Thrust Statement: God wants His children to separate themselves from the world.

Scripture Reading: Romans 6: 1-10; 2 Corinthians 5:17

            God performs a miracle in the rebirth of every individual. When one is born from above, one is raised from the dead to live a “new life.” In this “new life,” one is reborn for eternity. Every rebirth represents a death that one voluntarily enters. Through spiritual death, one becomes a “new creation” in Christ Jesus. When one dies with Christ, one dies to one kind of life and is born to another kind of life. In Christian baptism, one experiences more than just an ethical change in one’s behavior. In one’s acceptance of Christ in Christian baptism, one experiences real identification with God. The rebirth is not just an emotional experience—it is that—but identification. In the words of William Barclay: “Christianity can never be only an experience of the inner being; it must be a life in the market-place.”[1] The outcome of this rebirth is depicted as a “new creation.” Christians have put off the “old man” and put on the “new man” (Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9). Again, Barclay writes: “The man died to one kind of life and rose to another; he died to the old life of sin and rose to the new life of grace.”[2]

NEW LIFE/NEW CREATION

One is to live a new life because one is now a “new creation” from God in Christ Jesus. Prior to the rebirth, one is dead in sin. What does the “new life” mean to you? What does a “new creation” in Christ mean to you? The “new life” and the “new creation” necessitate a change in one’s ethical behavior.  Has this “new creation” brought about a change in your way of living? Has this “new creation” in Jesus brought about a change in your relationship with other people? Has this “new life” and this “new creation” infiltrated your conversations about redemption? Do you now think heaven?  Paul says, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).[3] All Christians are dead to sin. In other words, sin has lost its influence in their lives. As you reflect back upon your own baptism, what do you remember? The very act of baptism represents dedication to the service of the Trinity—into whose name every believer is baptized (Matthew 28:18-20).

Faith Demands Consecration

Christians are made dead to sin. Thus, every believer should rise to a consecrated life just as he or she rose, as it were, from the grave. The very nature of our profession of faith demands purity of life. As you reflect upon your death, burial, and resurrection with Christ, you must come face to face with the question: Has the old life departed? When people see you, do they see Christ? Since you have been raised with Christ in baptism, has there been a change in your lifestyle and your conversation? What do you think about? If you knew that Jesus would come today, would there be a change in your talk and life? In baptism, everyone is confronted with a decision in which one cuts his or her life in two.

At the point of baptism, one, in one sense, rips the old self up by the roots and begins life all over again (Romans 6:5-10). Today, we wish to remind Macie Michele Johnson, who was baptized on February 2, 2003, to remember her death and now her new life in Christ. Also, I wish to remind each person about his or her death to sin and his or her new life to righteousness in Jesus in order that one might bring honor to God. Every believer should rise to a sanctified life just as Christ rose from the grace. Has your baptism made a change in your affections and thinking? Is there a difference in your life after your baptism? Are you now dead to sin? Are you now alive to God? One should reread Romans 6 and reflect upon these words in relationship to one’s own walk with God. Are you a servant of sin or are you a servant of righteousness?

Belief and Behavior Go Hand In Hand

            What about your behavior? As you reflect upon behavior, do you compare your activities with someone else? Or do you examine yourself in light of God’s Holy Word? In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, he issued a final warning in the closing of his epistle: “^Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5). Again, Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians, addresses the folly of someone testing himself or herself by someone else’s manners: “Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, ^5 for each one should carry his own load” (Galatians 5:4-5). Have you ever said, “I am as good as he or she is”? We should evaluate ourselves by the Word of God, not someone else’s behavior. It is not that Christians cannot emulate good performance by others, but God’s children must not use someone else’s deeds to justify his or her actions. Two wrongs do not make a right!

What Christians believe and how they behave go hand in hand; one cannot separate conviction and performance. For Paul obligation and belief go together.  It is in this vein that Paul admonishes the Corinthians to remember: “So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it” (2 Corinthian 5:9). What is your purpose? Is your ambition to please God? When one is born a second time, one’s target should always be to satisfy God. For one to give pleasure to God, there must be transformation in one’s conduct and thoughts. To the Christians at Colossae, Paul calls attention to the necessity of a change in conduct and thinking. He wants them to reflect upon the implications of their resurrection with Him:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Colossians 3:1-4).

Change in One’s Affection/Renovation in One’s Thinking

For Paul, the new birth places emphasis on a change in one’s affection and a renovation in one’s thinking. The Christian not only sets his heart upon things above, but he also thinks heaven. Every believer now is a minister of the reconciliation. It is the duty of Bubba Wilson, Todd Driver, Debra Newton, Gallia Rohm, Curtis Creel, Mickey Brooks, Michael Brooks, Carrol Brooks, Don Snell, and Tammy Salinas to persuade sinners to be reconciled to God. Paul writes: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).  Every believer should seek to tell the story of the cross, even in the face of opposition. Paul reminds the saints at Thessalonica:

You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure. We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you (1 Thessalonians 2:1-3).

MOTIVATION FOR MINISTRY

The Fear of the Lord

            As Paul contemplates this ministry of reconciliation, he says,” Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11). The New Jerusalem Bible translates this verse: “And so it is with the fear of the Lord always in mind that we try to win people over.”[4] Do you fear the Lord? But what does it mean to fear the Lord?  This is not the kind of fear that a child awaits from his/her parents for disobedience. This fear is the fear that prevents one from desecrating a holy place. It is not so much terror as it is awe and reverence as you serve God. Moses asked the children of God: “And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 10:12).

Solomon says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline” (Proverbs 1:7). Again, the Holy Spirit says, “Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for; through the fear of the LORD a man avoids evil” (16:6). Without this cleansing fear, one cannot serve God acceptably. The psalmist says, “The fear of the LORD is pure” (Psalms 19:9). Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, is trying to persuade the Corinthians of his own “fear of the Lord,” that is his to say, his sincerity of admiration and veneration. He wants them to understand his motives. He says in his defense:

Since we know what it means to fear the Lord, we try to help people accept the truth about us. God knows what we really are, and I hope that in your hearts you know, too. We are not trying to prove ourselves to you again, but we are telling you about ourselves so you will be proud of us (2 Corinthians 5:11-12).[5]

            Paul reacts over the feedback of others about his actions. He does not want his message injured.  He is conscious that any communication is judged in the context of one’s character. Paul desires to avoid even the appearance of evil lest his message be rejected. Thus, he lets the Corinthians know:

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 (5:13-15).

Paul insists that there has been only one motivating factor in his service—to serve God and to assist the Corinthians in their relationship with God. Paul lived for the One who died and was raised again. Do you live for the One who died and was raised again? What is your motivating factor in your service? Is it to serve God and the saints in Christ Jesus?

A New Creation

            Paul goes right to the heart of the moving motivation of it all—“he died for all.”  To Paul the Christian is “in Christ” (5:17). Every believer died with Christ and arose a new person. The hands of God freshly created him/her in this rebirth. In this newness of life, each person has a set of new standards—the Word of God.  In this newness of life, each person has a new agenda—seeking first the Kingdom of God. God wants His children to separate themselves from the world around them. Christians are not to walk in darkness. It is in this regard that Paul admonishes the Ephesians:

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.   Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them (Ephesians 5:8-11).

            When one is a new creation in Christ Jesus, then there is a new set of priorities. One is careful about his/her activities in the Lord. Again, Paul cautions the Christians at Ephesus:

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (5:15-21).

Every saint is to allow Jesus Christ to work out His will in his or her life. The author of Hebrews expresses it this way:

May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen (Hebrews 13:20-21).

IMPLICATIONS OF JESUS’ DEATH

Live for Him

Jesus died that individuals might live for Him. Paul captures this concept in his second letter to Corinth, when he writes: “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” (2 Corinthians 5:15).  As stated above, this truth is also explained in his letter to the Christians in Rome. In this Epistle, Paul lets the Romans know that when Christ died, they, too, died in Him and with Him. He wanted them to understand that in their baptism, they identified themselves with Christ. He says, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4).  Again, he records:

The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.  Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness (6:10-13).

            When we were baptized, we died in order that we might live for God. This is the positive aspect of our identification with Christ. We not only died with Him, but we were raised with Him in order that we might “live a new life” (6:4). We, as well as all Christians, are to bear fruit for God’s glory: “So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God” (7:4). Jesus died that we might live through Him. Jesus was raised from the dead in order that the “set apart” ones might bear fruit to God.  John jots down: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). Christians should never forget that Christ’s death was our death. John Phillips makes the succinct observation about Christ’s death:

His burial was our burial; His resurrection was our resurrection. He not only died for me; He died as me! So far as God is concerned, we are already on the resurrection side of the grave and it but remains for us to realize this truth and appropriate it, and the victory is assured.[6]

Every Christian should remember the words of Paul, “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” (1 Corinthians 5:15). If one has been to the cross and has been saved, how can one spend the rest of his or her life in selfishness? In 1858 Frances R. Havergal (1836–1879), while visiting Germany, saw a painting of the crucifixion with the words underneath: “I did this for thee, What hast thou done for Me?” Following this moving moment, she wrote a poem based on that motto. Shortly thereafter she threw the poem into the fire, but the paper came out unharmed. Her father encouraged her to polish the poem, and it was later published. Christians today still sing this poem set to music. Listen to the words:

I gave My life for thee, My precious blood I shed, That thou might’st ransomed be, And quickened from the dead. I gave, I gave, My life for thee, What hast thou given for Me?

CONCLUSION

            Christ died that we might live through Him and for Him and with Him. Paul tells the Christians at Thessalonica: “He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:10). What does it mean to you to say that you are a “new creation” in Christ Jesus. Are you conscious of the fact that you are reconciled to God through Jesus? Are you aware of the actuality that you are an ambassador of God?  Are you cognizant of the truth of God’s righteousness that is imputed to you through Jesus Christ? Listen again as Paul caps off what he says about a new creation:

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 (2 Corinthians 5:18-21).

            Christians must do something about what God has done. Christians can share the message of salvation and live a holy life. Needless to say, one’s comprehension of what God has done places a tremendous responsibility on everyone who has heard of God’s act of love. Christians have been entrusted with the message of reconciliation. We, today, just like the apostle who heard the Good News and accepted the Good News of God’s deed, have a responsibility of telling this story to others. Being a Christian means being a missionary. When one understands the cost of redemption, one will become a missionary to everyone he or she knows. Also, when one recognizes the price tag of redemption, one will change his or her affections and renovate his or her thinking.

This appreciation of redemption will result in one’s change of his or her ethical behavior. Still, having said this, we need to let men and women know that they do not have to become perfect before they can accept the love of God. Every believer must see his or her work as arising from God.  The act of God in and through Christ is the means of reconciling humanity to Himself and to one another. In Christ, we are called upon to unite because of what God has accomplished for us in Christ. God came to men and women in love and suffered for them in Christ so that all—Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free, black and white—could be united with Him and with each other. With God there are no first or second-class citizens. This act of love in Christ binds all men and women together. Charles W. Foreman has captured the very essence of God’s act in Christ:

At last came the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. It came in Jesus Christ. In him men saw God, not just giving commandments to love, but giving himself in love. In the cross, men saw not just the sufferings of a thoroughly good man, but the sufferings of God himself for the sake of men. In that man Jesus Christ they saw somehow God acting for man. Instead of men making sacrifices to appease God, as had so long been done, God himself assumed the burden and suffered the consequences of evil for the sake of man.[7]