If you’ll turn with me to 2 Corinthians 5, verse 11. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 11.

So that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart.

For their sake died and was raised. 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. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Several years ago, I was watching the news at my folks’ house, and all of a sudden, a story came up that was talking about people who are tall naturally get beneficial treatment or subliminally people prefer them in business and various other facets of life. And I was kind of shocked. And also, you know, it just caused me to think, and say, wait, have I been the benefactor of some tall privilege, if you will, some sort of, you know, subliminal thought that helps me succeed in life versus others? And I began to objectively try and assess my life. Do I live under the same superficial thought process of looking down on people who are shorter than me? And I don’t believe so. I assume that I look at all men for their character, and for their work ethic, and just them as a person. But then I also looked and said, wait, several of my better friends are at least six foot tall. So perhaps I’m also just as biased. But regardless, the fact that this bias is present, based on something so simple as a general height standard, is just one example of humanity’s superficiality. And I think that’s what we need to focus on in order to be successful in our lives. There are many traits that humans tend to focus on. Men, we so often look at women for their outward appearance, failing to look at the very characteristics within that would lead to us finding a partner that might actually be a beneficial partner for our lives. And men so often fall into destructive circumstances because such. So too, women look for… There are men who are tough and will be their protector or can provide or various other attributes that they’re looking for and once again could fall into situations where these men are cheaters or liars or egotistical or even abusive. And in both sexes, we find ourselves saying, man, they fell for the wrong type of guy or the wrong type of girl, right? I mean, that’s just what humans oftentimes fail to do. Our speakers, we look for politicians, we look for people who have certain characteristics that have a certain alpha male mentality or a speech that leads us to emotionally want to follow them, oftentimes failing to verify what they’re saying is true and can even fall into some sort of deception because we fail to focus on the appropriate traits. We look at rich people and movies, we look at movie stars and athletes and we assume that their opinions have some value in areas outside of where they have been successful in. We look at clothes and cars and homes and we assume that these offer some sort of sign of success that we should now be respective to those people. And in our own lives, we spend hours in the mirror fixing our hair and fixing our clothes and our makeup. And we do diets. We do workouts and workouts. And even our kindness so often is not for the glory of God, but it is for us to not be rejected by others that we even oftentimes treat people certain ways.

And many of these things are not inherently bad of themselves. I mean, we need to brush our teeth so to not offend the smell of others. And we should take care of our bodies because God has given us these bodies, and we shouldn’t just look the worst we can look. That should not be the goal of humans. But the real problem is that we become obsessed with these items. We focus on them. We make them the priorities when we look at our own lives and also when we compare ourselves to others. The truth is we humans have a real disposition to focus on qualities and traits that are far off from those that should be valued in God’s kingdom.

Those are tributes that are actually important.

In the church of Corinth, we find them falling into the same trap. You see, Paul, years before, went and he established this church in Corinth, which is a port city. And we all know port cities haven’t changed much over history. They always are a place where many cultures come, but also much partying and cravings. Craziness takes place. And I’m sure it was challenging for the church of Corinth to function as a godly people in the midst of such distractions. However, Paul establishes this church and he goes and makes his circuit as he continues to establish more churches in other countries. And he also is going back to the churches he’s already established to continue to give them guidance on how to love each other and be the church he’s called them to be. And… While he’s away from the Corinthian church, the Corinthians, in his first letter, they’ve already got several issues going on, right? In his first letter, he writes to them, he’s dealing with factions have already broken out. People are saying, I am of Paul and I am of Peter and I am of Christ. And Paul responds to them and says, Christ is not divided. We are all for Christ. And then we have prominent members of the church who really don’t have to work like a lot of the less fortunate people. And they show up to the church early. And they start eating all the bread and drinking all the wine. And next thing you know, the people who are less fortunate that had to work all day show up and there’s no bread and wine left for communion. And the people who are… And the others are drunk already. And then we have people in the services who are just standing up and randomly yelling out various things and wanting to talk over each other and causing mass chaos. And he goes so far as one member is sleeping with his stepmom. And he goes so far as one member is sleeping with his stepmom. A sin that Paul says even the sinners don’t participate in. And Paul corrects these accordingly in his letter. But he ultimately points to love as the answer for these people to begin to function together as the body and really care about each other enough to stop these destructive activities. Well, he continues on again in his ministry. Going to various churches. And we believe there’s also a second letter that he writes to them that we no longer have. But in this letter, which we believe is a third letter to the Corinthians, by now, this group of false teachers, people who claim to be the super apostles and they’ve got it all together, they come in and they’re teaching, they’re trying to persuade the Corinthians to do this. Deny Paul. They accuse him of several things. They accuse him of his motives being impure as he’s trying to take up collection for other churches who are less fortunate. They accuse him of his actions not being correctly. They mock his appearance for apparently Paul goes to their church and he speaks humbly and he doesn’t have good speech patterns. He doesn’t speak very well. And yet he speaks boldly in his letters and these false teachers are mocking him and challenging him on his outward appearance. And, finally, his methods. They appear to be mocking his methods of constant suffering, of being beaten and stoned. They say, really, this guy’s a troublemaker. You know? I mean, they have challenged Paul in all that he does saying that he does not have God’s ministry in mind or the people of Corinth’s best interest in mind. And, finally, they present heretical teachings to the people that are, are leading them astray from the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in the midst of this, we find ourselves in chapter 5. In this letter, unlike most of Paul’s letters, he usually provides a doctrinal portion where he’s giving you why we do what we do as believers. And then he usually says, practically, this is how we work it out. And there’s this flow in many of his letters. But in this one, we don’t get that. We get Paul throughout almost the whole letter continually, continually attempting to persuade the Corinthians to not follow these false teachers and also to follow him in the ministry and join together to do the Lord’s work. Last, two weeks ago, we looked at the first ten verses of this chapter in which Paul informed the Corinthians of his heavenly-minded mentality that ultimately leads to one resting in confidence of the hope to come. Being courageous in the midst of suffering and being ambitious to be pleasing to the Lord. Paul links the ambition to be pleasing to the Lord with verse 10, which says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. In verse 11, Paul continues by saying,

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known 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 about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. Here, when Paul is talking about this fear, he is actually describing, he’s actually using this fear to persuade the Corinthians. He’s saying, you can know that my motives for you are pure. You can know that my ministry to the Lord is right because I have a fear of standing before this judgment seat one day, being found guilty of malicious behavior. And in the positive, he’s saying, I have the hope of one day standing before God and him saying, well done, good and faithful servant. That there is persuasion enough to suggest that Paul does not want to be disqualified in attempts to manipulate or do something harmful to the Corinthian church. He then goes on to describe his confidence of that God is approved of his ministry. He says, um, um,

but we, we are, but what we are is known to God and I hope it is known also to your conscience. He’s saying, God, I believe wholeheartedly that God approves of my ministry and I hope that I can persuade you Corinthians also that what I am doing is good for you. Not to boast to you, not to try and like make you think that we’re awesome people, but so that you can go back to our accusers and tell them actual facts, not just, not just emotion, not just accusations, but actual facts of what we are and who we are for you. He’s asking for the Corinthians to actually defend him in this.

And then he turns in verse 14 through 16. He says,

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 have died and those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. He’s appealing to the amazing work of Jesus Christ, his sacrificial death on the cross to say we too are to live sacrificially for God and for others and no longer for ourselves. We’re no longer to be these people who are manipulating each other and manipulating and looking at their fleshly qualities and all these qualities that humans find valuable but now we are to turn our eyes to these godly characteristics. And what are these godly characteristics? Galatians 5.22 says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. In 1 Corinthians 13, 4-7 Paul says to the Corinthians love is patient and love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And in 1 Corinthians 1.27 Paul says but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. You see God’s economy as we’ve constantly looked at in the Beatitudes is different from man’s. He turns it upside down. The things that God values are often opposite of what we value. And these are the very characteristics that Paul is telling the people of Corinth to look at and pay attention to in their relationships with one another in this church.

But how can we truly value these attributes?

Look with me at verse 17 through 18.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

You see, both God and man actually have a relationship with God. They have obstacles or had obstacles in their way of being united with one another. Many say God can do anything but the Bible actually says God cannot lie. God cannot sin or he wouldn’t be holy. God cannot wink at sin in our lives and just say, oh, it’s okay, I’m going to brush that off or he would not be a just God. God is perfect in all of his attributes and God cannot do anything that is contrary to his, character. And so, God, man in the garden sinned against God. They rebelled against God. They chose to do things their way and because of that, humanity now has sin in us. We all have sinned. We all inherently are sinners and not all of us fall to the deepest, darkest depths of depravity. Not everybody becomes a rapist or a mass murderer but all of us in our own ways, every single day, choose ourselves first and participate in activities that are not only destructive for ourselves but destructive for others and are against God’s character and God cannot be united with sin. There’s an obstacle and man has an obstacle. Man has sinned and can no longer, they have no ability to stop sinning. We cannot in ourselves stop one day and say, I will never sin again. We can’t correct the inefficiencies in ourselves and our thought process. Sin is inherent to who we are because of the fall. So we need a savior. We need somebody to do it for us. We can’t do it. But God in his infinite wisdom, his all-knowing, he’s all-powerful, God can break through his obstacle but we can’t. And not only did he break through the obstacle, but he did it in the most loving way possible. The way that he gets the most glory and the way that he shows the most love. He could have just left us in our sin and said, you did the crime, you’re going to pay the punishment. But he chose to, in Christ, come to earth, Christ being both fully God and fully man, live the perfect life and die for our sins for a death that he, didn’t deserve, for accusations that he, that were false, a brutal death and then he rose on the third grave, third day, that we could now be reconciled to him. The obstacles were there. God solved the problem. Now through the conviction of the Holy Spirit, all men and women can respond to this reconciling work of Christ by placing their faith in Christ and accepting the truth. Accepting his work on the cross.

And because of that, that calls for real sacrifice. Paul is pointing to Christ died for all.

That he who knew no sin became sin that we would be counted as righteousness. Now we no longer have, in Christ’s eyes, those who accept Christ’s free gift no longer have, are seen as sinful but are righteous and we can now be reconciled to God. And that is a powerful message. I mean, that is a powerful thought just to think about that because of Christ’s work we are now, can be reconciled to God. But because of that, we are called to live sacrificially and be reconciled to one another. Talking about the believers here. We are not called to continue on we are called to be a new creation that no longer looks at these fleshy things but cares for others and cares for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

And what are these godly characteristics that God calls us to do? We just went over them. But,

excuse me, I got it in the wrong place on my nose. But I’m okay.

We are now a new creation that focuses on the attributes God values. We no longer slander and judge believers by the things of this world but we are reconciled to each other. Judging each other according to God’s standards. The standards that God values are important in our personal lives as we saw before but they are also important towards each other in the church. Jesus says, They shall know you are my disciples by your love for the brethren. Talking about other Christians. Not the people of the world even though that is important but he’s specifically talking here. They shall know your love they shall know you are my disciples by your love for the brethren. In 1 John, John says, If anyone says I love God and hates his brother talking about brothers and sisters in Christ he is a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has seen. In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul tells us to pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. These gifts are wisdom and faith, knowledge, healing, miraculous powers, prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues. In Romans he speaks of the gifts of exhortation, giving, leadership, mercy, prophecy, service, intention, teaching. In Ephesians 4 he speaks of apostles and evangelists, pastors, prophets and teachers. These gifts that we should pursue are so that the church can function. Almost the whole New Testament after the Gospels is ultimately

instructions for believers on how to function as the church to be reconciled to one another to love each other to sacrifice for each other to live for each other over their selves. While we are not in a situation here where false teachers are flooding our doors to teach us heresy and claim that Pastor Chad is some bad person so we turn from him. If we fail to look at each other according to these godly attributes and if we fail to truly live sacrificially for each other and be reconciled to one another we will miss what God desires for us and be ineffective for his kingdom.

Look with me at verse 20.

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us we implore you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that he would be reconciled to God. For that in him we might become the righteousness of God. If we are in Christ then we are ambassadors for Christ and his work of reconciliation.

An ambassador is someone who is a representative for a country such as the U.S. who goes to a foreign land and he makes various diplomatic decisions and has a very big role in how the people of that country look at our country. If he fails to represent our country correctly then he is going to cause these people to hate us and that is the very purpose he is there for is to make people like us, right? And so it’s the same with this. If I was an ambassador who went to a foreign country and I was making side deals and selling our secrets or even if I did absolutely nothing and I was completely lazy how long would it be for they to remove me from office? Or I would be disqualified? It wouldn’t be long, would it? Matt Barkley says Here is the Christian’s proud privilege and almost terrifying responsibility. The honor of Christ and of the church are in his hands by his every word and action he can make men think more of or less of his church and his church. and his master.

Now that we are reconciled to God we are on mission to be reconciled to one another here through faithfully loving one another to strive for the things of God but we are also on mission as ambassadors to share the word of reconciliation with the world. These two things are intertwined. We each have our own strengths our own weaknesses sins we struggle with my sins not the same as yours my strengths aren’t the same as yours we all God knows that we need each other if I sit around and listen to all the information that the world propagates all the time and never spend time with believers and continue to remind myself of why I’m here as an ambassador of Christ I will fall into laziness and fail to pay attention to the real mission we are here to support each other to support each other to love each other sacrificially and I submit to you loving each other sacrificially is one of the greatest evangelistic things we can do. But we are called to live life together that’s more than us just coming here on Sunday and shaking each other’s hands and then going up to our life locking our door and say what happens in my house stays in my house. It means really living with each other and I suggest that many of our churches don’t have any of this mess that we see in these letters because we’re actually not living with each other for real we’re not committed to each other’s life intimately involved it’s almost better for mess to take place and then we allow the Holy Spirit and each other to work it out that we grow together than for us to sit around and continue to be like don’t be involved in my life I don’t want you to find out about me and then we ultimately are incompetent to accomplish God’s mission I tell you that us loving each other here is intertwined with us being effective ambassadors for Christ out there in the world. In the first 500 years of the Catholic Church many they began to misinterpret certain scriptures to give them a little bit more power than what they needed as far as the church they would you know they came to a place where if you disagreed with them they would excommunicate you and ultimately this excommunication had eternal ramifications that there you being separated from the church led to you ultimately going to hell and along came the Protestants which I love Protestants very much but just like everything else we often times take one extreme because I do believe the church is very important and the Catholics just took it a little bit too far and we all of a sudden take it to the other extreme we now say oh it’s just a personal relationship with Jesus this is just me me and God’s walk don’t talk to me about mine and Jesus’ walk I can worship the Lord in the woods by myself and I tell you there’s a nice happy place in the middle like so often we follow man’s failure to go to the two extremes of that the church is highly important the church is highly important for your salvation for your sanctification for your effectiveness in God’s mission which is to share the gospel with those who are lost and he’s calling each and every one of us to engage more than what we do now some of us here might be adamantly engaged in it others might be not engaged at all and even others might have never even pondered the concept that I actually need to be a part of God’s mission to be a Christian but I suggest if I joined the Marine Corps and I never showed up a single day not even to boot camp could I actually call myself a Marine?

and in this every one of us can be convicted here by the Holy Spirit in their own way to say we can do more we can do more for each other we can do more in our personal lives we can do more for Christ’s mission as ambassadors of the gospel of reconciliation and I know this sounds harsh because we’ve heard it’s through faith isn’t it? this is a free gift and it is it really is but let me ask you this if I believed if I had faith that tomorrow my house would burn down or my neighborhood excuse me if my neighborhood would burn down what would I do? I would pack up my bags and load them into my car and then I would go around to everybody in the neighborhood saying you need to get out of here your house is about to burn down my actions were appropriate to what I believed in my faith that my neighborhood would burn down and not just that but my quick response let me know that what I actually believed was valuable to me my possessions were valuable to me me getting my life was valuable to me my actions responded accordingly to my faith so too if I believe that God is the creator of my life the creator of all things if I believe that he sacrificially died for me when he didn’t have to to save me that people can either accept this or they can deny it and they can either live eternity and even right now with their God who created them and loved them perfectly or they can be separated from him for all eternity if I truly put my if I truly had faith in that wouldn’t my actions look a little different than they so often do wouldn’t I have a sense of urgency about me

than so often I just go home and turn on my TV and spend several of my hours at night just wasting time if truly I had such a care for this gospel like I did in the case of that fire of my possessions certain possessions not getting destroyed if I cared so much for it I would ultimately receive and respond naturally and ultimately I mean don’t get me wrong the Holy Spirit is a huge part in that equation I mean without his conviction but me responding to them still

they would look different and so

eventually we have to stop trying to reinterpret the Bible to fit our American lives and just acknowledge that Jesus and the other biblical authors in the New Testament were saying the same things over and over telling us to be a disciple of Christ we must live sacrificially in our personal lives for Christ we must live sacrificially for each other in the church so that we might be effective ambassadors for the word of reconciliation to the nations

and again I just I’m preaching to myself as much as anybody else here I constantly struggle but if we don’t ever get our minds wrapped around to where we’re even wrestling right if we don’t ever even get to the place where we actually understand that this is our mission to where we’re actually wrestling with it we don’t even get to the place where we’re actually wrestling with our laziness right with our fleshly desires we don’t even get to that point so we have to change our mind we have to constantly remind ourselves that this is why we’re here and God has saved us to be reconcilers to be ambassadors and I tell you this

when we get to the end of our lives from serving the Lord we’re not going to say man I wasted my time we’re going to actually find real fulfillment in life versus these things that feel good for the moment but then they pass away and we’re going to truly be able to right now not when in the afterlife in our new glorified bodies but right now we can begin to live life with Christ in union with Him and enjoy His presence right now and that is what He created us for so we can never find fulfillment in life unless we follow that purpose and so to close I want to read a portion of Philippians Philippians chapter 3 and it’s a little lengthy but I think it’s some I think Paul once again is saying the same thing in another place in a totally different context but the church at Philippi is a colony in Greece a colony of Rome in Greece the majority of the population is retired military personnel and diplomats there to deal with stuff in Greece so these people would also I believe have a very good understanding of what it meant to be an ambassador in their place and Paul in chapter 3 verse 7 says

but whatever gain I had I counted it as loss for the sake of Christ and I counted it as loss indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ the righteousness from God that depends on faith that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and may share in His sufferings becoming like Him in His death that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own brothers I do not consider that I have made it my own but one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus let those of us who are mature think this way and if in anything you think otherwise God will reveal that also to you only let us hold true to what we have obtained brother, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us for many of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears walk as enemies of the cross of Christ their end is destruction their God is their belly and their glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things but our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a Savior the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself therefore my brothers and sisters whom I love and long for my Joey and my Mary and my crown stand firm thus in the Lord let’s pray

Father, You are a great God, Lord You are worthy of all praise You are worthy of total sacrifice of our lives, Lord You have done all things perfectly for us and You have made a way that we can be reconciled with You when there was no way for us to do it, Lord and we thank You for that and in response to that, Father I pray that we will truly make You not only our Savior, Lord but we will make You our Master that we will live for You every day of our lives that we will be reconciled to You that we will be reconciled to one another and that we will go out and share the word of reconciliation to the world, Lord may we love each other with a passion like never before may we be reconciled to one another may we constantly recall what we’re here for may we be willing to be in a bit of a challenging not being able just being willing to be not a

being just in a place where we’re okay with not being perfect in each other’s eyes, Lord that we are able to be just open with one another to share with each other to love each other

to surrender for each other

that we might grow together to be more efficient for Your mission

that we might all grow to be more in Your image

that we might love You more that we love each other more that we love the world enough that we’re willing to be um…

persecuted for You to share Your word I pray that here at Providence Fellowship that we will take this seriously that we will all in our own however You convict us today that we will commit to making Your church and Your mission a priority in our lives in Jesus’ name Amen