Making Sense Of The Christian Life

Text: 2 Corinthians 5:11-21

Title: Making sense of the Christian Life

“Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but we are giving you the opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than what is in the heart. If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

If the Christian life could be compared to any one sport it would have to be the game of baseball.

There are four bases in a baseball game. There is first base, second base, third base and home plate. And in order to get to home you must first touch the three other bases.

What do the bases represent in relation to the Christian life?

1. Reconciliation.

“Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (V21)

In relation to the Christian life we see here that first base represents reconciliation with God.

How does someone get to first base and reconciliation with God?

It may help to look again at a baseball analogy.

In a baseball game there is really only two major ways you get to first base. You get to first base either by getting a hit or by getting a walk.

A hit is something you do for yourself but a walk is something that someone else does for you.

Do we get to be reconciled to God at first base because of something we do or do we get reconciled to God at first base because of something that is done for us by someone else?

All of us at one time would have said that we get reconciled to God because of something we do but is that the right way to get reconciled to God?

“Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (V20-21)

You and I get reconciled to God not because of something we did but because of what God did for us in Christ Jesus.

Baseball is all about numbers.

For example you have your batting average, you have your total number of hits and rbi’s.

There is something very significant about all those numbers. They are all numbers based upon what a player has done in the past.

Our scripture text tells us that every person has a number.

That number is the number of sins that is against us.

Some of us have a number in the millions others of us are in the thousands. None of us know for certain how many sins are against us we only know that the number grows every day.

Lets do the math. If I sin only three times a day that’s over 1000 in a year.

But when we become reconciled to God through Christ all those sins are no longer counted against us.

“That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them”.

A double exchange takes place at first base. We give God our sin and in exchange God gives us the righteousness of God.

In a spiritual sense it would be more correct to call the first base bag the cross of Christ.

It was on the cross that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. We know this to be true because Jesus said so.