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2 Corinthians 5:10-17
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. 12 We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. 13 For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.1 The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
So let me read this section for you, beginning in verse 10, chapter 5. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil? Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not, not about what is in the heart.
Joel Brooks:For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us. Because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Joel Brooks:Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Lord, give us insight into your word, an insight that transforms us. Your word says in Colossians, to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. So in this moment, may it dwell in us richly and make us more like you, Jesus. May my words fall to the ground and blow away and be remembered no more, but Lord, may your words remain and changes. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. Paul begins this section verse 11 with the therefore, meaning he's connecting what he's about to say with what happened before. And he says, therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. What's the fear of the Lord? Judgment.
Joel Brooks:That's his fear. And I think he's talking about a couple of things here. 1, he's talking every Christian at some point has understood that they will give an account of their life to Jesus. And they were scared everybody. We we've all known that fear in this.
Joel Brooks:Some people, it leads them to repentance, just knowing that. And so, so I think Paul's talking some about that. Yes. I mean, he, he knew the fear of the Lord, but also he's looking out at other people who don't know the Lord and he knows that they are going to stand in judgment before God. He says, knowing this, that everybody will stand before God and give an account of their life.
Joel Brooks:We persuade others, meaning that he passionately now is gonna go out and he's gonna preach the gospel. Don't let the word persuade kind of, you know, give you a little hiccup there because we talked about that a few weeks back. How Paul says that he's not going to use cunning. He's not going to tamper with God's word. He's not going to use deceitful methods and trying to, to get people into the faith.
Joel Brooks:That's not what Paul means here when he uses persuade. He's meaning that he is, he's proclaiming the gospel, and he hopes you believe it. He wants you to believe it. That's what persuade is. And if you go through the book of acts, you're gonna find, in chapters, you know, 17, 18, and 19 chapter 26, chapter 28, Paul's going to be described as trying to persuade people of the gospel.
Joel Brooks:That's that's what he's trying to do is convince you the death resurrection of Jesus. This fear of the Lord, it's so tempting just to say it's a, this kind of reverential all, but it's more than that. It's, it's it's kind of like, you know, at at times with your father, you you know he loves you at the same time. There's this there is this kind of respectful fear, And Paul is thinking in light of that judgment day, he does have to give an account of his life. He does, and he wants it to be a good day.
Joel Brooks:And that's why Paul over and over again, he says, and he is dedicating himself to good works. He works more. He said, I actually do more than all the other apostles. He actually says that at one point. Says, but it's actually Christ at work in me.
Joel Brooks:So Christ receives the glory through the work that he does. But he is living in light of that day, both when he looks at others and he's like, they need to know. And also, just he wants his life to be a testimony to God and he receives glory from that. Paul moves on, after this verse well, he says, but what we are is known to God. And I hope it is known also to your conscience.
Joel Brooks:We're not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you calls to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearances and not about what is in the heart. It's kind of seems like Paul, this is a very complicated argument from Paul. There's a lot of force, meaning for this, for this, there's a lot of therefores, meaning he's connecting, he's connecting, he's connecting. Essentially after Paul talks about, I'm trying to persuade people. He says, once again, I guess I have to defend my apostleship.
Joel Brooks:Okay. I really am an apostle. I might not look like an apostle, but I wish you could just look inside my heart and see what's there. That's what he's saying here. I wish you could just see.
Joel Brooks:And then you would actually boast of me, not be ashamed of me. And then he gets to verse 13. He says, For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. Very unusual verse here that the, for, if we are beside ourselves, you could translate for if we are out of our mind, it is for God.
Joel Brooks:If we are in our right mind, it is for you. Now, I think Paul is talking about a couple of things here. One is is a more generic. He's like, when you look at my life and you look at my life of suffering, you got to just think Paul is crazy. Well, I mean, look at, look how he loses life.
Joel Brooks:And I think that's, that's a part of it there. But Paul actually is using some very specific terms that he used in his previous letter to the Corinthians and first Corinthians 14. If you just go ahead and flip back there, first Corinthians 14, and want to find a lot of these same terms there. 1st Corinthians 14:2, Paul says, for one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God, For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the spirit. Look at verse 18.
Joel Brooks:I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in the church, I would rather speak 5 words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue brothers do not be children in your thinking, be infants and evil, but in your thinking be mature. And the law, it is written by people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners, will I speak to this people? And even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord. Thus tongues are a sign, not for believers, but for unbelievers while prophecy is a sign, not for unbelievers, but for believers.
Joel Brooks:If therefore the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? All right. So there's a lot of the same specific terminology that Paul is using in this argument. And second Corinthians as he used in first Corinthians 14, he says essentially to the Corinthians and the first letter says, listen, all right, when you speak in a tongue, it's it's between you and it's between God. Alright?
Joel Brooks:It's it's you before God. If others hear you, they're going to think you're out of your mind. That's what he says in, in chapter 14. And then he says, I, on the other hand, would rather speak just 5 intelligible words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue. Okay.
Joel Brooks:So here you have, let's, let's read through 2nd Corinthians again. Here he says, for, if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. And I think what Paul is talking about, and I know this sounds strange, but I'm gonna tell you why I think he talks about it here. Listen, if I speak in tongues, if I, if I have one of those ecstatic experiences that that's, that's for God, but for you, I'm going to be sober minded and I'm going to give you instruction.
Joel Brooks:And this is why he's telling the Corinthians this. They were absolutely fascinated, obsessed with the spiritual gifts, not just all the spiritual gifts, but especially the supernatural spiritual gifts. And so, things like tongues, things like prophecy, things like healings or miracles. They were obsessed with these things. And they really thought that if you were to be a spiritual person, if you were to be a great spiritual person, then you had to have these things that that's, that's how you showed you were great.
Joel Brooks:And so you had these super apostles coming in, which Paul is going to talk about later. And second Corinthians, these self described super apostles, and they're coming in and they're using all of these supernatural gifts and they're wowing everybody. And they're having these ecstatic spiritual experiences very publicly for everybody. They're having visions and they're sharing them and people are just being wowed by their visions. And they're thinking a whole lot about them.
Joel Brooks:And I think Paul is contrasting his life with theirs. You're saying, I know I've seen the danger of how you guys walk. There's nothing wrong with having ecstatic experiences. There's nothing wrong with tongues and healings and and all these miracles. They're great.
Joel Brooks:I mean, he says they're great. We should pray for them. Because, however, that's between me and the Lord. It's not it's not a public display here. With you, what you need is to grow up, and he says that, you know, in 1st Corinthians 14, you need to quit being kids.
Joel Brooks:Let me talk to you like mature people. I'm going to be sober minded in my words to you. I'm going to walk you through truth. I mean, picture the situation with you have these super apostles, I feel like I should always do super apostles, and then you have Paul, the apostle. And Paul's here, you know, I always kind of picture him as short kind of hunched over.
Joel Brooks:He's probably missing teeth, you know, he's been stoned, scars, he's got all this. It says that he trembled before them. He came in weakness, a weak bodily presence, stuttering his words. He's been homeless. He's been hungry.
Joel Brooks:He's always just coming out of prison. Then you have super apostles, the most successful ministry you can imagine, hordes of people coming to hear them. They live very comfortable lives. They they have all these visions, these ecstatic experiences that they're happy to tell all these people about. Now, you picture these 2 next to each other, who would you like to join?
Joel Brooks:Who would you like to be with? That's why Paul's defending his apostleship here and he's actually going to build on this argument later. You know, we love the verse 17, where it says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, oldest passed away, behold, the newest come. I mean, I love that verse. I'm sure you love it.
Joel Brooks:Probably memorize it as a child, but you probably memorized it in a vacuum. I bet nobody really, I never did, understood the argument leading up to it. There's a therefore right there, therefore, meaning in light of what we're talking about before, you need to come to this verse. Hopefully, when we get there, we'll see this in a different light. So, that's why I think Paul's talking about both his suffering and also just this issue of tongues or ecstatic experiences and how drawn they were to that, they really thought that proved that you were spiritually superior.
Joel Brooks:Verse 14 says, for the love of Christ controls us. Right there, that's a subjunctive. It's it's not your love of Christ, it's Christ's love controls us. Right? Christ is the subject of this love.
Joel Brooks:Alright? So his love for you is the controlling factor for your life. That's what Paul says. The love that Christ has shown me, that's the thing that matters. That is the controlling factor for my life is his love for me.
Joel Brooks:Then, he explains the gospel. Christ loves me, and he says, because we've concluded this that one has died for all, therefore, all have died. That is the most illogical argument you could possibly write. I mean, you would expect one died for all, therefore, the rest survived. I mean, that's that's how it makes sense.
Joel Brooks:He died for everybody, therefore, we all live. And Paul says, no, no, no, no. Christ died for all, therefore, we all died. I mean, we we When we're united with him, we died with him on a cross. Our old life died.
Joel Brooks:The, the, the person we were died with Christ as we were United to him. And he says, and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. So, our old self has died that now that we are alive, we don't go back to our old life. We have this new life and this new life is lived out for him. And this is the gospel that's always doing is explaining right here the gospel.
Joel Brooks:Christ loves us. Christ died for us and our life died with him and he's given us new life, not to live unto ourselves, but to live to God. From now on, there's another connection, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. And what he is saying here is we now have a different measuring stick for how we evaluate ministry or success or hope.
Joel Brooks:It says, when we once looked at Jesus, before we were converted, we looked at Jesus and we said, what a waste. And what a waste. Here's here's this poor Jewish man nailed to a cross, stripped naked, humiliated as the powers of the world laughed at him. What a meaningless, worthless, pathetic death. And that's how we once regarded him, but we don't anymore.
Joel Brooks:And he says, in the same way, look at me. You're gonna see a guy who's just out of prison, a guy who's often homeless, a guy who's hungry, a guy who who looks Well, he looks pretty pathetic, he looks like he's been through war. The guy who who stumbles in his speech, who trembles before you. And don't judge me though how how you want to judge me, there's a different measuring stick. We don't judge anybody that way anymore.
Joel Brooks:That's what he's asking them to do. We've been given new eyes to see things completely different. Suffering is how God is preparing us for a way to glory. Now, we get to verse 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
Joel Brooks:The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. What he's saying here, as a new creation in Christ, we no longer see things the same way we used to see things, evaluate things the same way we used to evaluate things, experience things the same way we used to experience things because we're a new creation, everything's been flipped upside down for us. We're now living in light of this new world that's coming. And so, don't look at me as this utter failure.
Joel Brooks:No. Death is at work at me, life is at work in you. God is reeking putting death here in my body, but at the same time, he's producing hope and he's producing joy. There is new life in here. See that.
Joel Brooks:Because you're part of God's new creation, you should be able to see that. That's really what he's talking about. Yes. He's talking about just in general that we are converted and we are new people, but really what he's saying is, as new people, we see everything differently. We should see everything.
Joel Brooks:We should see money differently. Not as something we find our security in, but something we could just give away. We should see all of our relationships differently, our work differently. Everything has a new meaning to us because we experience it now as a new creature. Behold, the old has passed away.
Joel Brooks:Behold, the new has come. I'm gonna stop here because I want us to pray. We'll pick up next week. Hopefully, it was helpful just to kinda walk through this.