In the 5th chapter of II Corinthians, Paul has supplied us with all the information we need give anyone, in order to bring them to saving faith. He talks about the atoning death of Christ, His resurrection, the assurance of newness of life for the one who believes in Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as a down payment of our inheritance in Him, the new man’s relationship of acceptance with God, the fact that our new life in Him is one of faith and not sight, and the eventual glorification of our bodies and eternal life in the presence of God.
It’s all there.
Now the primary aim of Paul in this chapter is to define his ministry and the ministry of those who traveled with him, and call his readers to believe.
But since the scriptures are God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work, I have to believe that Paul’s claims are for every believer in Christ; for while we are still here on this earth and until the Lord comes, our commission from the Lord is to make disciples of all the nations, using the Word of God, our own testimony, and sacrificial Christ-like love in the doing of it.
So I want to take just this one verse from II Corinthians 5 today, verse 19, and break it down into its three natural parts. 1. THAT GOD WAS IN CHRIST RECONCILING THE WORLD TO HIMSELF, 2. THAT HE WAS NOT COUNTING THEIR TRESPASSES AGAINST THEM, and 3. THAT HE HAS COMMITTED TO US THE WORD OF RECONCILIATION; and as we go I ask you to keep in mind that when Paul says God gave US the ministry of reconciliation, and WE are ambassadors for Christ, the ‘us’ and ‘we’ includes not only Paul and his troop, but all believers, everywhere, throughout the history of the church until He comes.
First then, GOD WAS IN CHRIST RECONCILING THE WORLD TO HIMSELF.
In the 59th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet writes;
“Now the Lord saw,
And it was displeasing in
His sight that there was no justice.
And He saw that there was no man.
And was astonished that there was no one
to intercede;
Then His own arm brought salvation to Him;
And His righteousness upheld Him.”
Then a few verses later he says;
“And a Redeemer will come to Zion,
And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob”,
declares the Lord.”
What an amazing God we have!
At some point in eternity past, before the foundation of the world, the Triune God took counsel and in that Divine counsel it was established that the Word of God would become flesh and dwell among us, for the purpose of reconciling sinful man back to God.
AND THIS, BEFORE MAN WAS CREATED; MUCH LESS HAVING HAD A CHANCE TO SIN!
People of God, how much surer could our salvation possibly be, if God, Who sees all of eternity at a glance, saw our fall and the depths of our sin, and even our individual sins BEFORE even the light was spoken into existence; and yet determined to suffer and die to pay the penalty for us, for the purpose of reconciling us to Himself and giving us an eternal inheritance in Christ?
Man cannot pay for sin; not even his own. He can only suffer the consequences. An eternity of punishment, separated from God’s presence and in the fires of Hell cannot begin to pay the price for sinning against the Holiness of God. Man cannot pay for sin.
Yet the wages of sin is death, and God cannot die.
And since only perfect Holiness can purge sin, there was no man who could intercede between men and God.
So God became a man, so that He could live perfectly, and die perfectly, and perfectly impart life to all who would believe in that atoning work.
God was in Christ; the perfect God/Man. I could go on and on about this until my voice gives out and my vocabulary runs dry, and still not begin to plunge the depths of this wonderful truth!
God was in Christ. God maintained all of creation, while inhabiting a frail body. God walked among us. How could I do justice to that with words? Can you imagine how the apostles must have laid awake some nights, staring at the ceiling or the stars...their minds reeling with the thought that they had walked and talked and eaten and prayed WITH God in the flesh?
Well Christian, you have as much to lay awake pondering as they. For “...though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.”
This same God-in-Christ who walked and talked with the apostles, rose bodily from the grave, ascended to the Father’s right hand where He now ministers as our Great High Priest and intercedes for us there, IN HIS GLORIFIED BODY, and we will see Him! We will see the same body that the apostles beheld and touched. We will gaze on His wounds, now glorified but visible, and we will know that He bears for eternity those wounds that we should have borne, and He bears them joyfully because He took them in order to reconcile us to God.
“Crown Him the Lord of Love,
Behold, His hands and side,
Rich wounds yet visible above
In beauty Glorified,”
Now I want you to consider how full and free is your reconciliation to God, in that HE WAS NOT COUNTING THEIR TRESPASSES AGAINST THEM...not counting your trespasses against you.
The Apostle John, in his epistles to the churches, establishes very clearly the great doctrine of Love. In them, the clearest and most profound definition of Love ever given, is offered in three words; “God is love”.
He follows that phrase with this statement: “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that GOD HAS SENT HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON INTO THE WORLD so that we might live through Him.”
Without God, we do not know love, we cannot love, for there is no love in us except that which comes from God and flows through us.
The world has many definitions of love, Christian. If you asked 50 people to write a thesis of 50 words or less defining love, you would probably get 50 different definitions. But according to what I see in the Bible, all of them would be wrong, or at best incomplete, unless they include the words, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us”.
Having said that, I want to direct your attention for a moment to the great love chapter; the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians.
This chapter, this entire epistle really, was written to a church with many problems. The paganism and rampant idol worship of the region had slithered its way into the assembly of believers in Corinth. They were spiritual babes who needed the milk of the Word and were not ready for meat. There was infighting, self-seeking, blatant sin in their midst was being condoned by most and even applauded by some, and Paul had need to give them some very basic instruction about the articles of their faith and abiding with one another successfully as those who named the name of Christ.
So when he comes to the 13th chapter he is giving them the marks, the evidences, of brotherly love to use as a guide in their dealings with one another.
That is primarily what this chapter is used for today, and we would all benefit from memorizing this chapter in full and asking God to make us the kind of Christian described here.
But today I want to admonish you to go by yourself later and read the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians in this light; it describes our God, because God is Love, and He is the perfect and infinite fulfillment of all these characteristics of love.
However for time’s sake, and because my sermon is not from this chapter, for the moment just look to one of those characteristics recorded for us in verse 5, the 4th phrase:
(love...) “...does not take into account a wrong suffered.”
People, hear me when I say, the only living being from eternity to eternity who has ever or will ever have justification in claiming that he has been wronged, is God.
It would be interesting to know how large a percentage of our lives; our time, our breath, our energies, are spent from birth to the grave, whining about how much we’ve been wronged. I needn’t elaborate on that further; probably half of this congregation today, at some point between the time we awoke and right now, have for some reason, large or small, felt wronged...if not by a family member, perhaps by that clod who pulled out in front of us on the way to church, and proceeded to drive 5 miles per hour. It is part of our fallen nature. It is a symptom of the boastful pride of life.
Besides, we live in a time when the popular worldly philosophies are fairly screaming at us from every quarter, “Protect yourself! Stand up for your rights! You’re special! (but not as special as me) You’re worth it! Be proud! Never give an inch!” and the list could cover pages.
But the fact is my friends, we are deserving of death. There is nothing we have; no comfort, no need met, no pleasure in life, not life itself - neither the air we breathe or the blood that courses through our veins, nor the joy of loved ones, or anything else our imaginations can name, that we do not owe entirely to the love and mercy of God.
Only God is perfect and perfectly holy and infinitely right, and therefore deserving of never having been wronged.
But He is wronged. He was wronged from the beginning by the very first man he created, and He is automatically wronged ever since, by every son or daughter of Adam’s race who opens the womb because we have all inherited Adam’s fallen nature and by our existence in the flesh, we wrong God.
Ever wonder if small children have a sin nature? If you do wonder, or if you think they do not, you have never had children and you don’t remember your own childhood.
God is the only, truly, wronged entity in the universe, by virtue of the fact that He is the only One who absolutely deserves to not be wronged.
Yet He was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, NOT COUNTING THEIR TRESPASSES AGAINST THEM...NOT TAKING INTO ACCOUNT A WRONG SUFFERED.
Now take care not to miss this point! He was in Christ, RECONCILING THE WORLD TO HIMSELF.
It doesn’t say He was reconciling believers to Himself. For while we were yet helpless, sinners, enemies of God, Christ died for us.
He was reconciling the WORLD! Yes, only those who come to Him by faith in the shed blood of Christ will appropriate to themselves that free gift of right standing with God...
...but God was reconciling the WORLD to Himself.
This ‘reconciling’, is the healing of a breach, or a break in fellowship and relationship. When a married couple has a disagreement, they must eventually be reconciled to each other in order to maintain a healthy relationship. The thing that caused the strife, the contention, must never be allowed to become more important in their minds than their relationship to each other. If it does, then the relationship ends, the fellowship is broken, and in most cases the thing that caused it becomes a moot issue by virtue of the fact that they are no longer together.
There has to be reconciliation. In a marriage it takes desire and effort on the part of both parties to put that difference in its proper perspective and bring reconciliation.
But between man and God there could be no joint effort. All of Adam’s race is dead in trespasses and sins, and God, looking about and seeing no man, amazed that there was no one to intercede, brought salvation to Him by His own strong arm...and a Redeemer came to Zion!
“Jesus paid it all;
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow!”
God has paid the price for us, not taking into account the wrong suffered, but has paid it all...FOR all.
Those who enter eternity without Him, spending eternity separated from Him and His love, will do so, not in payment for their sins...HE PAID ALREADY...but for their rejection of His gift!
It will be like a man serving a life term in prison, who is pardoned by the Governor, and when he is told that he is free and the cell door is unlocked and left standing open, chooses to sit in that cell for the rest of his life with an open door before him because he hates the Governor!
There is no longer a debt against him, but he insists in his own folly, on paying a debt that is already covered.
God was in Christ, reconciling the WORLD to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. The WORLD.
What exciting news! We must tell them! And that takes us to our final point, the third phrase of this verse: HE HAS COMMITTED TO US THE WORD OF RECONCILIATION.
Believer in Christ, you who call yourself His disciple, He has committed to YOU, the word of reconciliation.
Little Johnny’s mother handed him two large chocolate cookies. As she did, she said, “Johnny, one of these is for you. You don’t have to share it with anyone, and no one will take any part of it from you. The other cookie is for your friend, Billy. You may eat your cookie now and then take Billy’s to him, or take them both to his house and eat them there.
Well, God has given you much more. He has adopted you into His eternal family and made you an heir and joint-heir with Jesus Christ. All the riches of Heaven are yours.
God has also handed you another gift exactly like yours, wrapped and tied with a pretty ribbon, and said, “Give this to Billy”.
What will you do?
What are your justifications for not obeying the commission that has been given us?
Will you feel like a fool? Jesus let them wrap a purple robe over His shoulders and press a crown made of thorns down on his head, and as he stood there bleeding they pummeled Him with their fists and spit on Him and coaxed Him to prophecy.
Will they hate you? They hated him with all the hatred Hell had to fill them with.
Will they reject you? They shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Let His blood be on our heads and on our children’s!” and then they nailed Him to a cross.
Whether they accept your message is not your responsibility. To you has been committed the word of reconciliation.
You are an ambassador for Christ, who counted not their trespasses against them. As though God were entreating through you, beg them if need be, to appropriate to themselves the gift that you’ve been given. Implore them to be reconciled to God.
If you are here today, for whatever reason you first came in the door, and you have never recognized your own need for salvation and believed on the shed blood of Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for your sins, I am here today as an ambassador for Christ. As though it was Him speaking through me, I implore you...I beg you...be reconciled to God.
He has paid the price in full. He has made the reconciliation and requires nothing from you but faith. You have wronged him, and you have no claims to yourself. You have no quarter to accuse God; the sin is all on your part, but the free gift is all on His. Today, while the Holy Spirit still calls you, be reconciled to God.
He made Him who knew no sin, to become the physical embodiment of all sin for all time, and nailed it forever to Calvary’s cross. He has taken the decree of debt against you, and with a big stamp in red ink, has stamped your debt,
“PAID: NO PENALTY”
Reach out and take the gift. Be reconciled to God. Know His peace; and praise and glorify His name through the ages of eternity.
