It's a Living

2 Cor. 5:14-21

Almost everybody has or has had a job of some sort. In today’s economy, you have to work to pay the bills. Money is a basic need. It enables us to buy food and clothes and other basic necessities as such as the internet and cable TV. Some people experience the blessing of really loving their work. I count myself among them. They are getting paid to do what they really love doing. But most people, at least I think most people, see work as a necessary burden. They are glad for the money they earn. But when they think about the actual work they are doing to earn that money, the attitude for many is, “Eh, it’s a living.”

Once while I was working in a furniture factory in Grand Rapids, MI, I was busy with a stack of wooden frame members for office cubicle partitions. All I was doing was filling holes with glue and then pushing a short little dowel in each hole to get them ready for the next step in the assembly process. So while I was standing there with another guy, him on the other end of the stack doing the same mindless task, the foreman comes over and says, “I don’t know guys, sometimes I wonder, what’s the point? I work hard all day and all week to get a paycheck that I spend on food, housing and bills just so I can stay alive and go to work again to earn more money that keeps me alive and healthy to keep on working.”

I said to him, “Carl, the way you describe it, if that is really all there is to life, you are right, there is no point. It is pointless. You’re on the hamster wheel, running all day and going nowhere.”

He seemed a bit taken aback at the way I resolved his wondering. He then asked me, “Do you have a point, a reason for living?”

I said, “Sure I do. I live for God and he gives my life meaning and purpose. And he takes care of meeting my needs.”

He came back with, “What purpose? You’re doing the same as me, just working a crumby job so you can stay alive to keep on working. And you’re getting less pay than me! If you’re working for God, why in the world are you working here? If God takes care of all your needs why do you even have to have a job?”

I said, “I have this job because that is the means by which God has decided that my needs should be met for now. I also serve the Lord by going to church, learning about him and what the world needs. I also support the ministry I enjoy by giving some of this money back to God.”

That really seemed to take him by surprise. He said, “You give your money away?”

“Yes, well, not all of it. I do need to pay the bills and God understands about that. But I give Him at least ten percent. It proves that I trust and know that God will meet my needs. And it makes this work I am doing here more than just earning a living. God uses some of the money I make here to spread the gospel. So I am making better use of this money than anybody who just spends it all on himself.”

Well, I think the conversation kind of wound down from there. I believe Carl walked away just shaking his head about my crazy ideas, crazy to him anyway, at the time. I kind of hope that eventually I’ll find out that the things I said blessed Carl on his own faith journey toward the cross of Jesus Christ.

And that’s why I spoke the way I did. I was doing the work of an evangelist. And that was at least ten years before I was officially a pastor. So I know anyone can do it. Christ’s love compelled me to care about Carl and try to help him see that life can have meaning and purpose through faith in Jesus Christ who gives us a completely new way of looking at this world in which we live when we give our lives to him.

But it did take a bit of courage to push back at Carl’s ideas rather than just sympathize. The Bible says always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope you have in you. But how are they ever going to know that you have a different kind of hope that needs an explanation if you never dare to stick your neck out and say something or do something that makes people wonder about you?

Sometimes it’s okay to start out sounding a little weird if it stimulates a better conversation than your run of the mill chit chat. That’s what Jesus did with the woman at the well. He was weird first of all just by talking to her in the first place. But then what he said really made her wonder. Kathy said I shouldn’t say anything was weird about Jesus. But I couldn’t think of a better word. I mean I think if the woman at the well knew our language and culture she might have had this thought, “That’s weird. Why’s he talking to me?” I trust that most of you already know what happened at that well so I don’t have to go any further into that story. And if you’re curious you can look it up in John 4. Later. But I have to stay on track here. So let’s get back to what compels us to even try to begin a weird conversation that might end up talking about Jesus with someone who needs to hear it.

Why do we bother? Love compels us. And in the 2 Cor. text Paul tells us why: Christ’s love compels us!  When we truly know this love of Christ we must respond by doing the same kinds of things Jesus did. We can’t help it because we are convinced that one died for all. That is, Jesus died for all of us, and therefore all died. That is, everyone who believes in Jesus ends up crucified with him. We die to ourselves so we end up living for him. That’s what Paul says next. Jesus died for all, “that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

Now what does a life look like that has died in Christ and is risen again in him. If we no longer live for ourselves how do we live for Jesus? The only way we can do that is to live the life he calls us to live, the life he has planned for us to live, the life that gives life to other people because we offer ourselves for their sakes the way he offered himself for our sake.

Paul says, you are a new creation. We often relate that to the idea of being born again and we affirm that we are new. But do we feel different? Can we tell that we think about things in a way that is different from the way unbelievers think? Your whole world view changes. Your whole way of looking at and describing the world is markedly different from the person who doesn’t know about Jesus. They just live like Carl, in the rat race, trying to make a living, trying to find that pot of gold so he can be set and comfortable for life. But as a Christian, you are not in a rat race. You are not seeking your own prosperity. In Christ you are an heir to the throne, you’ve already got all the prosperity you will ever need. You are set for life! So you can focus on somebody else, or everybody else.

In fact that’s what’s wrong with the prosperity gospel we hear about. The prosperity gospel is really all about what I get from God because I put my faith and trust in him. So the prosperity gospel can very easily still be self-centered. So I have started saying that I am a believer in the posterity gospel. That’s the gospel that gives me so much life I can focus on passing the faith along to the next generation, down to posterity.

“So,” as Paul says, “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.” The worldly point of view has resulted in the development of the me generation. But Christians, genuine Christians fight against the temptation to go with the flow and be part of the me generation. By the power of Christ we are very different. “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! It’s here now! It’s not just a future glory that we’re looking forward to. It’s a different life that we live today that can make other people wonder about us and maybe ask us to explain the difference. We should be building the “you” generation, a community of people who are more concerned for others than for themselves, like neighbors who care.

Does that make us better than others? Absolutely not. Paul tells us, “All this is from God.” We didn’t come up with this on our own or even want to do it without the power of Christ at work in us to compel us. And it all started with forgiveness. We were sinners who needed to experience grace and forgiveness. We didn’t make God do that either. He just wanted to because he loves us. He wanted to reconcile us to himself through Christ and give us the ministry of reconciliation.

Notice that. He didn’t just give us the reconciliation. He gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That means once we are saved and alive in Christ there is work for us to do.  We have something to offer. We get to tell everyone else who will listen “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.” And, as Paul says, “he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”

Paul ends this section begging everybody to be saved and then to help God save others. When we become the righteousness of God, that doesn’t just mean that we get to be new and improved human beings. The righteousness of God is intent on saving lost souls and redeeming the world. So he says, “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.” That’s the good news in a nutshell. All neatly packaged up and ready to go.

All you need is the motivation to offer it to people. So let me tell you a story about being compelled by Christ’s love. I am learning a lot from reading the stories of my brothers and sisters who live in places where they suffer persecution. They are not punished for being Christian. But they are punished for sharing the gospel. So why do they keep talking about Jesus?

There is a man who used to work as a river guide in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. It was his job to row tourists around the river especially at sunrise so they could take pictures of the morning sun shining on the giant rows of temple steps, called ghats, that hugged the river bank. His employer insisted he provide sexual services for the tourists who hired the boat, and he soon became a male prostitute.

A few years later he received the gospel as a result of a chance encounter with a tourist. After becoming a Christian he said, “I felt relief that I did not have to behave that way again. Suddenly a whole new set of choices opened up for me. But I was apprehensive too—the choices that pleased God would not please anyone else.” His employer had him beaten by thugs. But he refused to return to work as a prostitute. He was fired and immediately had to leave town.

At first he went back to his family, but they were not happy to see him. His mother wailed, “We sold you so you could look after us in our old age, and now you are following a bad god who has made you refuse to provide for us.”

He became convicted that he must return to Varanasi and work to free all the other sex slaves. He began setting up a bank so that low paid workers could borrow at reasonable rates of interest, and not have to go to loan sharks that kept them in financial slavery. He said, “Jesus Christ had given me freedom, and now I had to fight for the freedom of other people just like me. I had to. Jesus makes us pure and sacred, and it is not right that his children should be bought and sold and used like cattle.” He has survived two assassination attempts. His wife had acid thrown over her by thugs employed by the leaders of the prostitution rackets. This man is driven by a love for a God that is determined to set his children free.

That is an amazing story. But there is a little more. This guy has been to America and has visited some of our Western churches. Now listen to what he wants the American church to hear. “They have managed to turned a dangerous God into a safe one…instead of a God that burns with fury against hypocrisy, idolatry and injustice, they have a God that turns a blind eye to all our faults, just keeps on loving us with a disinterested air, and seems not to care whether we stand out for him or not.” Is that a fair assessment? Are you as an American Christian compelled by Christ’s love for you to love others as radically as this Asian Christian?  (From BibleGateway.com devotionals, Standing Strong Through the Storm.)

Are you ready to stand out for Christ? This reminds me of Romans 12:1-2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

First of all do you see how that fits with Paul’s message that we must become ambassadors for Christ? Now, when you offer yourself as a living sacrifice, are you making an offering for yourself? No, you are the offering. The offering on the altar is not for itself, it is always for someone else. Just as Jesus offered himself to save all who believe in him, so we offer ourselves for the others who would come after us in the faith that saves, lead to Christ and introduced to that personal relationship with our Lord and Savior by our sacrificial ministry for their sake.

I close with these words from Naghmeh Abedini – whose husband, Pastor Saeed Abedini, is currently imprisoned in Iran because of his Christian beliefs. She has an incredible story of leaving the Muslim faith and coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Now her husband endures persecution in prison. She says, “Actually when we become Christians, when we accept Christ, God doesn't owe us anything. And you think, oh, He doesn't answer this prayer, then I'm mad at Him. Or, I lost this child. I'm mad at Him. But really, at that point, He's given us everything when He gave us Christ on the cross. And He deserves our life. It might cost your life. It might cost everything you have, but we see over and over again, through what Jesus spoke in the Bible, when you find that treasure, when you find salvation, really you are the one who should be giving up a lot for that, when you understand what Jesus did on the cross for you.” (From a Focus on the Family interview)

 When you become a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit and not just calling yourself a Christian because you grew up in church, you get a new life! It’s not just a living. It’s really living! And in that new life, according to Paul’s teaching in the Bible, love will compel you to find some way to participate with God in the ministry of reconciliation he has given us to do. You will eagerly desire to offer that gospel to everyone else around you because you want to see them saved too.