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The Change Within
2 Corinthians 5:1-21
Pastor Tom Fuller
What sense is most important to you? I’ve heard it said that people who lose one of their five senses tend to develop one or more of the other ones to compensate: blind people can smell or hear better than others. What is for you? Most of the time we combine our senses to give us accurate picture of the world – but did you know that your senses actually fool you on a regular basis?
Your eyes, for instance. Ever wonder why movies look the way they do? In reality, a motion picture is nothing more than 24 individual still pictures moving across a light every second. Your eye knows that it is 24 frames, but your brain interprets those frames and turns them into a fluid motion that looks as real as anything you see around you. The phenomena is known as “persistence of vision.” Your eyes allow each frame to remain on the retina just a little longer so it tends to blur into the next one – it’s the reason that when you look into the sun then close your eyes you see spots.
That’s not all – each of our senses has built in mechanisms that fool us so that we can make sense out of the world around us. Have you ever played the game of sticking your hand into a bag and trying to guess what’s in it by touch only – or how about by smell only?
Even our emotional senses can be fooled, or manipulated into making us feel, think, or even do things that we wouldn’t otherwise do.
This concept applies to our walk as Christians as well. Too often the things we see going on around us, and our interpretation of those things leads us down the wrong path of reality. So Paul the Apostle this week attempts to give us a dose of real reality – as a way to wake us from the dream state we often live in, and help us live lives more purely devoted to God.
In Chapter 4 Paul has just finished talking about how even though we go through terrible trials that kill us on the outside – inside His Spirit renews and strengthens us. Fortunately, that’s not all that happens – we don’t end up as some broken down body limping along forever but really strong inside – you know, the “you’re only as young as you feel” kind of thing.
No – watch this.
5:1 Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
It makes sense for Paul to use tent analogies – he was a tent maker by trade. He uses the tent to represent the temporary nature of our bodies here on earth. The word “destroyed” in verse 1 means to dismantle a tent.
Have you ever been in a tent in a really big storm? You know how temporary they feel. (survival camping, coast camping). Our bodies are the same way, really. You are only one heartbeat away from death. In many ways it’s a miracle that we go on day to day.
But Paul is saying: “there is a better reality waiting for you – a body that wasn’t created in a mother’s womb but by God Himself.”
Another possible way to render this comes from the United Bible Society Translators Guide to the New Testament: "For we know that our bodies here on earth are like tents. And if they die, God will give us a house in his place, which is not made by human beings. Rather it is made by God himself, and it will last forever."
Right now we “groan” Paul says – I know what that’s like – I groan more and more as my body gets aches and pains and weaknesses. But I think there is a greater sense of groaning that Paul is getting to – the groaning of trying to live amidst the suffering and the attacks that come upon us while living on this earth.
And here’s a question – just how comfortable are you on earth? If given the choice right now – how quick would you be to say, “yah, beam me up, Scotty, I want to go to heaven”?
Peter calls us “strangers” in this world – too often we are can become like Lot, who looked toward Sodom, ended up living there because of the “well watered plains” and sooner or later was entrenched in that society. If we get caught up in the flash the world has to offer then we will end up clinging to it and it clinging to us.
The question is, where’s home?
6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 We live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
• Where are you most at home? Have a light touch here on earth – like camping.
• Don’t judge a book by its cover – a flashy appearance doesn’t mean goodness underneath.
• We live by trust – not circumstances – Don’t think God isn’t moving in your life just because circumstances look bad.
• Are you ready for the judgment seat of Christ? It’s like a combination of visit with the IRS and standing on the medal stand at the Olympics. Jesus will help us evaluate our lives and how much we trusted or didn’t trust in Him, and reward us for the things that went right – while wiping away the things that didn’t. Are you living with that appointment in mind?
11 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. 12 We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.
You see, for Paul’s opponents, image was everything. You gotta look like an apostle, act like an apostle, and operate your life like an apostle who’s in control. But this isn’t a movie or a play with actors – its real. God is real and He really is holy and pure. Sin is real, and its effects and the sin nature – and hell.
Ministry shouldn’t be about being impressive, it should be about being “plain” before God – honest, sincere. We should stop taking pride in the big production, the big church, the flashy presentation – seeming for all the world to have everything going right for you.
Life isn’t like that in the Lord. Ministry isn’t like that. There are ruts, there are trials, there are what seem like dead ends – and there is opposition.
Paul says “what is in the heart” should be what we focus on – are people being drawn into God’s kingdom and His presence. Is your life being transformed or is your image being polished?
13 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. 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 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.
Are you compelled by Christ’s love to serve Him no matter the consequences? Or when the going gets tough do you run away? To some, sticking by the Lord even though you are getting trounced might seem like madness. But, as Paul says, we should no longer live for ourselves – and our view of the world and of ministry should change.
16 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.
If you remember the Star Wars movies – what set them apart from anything before was that the ships were dirty – dinged – even downright dingy. It provided a realism never before seen in science fiction.
Life in the Lord is like that – from a worldly view we think everyone should always be bright shiny new – big smiles everyone, smiles! In reality we get dinged up as we suffer trials and attacks. But that’s the outside. Our bodies, our emotions, our outward appearance might not seem that strong – but inwardly is totally another story.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
In reality, if you are a Christian you have changed races. You were in Adam’s race – but now you are in Christ’s race. The old ways’ time has ended – it’s time for a new life.
But you say – sure seems like the old struggles are still there to me! Indeed – Paul says in Romans:
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
And, as he said in 2 Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 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. 20 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.
See, Paul isn’t just talking about the decaying physical body, but about the decaying old nature. Appearance is deceiving about what is going on in the heart, where Christ has reconciled us to God and given us the opportunity to see others reconciled as well.
We are His ambassadors – but we are bruised ambassadors.
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
This is truly a profound statement – one that we could spend hours and hours studying.
Charles Spurgeon calls this one verse “the heart of the gospel.” The entire gospel can be summed up in these words.
Jesus lived a totally pure life – something no one has ever done before or since. God, through His love for us, treated Jesus as if He were a sinner. Isaiah 53:12 says He was “numbered among the transgressors.” Then God laid on His shoulders the punishment for all of our sins.
But because Jesus lived a totally sinless life and was not stained with the sin nature – He could take the punishment, and satisfy the wrath of God.
Jesus coming back to life proved that the fix took – the payment was made, and so now we might become right with God and actually become like Him – totally pure and sinless ourselves.
You see, in the end, the only real thing that separates you from God isn’t your sin – God forgave that through the cross – but your unwillingness to accept that sacrifice – to reject Jesus.
Mark 3:28-29 I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. 29 But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."
Without going into detail – the blaspheme against the Spirit is saying that Spirit in Jesus is from the devil – akin to rejecting Him.
Matthew 7:22-23 Many will say to me on that day, ’Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Conclusion
So what to take away from this study? I want to focus in on the change that happens to us when we receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
1. The change is immediate and permanent, but not always apparent
2. The change on the outside is preceded by change on the inside
3. The change should be constant, if slow, in one direction
4. The change happens as we yield, not as we work
But realize that unless the change happens – heart of stone for heart of flesh as Ezekiel says – the old will be forever barred from God.
