Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been referring to it as the “new” year, just we do every January when we switch out our completed calendars for new ones. But really, there is nothing intrinsically different between 2024 and 2023 other than the change of the last number. Just to prove my point, I went back and looked at my old calendar from last year and sure enough, there was also a January 21 in that year as well. On the last day of December, we celebrate the final hours of one year as we roll into a new year, but if you’ve ever noticed, there is no magical change that happens between 11:59 p.m. on December 31 and 12:00 a.m. on January 1. Often times the way we use the word “new” may not be in the strictest sense of the word at all, but may refer to something used that is just “new” to us. But even when something is genuinely new, the novelty of newness wears off rather quickly.
But as it’s used in our verses from 2 Corinthians, “new” represents that most dramatic change anyone could ever experience. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (v.17). The newness a person undergoes in Christ is the most radical change that can happen! It starts with trading in self-made notions and narratives of who we are and who God is for reality. Like a magician’s disappearing act, the old “pretty good” or “better than others” version we perceived of ourselves has suddenly vanished. And as it turns out, the depiction of God we had constructed who is just tickled as long as everyone is trying their best and doesn’t bother getting bent out of shape over sin – such a god doesn’t actually exist.
No, the change we’ve experienced started with the revelation of who we really are and who God really is: real sinners absolutely repugnant to a righteous God. Only then, though, is the full picture able to be seen, as the gospel reveals God’s real love that makes us righteous saints. Who we were is not who we are. Condemned sinners have become confirmed saints. The old has gone, the new is here! It’s true! In place of the damnation we deserved is the salvation that God has secured! Praise God, we have been changed in the most profound way possible – and that for eternity!
That change changes how we look at other people. “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view” (v.16). We see people differently because what Christ has done for us makes us different! We don’t see people the same way we used to. And it’s true. People who used to make our blood boil are souls for whom Jesus died. People who are polar opposites of us politically are souls for whom Jesus died. People who have no filter almost every time they open their mouths are souls for whom Jesus died. People we would otherwise want absolutely nothing to do with in life are souls for whom Jesus died. I see all of them differently now because I am different. I have changed. And I attach to them a value not that the world does (or doesn’t!), but the value of priceless worth that God attaches to each soul. This changed view we have of others also happens to line up very well with one of the reasons God changes us in Christ: we’re charged.
When we’re changed, it leads us to see that we’re also charged; we are entrusted with a task. But before we further explore what that means, we must recognize that the sequence of these two things – being changed and charged – matters. The order in which they happen matters.
If we jump right to Jesus’ charge before we’re changed, everything is backwards. We then view Jesus’ charge and our ability to carry it out as the prerequisite to God changing how he feels about us. If we do a good job, then he favors us; if we don’t, then he doesn’t. We see his charge to us as an obligation to be fulfilled so that our status before God changes. We cling to Christ’s charge in hopes that our accomplishment of it might cause him to think and feel differently about us. But that’s backwards.
And it is this confusion that turns off many to Christianity – and understandably so! Their perception is that God lays out his demands and prohibitions for us to abide by, favoring only those who follow through with them. Christianity is viewed as a restrictive form of religious oppression or enslavement that only the weak, the disenfranchised, or the brainwashed are sucked into. Then, led blindly by a cult-like commitment, Christians try to satisfy a domineering God in the hope of achieving a better status in the life to come, a hope that is based on how well they adhere to his charge of unquestioning obedience.
So it is instrumental that we understand the proper order: changed first, then charged. Paul stated what initiated that change in verse 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.” First, Jesus died, and he died for all – not just for those who made his list. Not just for the obedient. Not just for the religious. Not just for Christians. He died… for all. That death changed our lives so that we live for the one who died for us. And living for the one who died for us means desiring to conduct our lives according to his will.
What is his will? What has Jesus charged us, his believers to do? “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 people’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” (v.18-20).
The word Paul uses – reconciliation – isn’t used as much outside of the Bible, so maybe it helps us to think of the word “restore” instead, even if it isn’t an exact synonym. We are familiar with the need for old, uncared for, or broken items or pieces of furniture to be restored, or made like new again.
That restoration (reconciliation) is exactly what we need. God’s creation, including mankind, was perfect right from the beginning, just as it was when he created it by the power of his spoken word. But sin changed that and brought everything, including mankind, into ruin and destruction. Our sin separated us from God, cutting us off from him forever.
But Paul is saying that God changed our eternity by reconciling – restoring – us through Jesus Christ. If it was our sin that separated us from God, and at the cross Jesus rendered full payment for our sin, every last one, then there is no longer any sin remaining to separate us from God. We have been reconciled – restored – into a perfectly lovely relationship with him.
Now, having discovered this lifeline of grace for ourselves, and fully believing it, God charges us to make it known to everyone else, to be, as he calls us, “Christ’s ambassadors.” We have been restored – but so have all people; now we – you and me, those who know it – are called to go out and make it known to those who don’t.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that God would charge us with such a task because anyone in sales knows that the absolute best way to sell a product is through personal testimony or word-of-mouth. A person who has experienced the benefits of a product or service is much more likely to lead someone else to purchase that product or service because they are the proof that it works. An infomercial including the science and the data validating the effectiveness of a product or service might be fascinating, but that alone will not typically generate sales. A humorous commercial might garner some attention about the product or service, but it doesn’t generally drive significant sales, either. But get someone personally talking about and demonstrating all the ways the product or service works for them, and people will buy it.
You are the proof that Jesus Christ does what he says he will, that he works, that Christianity “works” (to use a term that appeals to our pragmatic culture)!
Others see it in your thoughtfulness expressed to them and your kind words of support. They notice it in how calm you are in stressful, anxious moments. They get wind of it by how quick you are to forgive, how loving you are even toward those unloving toward you. It stands out as you relay the joy and privilege of getting to be a parent raising kids, rather than the complaining and the burdens they hear from other parents.
And, lest we all overlook the signature characteristic of Christianity, they hear genuine apologies and a willingness to say sorry and own up to our mistakes and our sins. We confess to others when we have done wrong or wronged them personally. Who better to serve as ambassadors than those who know first hand the joy of living in reconciliation with God?!? Who better to carry out this important charge than those who have so clearly been changed?!?
Paul is even modeling what it looks like for those who have been changed to then carry out this charge. As an ambassador, He addresses his readers in the same way he is encouraging them to address others: “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” (v.20-21).
Paul is not just talking the talk, but walking the walk by demonstrating exactly what he’s calling us to do. He is teaching his hearers about reconciliation and as one who has himself been changed – reconciled – he is carrying out his charge of encouraging the Corinthians to be reconciled. He invites them to believe that what God did for Paul in Christ Jesus, he also did for them (“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ…”).
Changed, Paul carries out his charge. Let us follow suit, always making certain that grace – and not guilt – is what compels us to carry out that charge.
As we carry out this charge, remember the driving force behind it. Read the first five words of verse fourteen again: “For Christ’s love compels us.” We could imagine a lot of other words or phrases in place of “Christ’s love,” that could prompt us. But Paul didn’t write that “guilt” compels us. It isn’t “the hope that we’re good enough for God” that compels us. It isn’t the impossible desire to please everyone else that compels us. It isn’t even that we love God so so so so much that compels us.
Nope. It’s Christ’s love – his love for us – that compels us. He loves you. That’s all I need to hear for me to want to change the world for Christ, just as he has changed me with his love.