the thought that he's going to be in the presence of Christ leads him to understand that I'm going to have to stand one day in front of the judgment seat of Christ. And then the rest of the chapter, he talks about how that drives him. The fact that I'm going to be resurrected, the fact that I'm going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, drives him to do the work that he does. Well, in 6, we'll talk about it later, but I'll just tell you what he's doing. He really, in chapter 6, comes to the main point of the letter, the main thing that he's writing for, the main goal that he's got.

13:41 And he brings to bear, in chapter 6, everything he's been talking about so far in order to do a specific thing, and in order to call the Corinthians to do a specific thing. We'll talk about that when we get there. So that's what he's doing, and the main idea of this passage is we are a people, We as Christians are a people who live in the hope of the resurrection and in the joy of having been reconciled to God. Those two things, right? We as Christians are people who live in the hope of the resurrection, in the joy of having been reconciled to God.

14:15 And because of that, here's the function, because of that, our hearts should be eager to be reconciled with other Christians too. We live in the hope of the resurrection. We live in the joy of having been reconciled to God by Christ. and therefore our hearts should be eager to be reconciled with other Christians too. So three points to the sermon just corresponding to Paul's three main moves in his argument. So it's going to be first half of five, second half of five, and then all of six. Okay? Number one, the hope of the resurrection. Number two, the gospel of reconciliation.

14:48 And number three, the call to an open heart. The hope of the resurrection, the gospel of reconciliation, and then the call to an open heart. Listen, my prayer this morning is that what we talk about here today, the fact that we live in the hope of the resurrection, the fact that we've been reconciled to God, will not just be interesting but ultimately useless information for you. It's not how it's supposed to work. To know those things is supposed to ignite something in your heart and make your life different.

15:19 It's supposed to change things. It's supposed to have massive right now implications in the way you live your life. And I hope that the way Paul argues here in chapters 5 and 6 will ignite that same kind of change in your life. So point number one, the hope of the resurrection. The hope of the resurrection. We're really just looking at the first half of chapter 5. That chapter break right there at 5-1 is without a doubt one of the most unfortunate and badly placed chapter breaks in the entire Bible. I think the monks that did the chapter breaks in the Bible must have let the intern monk do the ones for 2 Corinthians because they are terrible.

15:57 This one is terrible. The one at 7-1 is also terrible. You can see that in the way they cut off 7-1 from the rest of chapter 6. It's just awful. And whatever intern monk did this should absolutely be ashamed of himself. I hope he's covered in the blood of Jesus because he's going to need it for this junk. It's horrible. And the reason that 5 in particular is horrible is because Paul's thought in this section absolutely, totally, without a doubt, begins, not at 5.1, but up at 4.16. I mean, there's just absolutely no break in thought at all when you move from 4.18 to 5.1. Now, why does that matter? Why do we care where the chapter break is? The reason we care where the chapter break is, is because if you just start at 5.1 and begin reading, which is what most Christians do, let's face it, right? We just, we just trust the monks and we start where they tell us to start, at the beginning of the chapter. I mean, you'll notice even in your bulletin when I first looked at this, the intention was to preach from 5.1 all the way down, right? And And I was wrong about that.

16:57 You have to back up to 4.16 to get everything. If you do that, though, you can be duped into thinking that chapter 5, verses 1 to 5 is just Paul doing some speculative theology about interesting but useless facts. Yeah, I wonder what happens to us after we die. I'm in the middle of this apostolic defense of myself and this call ultimately for the Corinthians to be reconciled to me, but I've just had a thought. What happens to our bodies when we die? That's what it can look like, but that's not what he's doing at all. You connect those five verses at the beginning of chapter five up to the last verses of chapter four, and you can see all of a sudden that he's actually not just talking about useless but interesting information. He's making a dead earnest argument against hopelessness and despair. He's saying one day this mortal suffering broken body is going to be replaced and swallowed up by, dissolved and transformed into a new body that does not suffer

18:02 and is perfectly fitted for the glories of the new heavens and new earth. That's what he's doing. So let me walk you through it. He's just been saying there at the end of 4, 16 to 18, that our present sufferings are not all there is, right? In fact, those present sufferings, we talked about this last week, are producing for us a weight of glory that is unimaginable. Your sufferings, in a certain way are producing, they're manufacturing a weight of glory that's just unimaginable. But then he pushes it forward. He says that what we are looking forward to when we get to eternity, when this life is over and when this age gives way to the new age, what we're looking forward to is not just to flit around this place called heaven as disembodied spirits. Nor are we going to turn into angels. You'll hear that said so often in sort of pop culture, and even among Christians, that somebody who has died has gotten their angel wings. No, they haven't. And the end of this, Paul wants you to know, is that you're not going to just

19:02 flit around this place called heaven as a disembodied spirit. Rather, what we're looking forward to is the day when we're going to be given new bodies, resurrection bodies, as physical and as touchable as these we've got now. But all of a sudden, those glorious new bodies are not going to be subject to pain. They're not going to be subject to decay. They're not going to be subject to weakness or injury or disease or cancer. None of it. They're going to be perfect and glorified just like Jesus is. That's what he says in verses 1 and 2. We know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. Now the language can be a little confusing there. He's using metaphor, right? And we're not used, mostly we're not used to speaking about our bodies so much as buildings. That's just not the metaphor that we usually use for our bodies. But that's what Paul does. And he says that this present body that we live in, the one that you can touch right there, is a tent. That's what he calls it. It's a tent.

20:08 It's flimsy. It's temporary. It's subject to being struck down or destroyed at any moment. Which is a good lesson worth remembering, right? And one Greek philosopher said that the world is a tent and life is a passage. You come, you see, and you depart. Similar meaning here, though, it's not the world that Paul says is a tent. It's our bodies. They are temporary. They are fleeting. They're not meant to be here forever. And that tent is in contrast in verses 1 and 2 to what he calls a building from God.

20:40 A house, a solid structure, not built by human hands. Now, be careful. Look at it carefully. That building that you're waiting on from God, that building that's not built by human hands, that house, is not your mansion in glory. It's the resurrection body. That's what he's talking about. You have a tent now, then you will have a structure. It's not a mansion. It's the resurrection body that you're going to be given at the last day. You look at it carefully, some people have gotten confused here and there by Paul saying there in verse 1 that we have in the present tense this new body, right?

21:18 We already have this new building because they say, well, why would Paul use the present tense when clearly we don't have it yet and it's in the future, right? Why does he use the, why didn't he just say we will have it rather than saying we have it now? But that's really not an unusual thing for the Bible to do. Bible writers in Old and New Testament do that all the time because when Bible writers speak of God promising something in the future, they understand that that promise is so solid that it is as if we already have the thing which has been promised. I mean, you do this in English too, right?

21:50 You get mad at somebody and you want to hit them and you're going to get them back and you say, you're a dead man. You know, they're not actually, but what you're saying is you're going to be a dead man or something like it. Anyway, well, Paul is kind of saying the opposite. You're alive. You're going to get the resurrection body. You're a living man. You're a living woman. And that is as good as done because God has promised that he's going to do it. Paul's point here in 2, if you look at it, is not just that that's going to happen, but that we long for it to happen.

22:29 And you see that? In this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. Longing for our bodies to be transformed and swallowed up in immortality. Friend, do you long for that day? Like you yourself, do you ever long for the day when your mortal flesh is going to put on immortality and not be subject anymore to any kind of pain, death, sickness, cancer? Do you long for that day? Some of you sitting here are so young and healthy that you probably think you're already in the resurrection body.

23:05 But if the Lord doesn't take you out early, you'll learn, I promise you, you'll learn. Time passes, the years roll by, and things just start to go wrong. You start to hurt in places that you didn't even know you had injured. You start to not be able to do the things that you used to be able to do. Things start to go wrong. It happens over time. Sometimes things go wrong in one thunderous diagnosis that pops up from what you thought was just going to be a routine checkup. Sometimes things go wrong in one thunderous injury in a car wreck or in a basketball game.

23:40 Things just go wrong. Some of you have been painfully aware for as long as you can remember of the susceptibility of your body to pain and sickness because you've lived with it every day of your life. But that's the point. all of these things that go wrong with our bodies whether immediate or over time whether fast or slow are meant, all of them are meant to remind us that this world, this body, this age is not the end this age, this body is not our home that one is I don't listen to much country music but I like Brad Paisley is that funny?

24:20 I don't think so Brad Paisley has a song that's called When I Get Where I'm Going and there's one verse in that song that almost makes me cry every time I hear the verse because he says, he's talking about all the things that he's going to do and he says some silly things like I'm going to ride a raindrop and I'm going to fly and land next to a lion and run my hands through his mane he says a lot of silly stuff but in one verse in the middle of the song he says this when I get where I'm going I'm going to walk with my granddaddy and I'll match him and he'll match me step for step and I'll tell him how I've missed him every second since he left and then I'll hug his neck almost makes me cry every time I read it and what I love about it is the longing in that line he'll match me step for step because what that tells me about Brad Paisley's granddaddy is that he wasn't able to do that in this earthly body.

25:19 He couldn't match his grandson step for step. He couldn't run and jump in this body. He couldn't run at a fast clip next to his boy. But in that day, he will. In that day, all is going to be right and strong and good. For Brad Paisley's granddad and for you. But it goes further. Look at verses 3 and 4. He says there in 3, If indeed, in this tent we long to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked.

25:53 For while we are still in this tent we groan, being burdened. It's not that we want to be unclothed, but it's that we want to be further clothed, like better clothed, with a new body, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. There's a strange aside there, this talk about being unclothed and naked. So what does he mean by that? He seems to be at pains to say, it's not that we're going to be naked. It's not that we're going to be unclothed in the new heavens and new earth. What does that mean? Well, it's easier to understand if you know a couple of things. First, that phrase in your Bible at the beginning of verse 3, if indeed, that doesn't mean to be introducing doubt.

26:25 It's probably a little bit mistranslated. It's not saying that we might not put this resurrection body on, right? It's not saying that. It's actually exactly the opposite. It means, and we know, or knowing, right? So in this tent we groan, we long to put on our heavenly dwelling knowing that by putting it on we will not be found naked or bodiless, right? He says we know that we're not going to be found bodiless in the last day. Second thing you need to know to understand this is that it was a very common idea in Greek and Roman thought that the highest and best thing that could possibly happen is for humans to shed this earthly physical body.

27:06 The bodies of any physical kind are evil, they're based, they're weak, and therefore what we want, the great goal of everything, is to be unbodied, to be caught up into the realm of pure idea and pure soul. That's what the Greeks and Romans thought. And it's funny, I think that idea persists sometimes in Christians' thoughts. Thinking of the body as something evil, thinking of the body as something to be escaped, that the body is a tomb that we need to be raised out of so that we can be in heaven unbodied with the angels.

27:42 I think sometimes our idea of eternity is that we're going to spend all of it basically as disembodied ghosts, as what Paul here calls naked or unclothed or without any body at all. And I think that that idea of having an unbodied eternity is part of what makes the thought of eternity so scary for us. You ever let your mind just wander into eternity? Like, what is it going to be like? It can be a very scary thing, and I think some of the fear, as opposed to the excitement, is that we think basically we're going to be disembodied ghosts stuck in a church service for all of eternity.

28:16 But that's not going to be it at all. That's what Paul is saying is not the case. That's what he's solidly denying. We're not going to be naked in eternity. We're not going to be just unclothed. Our goal is not to be rid of the physical body. No, what we're longing for and waiting for is the day when these mortal bodies are going to be clothed with immortal bodies. When this body of death and decay is swallowed up by a body of life. That's what we're waiting on. You understand that. You understand that that's what you're longing for.

28:48 And I think the prospect of eternity gets a whole lot more interesting. I mean, I don't know what eternity is going to be like in these resurrection bodies of ours. There are only hints in the Bible. It never sort of tells us much about what eternity is going to be like. But, friends, it will definitely not just be that we're floating. We're not going to be utterly disconnected then from what we know and love in this age. You ever think about that? You ever realize it and sort of play with it in your mind?

29:18 You are going to spend eternity in a real, touchable, physical body. Like, everybody just do that. Everybody do that. You can feel that, right? You've got a body and it's physical. you'll be able to do that in the new heavens and new earth you'll be able to look at your hand and be amazed by the hand that God has created just like you can look at your hand now and be amazed by it you'll be able to see it and touch it but it's going to be a glorified body not like this body with all of its frailties and weaknesses and imperfection it's going to be a glorified body that's all of a sudden perfect healthy strong capable supernatural which means that eternity is going brothers and sisters to be glorious fun it's gonna be fun we're gonna eat and we're gonna drink and we're gonna enjoy the taste and texture of food the marriage supper of the lamb is not just a metaphor we're gonna taste the texture of food we're gonna discover and explore and create but I think we're gonna do that on a level with capabilities far beyond what our capabilities are

30:22 now. I mean, all this is just speculation. But Jesus, if you look in the Bible, some of the hints that it gives us about the resurrection body, Jesus could walk through walls. And apparently he could move instantly from one place to another, even though he could also eat and enjoy fish. So imagine if we're able to do things then with resurrection bodies that we're not able to do now. And are you going to be able in a resurrection body to go explore the depths of the ocean without a submarine?

30:53 You're going to be able to go down and, as God said, take dominion of the entire planet, not just the 30% of it that's on land? Will we be able to do that with our bodies? Are we going to be able to travel in an instant to go explore Jupiter or the Andromeda galaxy? I don't know. I don't have any idea. We know there's going to be rest. Sure, there's going to be rest. That's a great promise in the Bible. But I don't think we will just rest, as in lounging on the couch. Just like C.S. Lewis' characters say in his Chronicles of Narnia, the story of eternity is going to be a never-ending further up and further in.

31:27 Exploration and discovery and adventure and wonder. I don't know. What I do know, though, is that what God has prepared for us isn't scary. It isn't boring. It's not something to be dreaded or avoided. It's more than any of us could ever ask or imagine. And therefore, it's to be longed for with everything in our hearts. Well, in 6 to 8, there's a big change that sort of takes place in here. With those thoughts of eternity in mind, Paul turns to the here and now.

31:59 His mind has been off in eternity, thinking about the resurrection body, and now he returns to the here and now. If that's what we're hoping for and longing for, what are we supposed to do in the meantime? So he says it there in that paragraph. So, therefore, we are always of good courage. We know that while we're home in the body, we are away from the Lord. That's the negative of being in this physical body, one of them. And we have to walk by faith, not by sight. But we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. We'd rather have that.

32:31 But whether we are at home or away, whether we're here or there, we always make it our aim to please him. 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. You see what he's saying there? The fact of the resurrection, the fact of the hope of eternity has feet in the here and now. It causes us to live, he says, with good courage and with a mind to please Christ. So that's the first thing, the hope of the resurrection. Second, the gospel of reconciliation.

33:03 You could probably see it as I read 6 through 10 there. 6 through 10, Paul's thought changes pretty dramatically in verse 9. Because now he's not just meditating on the eternal age anymore. He's starting to move toward imperatives. He's starting to move toward commands, which is how Paul's theology always works. And you've probably noticed that pattern. Paul always, in his letters, moves from indicatives, saying things that are true, to imperatives, saying things that must now be done. And the indicatives and the imperatives in his theology are always connected by a therefore.

33:40 This thing is true, therefore you must now do this. That's how it works, and it's no different here in the book of 2 Corinthians. He says, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim. That's an imperative force. We make it our aim to please him because we all have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ so we may receive what is due for what he's done in the body, whether good or evil. See the point there? Paul knows that this hope of the resurrection, this longing for the day when he'll finally be with the Lord, means that one day he's finally going to be with the Lord.

34:17 Now, you see what I'm saying there? That reality, the realization that he's going to be with the Lord, it does a couple of things. There's one sense in which it's like, I'm going to be with the Lord, right? It's very exciting. I'm going to be there with him. I'm going to be with Jesus. And that's amazing. There is that sense in Paul's writings. He's looking forward to that day. I would rather depart and be with Jesus above all else. That's what I want. But he says here, too, that there's also a sense in this that, oh, one day I'm going to be in front of the Lord.

34:52 One day I'm going to be before the judgment seat of Christ. And therefore, that realization doesn't just encourage him and comfort him. It also drives him. Why? Why does it drive him? Well, because on that day, on that last day, you and I and Paul and everybody are all going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, he says they're in 10, and be rewarded or reprimanded for what we've done in this present body, in this present life.

35:23 Paul puts that as we're going to receive what's due to us. Now, this is interesting, right? It's interesting because Paul is clearly talking to believers here. He's talking to believers. So this receiving what's due cannot be the judgment of eternal destiny. That's not what it is. This is not the judgment seat of Christ that determines whether you're going to go to heaven or hell. Paul could not be clearer that your justification before God has nothing to do with the works that you have done or not done.

35:54 Your justification before Jesus happens by faith alone in him. That's it. And yet, there's this. there will be a day Christian when your actions are going to be weighed by the king and you're going to receive what's due now does that sound contradictory to you it's not it's not at all contradictory it's not contradictory at all to say that your eternity is secured by Jesus and Jesus alone and at the same time when you're with him you're going to give an account for how you used your redeemed life nothing contradictory about that and Paul talks about this in in other places too right in first corinthians he says there are going to be some christians some christians who build the foundation of their life the work that they that they do is built out of gold and precious stones right and they're going to receive reward for that life that they that they built for the good things that they did he said there are going to be other christians who build their life out of wood and hay and stubble and they're basically just going to catapult across the

36:57 the the threshold of heaven and do a somersault in because the flames are going to be licking at their clothes when they get in there. You're going to give an account. And look what he says in 11. He says, knowing that he's going to give an account creates in him what he calls the fear of the Lord. Well, what's that? Well, the best way to figure it out is to ask, like, what's this fear? The best way to figure that out is to ask, what does this fear do to Paul? As you read it, what does it do to him? Does it make him cower and cringe?

37:28 Does it make him just grudgingly and kind of flinchingly do what he has to do like he's going to get beat. No, it drives him. This fear, whatever it is, drives him to do what he's been called to do with a full heart and a full, happy, joyful motivation. So this fear right here that he's talking about is not cowering. It's not cringing. It's not that kind of being afraid. It's just a sober, reverent embrace of reality. It's an understanding of who Paul serves and who he's one day going to face.

38:00 And when he faces that great king, he wants to be able to say, Lord, I served you well. I built my life out of gold and precious stones, not wood and hay and stubble. So what does that mean for him? What does he mean? I served you well. I'm going to give an account. I'm going to receive recompense for what I've done. And what is it that he wants to do? Well, in 11, he says it real clearly there. It means that he persuades others. Having this fear of God, he persuades others. In other words, he preaches and tries to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah. And then for the next few verses, he makes kind of the same argument that he made up in chapter 1.

38:35 He says, look, I don't have to commend myself to you. I don't have to argue my own goodness. My conscience is clear. That's what he does through, say, 13. But look at 14. In verse 14, Paul gives her another reason for why he's driven to do what he does. He says, the love of Christ controls me because I've concluded this, that one has died for all, and therefore all have died. You see the logic there? I think if you want to talk about the details of it, this is something Christians have kind of argued with, about.

39:09 It seems best, I think, to understand all those alls in there. One has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all. It seems best to understand all those alls to mean not all people in the world without exception, but all Christians. do you see why well it's because the one in the middle there about therefore all have died doesn't make sense if you're talking about everybody in the world without exception I mean in what sense does Jesus's death cause every you see that therefore he died for all therefore all died in what sense does Jesus's death on the cross cause everyone in the world also to die it just it just doesn't make sense and the bible doesn't ever say anything like that at all what it does say however is that for christians when christ died therefore we died with him right because we're united to him you know ours the cross the grave the skies that's what that song

40:11 said at the beginning of the service ours the cross the grave the skies because his the cross the grave the skies what happens to him happens to us we are united to him like branches on a vine he says so it makes sense if you do that so that so that's the truth that paul's been persuaded of christ died for me i therefore died and because he died now i'm going to live in a certain way that's his that's his logic it drives him that truth drives him to live in a certain way it makes him want to live his life for other people's sake he says there in 15 i wonder if you can read verse 14 and 15 about jesus's death causing you to live in a certain way and say yeah that's that that's how it functions in my life too understanding the cross of jesus functions in my life in that way does it it should i mean i mean look i've said it a couple times already but the gospel of jesus christ is not something you just sign up for and then stuff into a drawer like a life insurance policy i have a life insurance policy i think i may even have two that i'm paying for on accident now that i think about it but you can tell this is

41:18 not something that I think about very often. It doesn't drive me. It doesn't make me get up in the morning and say, I'm going to do this life because I've got a life insurance policy. I don't care. I mean, I care for my family if something happens to me before it happens to them. You know, I care in that sense, but it has nothing to do with me. I will never, ever enjoy the fruits of that life insurance policy. It has no effect on me, but that's not true of the gospel. When you embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, it does things in your life. It drives you to live differently.

41:51 It changes your motivations and your desires and your ambitions. It makes you want to live like Jesus for the sake of others, he says in 15, not just for yourself. Friends, I hope that's how this church lives. Think about that. How can you do that this week? What can you do? What can you do this week that is for the benefit of somebody else and not for your benefit? It's a good question to ask. In 16 to 21 there, Paul goes on to describe more the message that he now proclaims to the world, and he talks about it in terms of reconciliation. He says, I am an ambassador making my appeal to the world. God threw me. Be reconciled to God. And the way God has done that reconciliation is in Christ. A few things to notice in there. Look at 16 and 17. 16 and 17. He says, From now on, therefore, I regard no one according to the flesh.

42:50 I once regarded even Christ according to the flesh. In other words, he looked at Christ and thought he was a shyster and thought that what he needed to do because Christ was a shyster is go kill and imprison Jesus' followers. He said, I don't think of him like that anymore. I don't regard Christ in the flesh and I don't regard anybody in the flesh anymore. No, he regards them. What he means is according to the spirit. He regards them according to eternity. He regards people in the shadow of the cross. And he means that of Christians and non-Christians, right?

43:21 So when Paul meets a non-Christian, he doesn't just think of that person as, you know, just one more of the six billion people on the planet. He thinks of that person as someone who's been made in the image of God and who needs a Savior. And if they don't come to the Savior, they will spend eternity in hell. That's how he thinks of a non-Christian. Then in 17, he says, when he looks at Christians, he sees these little sparks of eternity, little sparks of new creation. You look at other believers like that, little sparks of the new creation that have invaded this world.

43:55 How'd that happen? How did he come to not regard anybody in the flesh anymore? Well, it's because of what he says in 18 to 21. He says, God has reconciled us to himself. Now, that's an important word, reconciled. It's used a lot of times in the Bible. The gospel is often put in terms of reconciliation. So what does that mean? Well, originally, in the Greek language, the word reconciliation was, believe it or not, used in a financial sense. It was to take the books of a company or of a household and get rid of inconsistencies in the books, of reconciling them.

44:29 Fixing breaks in the numbers. Finding and correcting in the books what has gone wrong in the record keeping. But then you take that understanding of it, fixing breaks, fixing inconsistencies, and you can see how the meaning of the word pretty naturally moved over into a relational sense. To be reconciled to another person is to have a break between you and that other person repaired and fixed. And Paul says that's exactly what God has done for us. He has taken the break that existed between us and him because of our sin and rebellion against him, and he's fixed it.

45:06 He's made it go away by the work of Christ. How? Well, we'll look at 21, which I think is, I think 521 is one of the most beautiful statements of the gospel in the entire Bible. It's one of the most beautiful statements of exactly what happened on Good Friday on the cross. For our sake, he made Jesus to be sin, this one who knew no sin himself, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. it's an incredible incredible thing and i hope you can see the glory of what this is saying it's talking about what martin luther the reformer called the great exchange that's what it's talking about it's talking about the fact that jesus who had no sin was nevertheless given your sin and he died for it i mean and look how paul puts the language it's not just that he made him the sin bearer it's not just that he made him you know it's not that. It's this crazy language that God made him who knew no sin to be sin.

46:10 Your sin wasn't just smudged on the outside of Jesus. It went all the way to his heart. He bore it and he died so that you might become the righteousness of God. So that you might become like Jesus. You see that? Great exchange. That's why Martin Luther called it that. Jesus gets your sin. You get his righteousness. He dies. You live. So that's Paul's message. And friend, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, then I'm going to say the same thing to you that he says in verse 20. I implore you in the name of God, be reconciled to God.

46:49 Go to Jesus and say, Jesus, I need that exchange to take place. Because if I stand in front of your father, if I stand in front of your judgment seat with only my unrighteousness, I'm doomed. I need the exchange, Lord. I need you to take my sin and I need your righteousness so that I can stand justified and reconciled before God. Be reconciled to God through Jesus. Wouldn't it be amazing? People remember these days for certain reasons, right? There's certain Easter's that you can remember probably in your childhood growing up. Wouldn't it be incredible if Easter all of a sudden becomes the anniversary of your being reconciled to God. It'll be like the whole world is celebrating your salvation. It'd be an incredible thing. Don't walk away. Don't walk away from this place with a break between you and God. Let it be reconciled through the great exchange between you and Jesus. Go to him in faith. Here's the third thing. The call to an open heart.

47:48 The call to an open heart. So you can see what Paul's done so far in chapter 5, right? He's been slowly working up to this point that he's going to make in chapter 6. Where he's going to make a full-on appeal to the Corinthians. He's going to make an appeal to this church that he's been in this fight with for over a year. And everything that's come up to this point in 5 has been preparatory work for that. He's turned their eyes to eternity. He's told them that they're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account.

48:19 He's reminded them of the great central message of the gospel, that even though we're sinners and rebels, God reconciled us to himself at enormous cost, at the cost of the death of his son, at the cost of making his own sinless son to be sin for us. It was at that cost and God did it and he's put their minds on it. And then with all that in mind, he says 6.1, so working together with him, then we appeal to you, Corinthians, not to receive the grace of God in vain. Now look at it carefully because there's a bit of a change.

48:52 Very clearly here in 6.1, Paul is talking specifically to the Corinthians. Now at the end of 5, he'd been talking to the whole world. He was imploring the entire world to receive the grace of God in Christ, be reconciled to God. Here though, you see the clue there? Here though, he's talking to people who have already received the grace of God. And what he wants is for them to make sure they haven't received that grace in vain. He's not talking about eternal salvation or destiny here.

49:23 That's not what he's talking about. He's saying, don't let the reconciling grace of God fall dead in your heart. Let it do its work. That quote there from the Old Testament is Isaiah 49. Basically what he's doing there is saying, he's saying, remember what God has done for you, right? He said, remember that God has said, in a favorable time, I listened to you. And in a day of salvation, I helped you. And then he says in the second part of that verse, okay, then behold, now's the favorable time.

49:55 Right? Now's the day of salvation. You're still living in this day of salvation where God's grace is supposed to be active. He showed it to you at a favorable moment. Now it's time to, and he doesn't even tell them yet. He hadn't even made the ask yet. You've got it in your head because you know what's coming. but he hasn't even said what he's asking for yet. Instead, what he does is, starting in verse 3, he reminds them that whatever he's about to ask them to do, again, we don't know, he hasn't done anything to prevent them from doing it. He's made this case several times in the book, and he does it from 3 all the way down through 10.

50:30 We're not going to read all of that, because the payoff comes in 11 through 13. He finally, finally gets to it in light of all this. And knowing that I haven't done anything to prevent you from doing what I'm about to ask you to do, here's what I'm asking. We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians. Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us. You are restricted in your own affections. We've been open with you. And in return, I speak as to children.

51:03 Widen your hearts also to us. You see it? He's begging them. He's begging them in the light of eternity and under the grace of the astounding truth of the gospel. He's asking them to reconcile to him. To cease their warfare and opposition and distrust of him and embrace him as their apostle. I mean, look at 12.

51:34 12 is, what he says there is extraordinary, I feel. He's saying, look, whatever restriction you feel in your affections about coming back and embracing me, that's just you restricting your own self. I haven't done anything to restrict you. He says, I've been wide open with you, but you, Corinthians, are tying up your own feelings. You're binding up your own feelings. And so he calls them to loosen the ropes, break the chains, Whatever the chains are that are binding your affections, break them apart and open wide your hearts, he says to me.

52:16 I mean, by the time you get to this point, by the time you actually get to the ask in 11 through 13, this just feels as natural as breathing. Of course this is what the gospel does. Of course this is what Christians do. Christians who have been shown the grace of God and who are looking forward to eternity don't restrict their affections and close off their hearts to one another. how could they how could they I mean I mean think about it think about that Christian that your heart has been closed to that your affections have been restricted about you do realize right that everything Paul says here is true of you and your relationship with that Christian what Paul says here is true you're going to spend eternity with that person that your affections have been restricted toward?

53:03 You do realize that that person has received the same forgiveness from God that you have? And you realize, don't you, that it was at great cost to God, greater than any cost you'll ever pay, to reconcile you to him. How could you remain restricted in your affections toward that person? Unforgiving, unyielding, angry, and closed off. How can you do it? But you don't know what they did. You don't know what that person did to me. I can't forgive.

53:34 I can't open my heart. We got to deal with that. I mean, okay, yeah, maybe. Paul is dealing with some stuff with the Corinthians, right? He's doing that. Sometimes that's what you've got to do, but also not always. I mean, is that how God dealt with you? Rub your face in each and every one of the things that you did wrong to him. Trace down the root of every offense that you've committed against him. No, no, he didn't do that. He forgave you.

54:05 He looked at the raging fire of your rebellion against him, and he poured out the reconciling blood of Jesus across it and extinguished it. That's what he did. It's like the scriptures say, love covers over a multitude of sins. And sometimes that's what we as Christians need to do. Sometimes it's what we must do with each other. Friend, consider whether that might not be true of you. Why won't you do that? Well, Paul gives a little bit of an answer, actually.

54:39 In the second part of chapter 6, we're not going to read it. We're not even going to spend a lot of time on it. But if you look at verse 14, if you've read this in advance, all the way down through 7-1, it seems out of place at first. Paul's made this appeal to the Corinthians to be reconciled. And now it just seems like he randomly breaks into this section about being unequally yoked with unbelievers. Well, I think that seems weird because we generally come to this passage and we think it's talking about marriage or friendship or business dealings or whatever. Like don't get married to an unbeliever. Don't get into a business partnership with them.

55:10 But we think that's what it's talking about. It's not talking about that. It's talking about just general worldliness. As the Apostle John would talk about, it's talking about being friends with the world, being in love with the world, of having the world's values and ambitions, of acting like the world acts. And I think once you understand that, you can see better how this is functioning in what Paul's doing here. Why aren't the Corinthians willing to open their hearts and be reconciled to him? Because they're worldly, he says. Because they're worldly.

55:41 Because they're yoked to the unbelieving world. Because they've got the world's priorities and values and ambitions. Because like the world, they're living for self and not, like Jesus, for the sake of others. Look, friends, if you find your heart in any way being cold and hard toward another believer, this is a strong and pointed warning for you. Might it not be that the problem isn't so much in that other believer, but rather in you?

56:13 Might it be that your heart has forgotten what God has done for you and fixed too hard on what the world says you should demand from others? maybe your definition of forgiveness is far more like the world's than it is like God's. You know, look at 7.1. Might be worth spending some time thinking about today. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all of that.

56:43 Every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. He's calling them to do what he asked them to do in 6.11 through 13. Maybe today, especially, it would be worth taking some time to meditate on 7-1. On this day, when our eyes are turned so pointedly to what Jesus did for us on the cross and the hope that we've got of the resurrection. We have these promises, beloved. Let's put them to work. Let's pray.

57:20 Our Lord, we pray that the truths and the warnings and the exhortations of these two chapters of 2 Corinthians would burn into our hearts and not just be a dead letter, not just be useless but interesting information, but God, we pray that these things would change us and make us more like Jesus. Help us, oh God, because we have these promises to love you, to love your son, to love your spirit, to love your word, and to love each other more. We pray that in the name of Jesus, our Savior and our Redeemer and our King.

57:51 Amen.