II Corinthians 5: 16-21
Deomai
"We implore you" Paul writes. (Pause)
-
The Greek
word, translated into English as "implore," is a form of the verb
"deomai."
-
Forms of this
word are used in a variety of other circumstances in the NT...
o
For
instance, in Luke 5:12 a man with leprosy is reported to have fallen down on
his face before Jesus and "implored" Him (a form of deomai) to make
him clean...
o
And in Luke
9:38, the father of a demon-possessed boy "implored" Jesus to cast
the demon out of his only son...
o
This is, in
fact, the same word that the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, the one who had
thought himself cut off from God, used when asking Philip who Isaiah was
writing about when referring to the “suffering servant,” hoping against hope
that somehow, someway, Philip's answer might mean the opposite of what he'd
always been told about God’s attitude toward him... (Pause)
These other uses of the verb
deomai serve to show us that this word does not translate with a simple
"please," or a polite "would you kindly," or "if it is
of no inconvenience might you be able to"…
-
There is
passion and urgency behind this word...
o
This is the
kind of word you use when you know the person standing in front of you can cure
the incurable, can do the impossible, can save the un-saveable...
o
This is what
you say when something of consequence lies before you, and you need to become a
part of it!
o
This is a
“life or death” word. (Pause)
That being the case, why does
Paul use this word here in his second letter to the
Corinthians?Because something has happened…
-
…something
so big, so meaningful, so history-changing that if we fail to take heed, it
will be like the leper missing out on his healing, or the
demon-possessed-only-child-of-a-man not being made well, or the eunuch passing
up God's embrace. (Pause)
Paul has in mind, in other words,
a goal for us, a way of responding such that if we were to fail to respond, we
would miss out on everything. (Pause)What is that goal? What sort of response is Paul imploring us to make?
The only way to know is to first understand what, exactly, has happened...
-
We can
gather this, at least in summary form, from the surrounding context, beginning
in v.14 of Second Corinthians 5...
o
"For
the love of Christ urges (or better, "compels”) us on,” writes the
apostle.
§ Why?
o
"...because
we are convinced that one died for all; therefore all have died. And he died
for all," Paul continues, "so that..."
§ …they could go to heaven when
they die?
·
That’s not
what he writes.
§ …so that they could do whatever
they wanted without a care in the world?
·
No, the text
doesn’t say that either.
§ "…so that those who live
might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for
them."
§ So that human beings might live a
totally different kind of life. (Pause)
o
What ever is
he talking about? (Pause)
This is the account of reality
and world history according to Scripture...
-
God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, is three persons, who have ever lived in a community of
pure, self-giving, reciprocal love and enjoyment...
-
This God,
for some reason unbeknownst to us, decided to share this community of
overflowing love and joy with persons who were not God, and thus creation was born,
and human beings as the highest form of created life...
-
Humans were
to be the mediators between the Triune God and the creation, sharing in the
love and joy of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and spreading that overwhelming
goodness throughout the creation.
-
In a word,
we failed in this task to participate in God’s life and to spread that life throughout
the cosmos.
-
Yet, even
though we failed, turning away from God to our own ideas of how things ought to
go, God was determined to see to it not only that His intentions were accomplished,
but that they would come to fruition through human beings...
-
And so He
called Abraham, and promised that through him and his seed, all the nations of
the world would be blessed…
-
The promise
to Abraham was given to Isaac, and then to Jacob, who became Israel, father of
twelve sons, twelve sons which would become a nation, the nation Israel…
-
God called
Israel, as He did Adam, to be the humanity that would faithfully live in the
joy and love of the Trinity and extend that same Life throughout the world...
-
Yet they
failed too.
-
But God
would not have His mission thwarted, nor would He leave humanity to rot...
-
So, He rolled
up His sleeves and got His own hands dirty...
o
In, through,
and as the man Jesus, God stepped into the chaos and the brokenness that humanity
had created…
§ He stepped out into the far country
as the father did with his prodigal son…
o
… and there
He embraced humanity in the flesh, and lived the Life of the Trinity into the
very humanity that you and I share…
§ The life of joyful, self-giving
love...
o
Though we
rejected Him and that Divine form of Life that He lived, He kept right on, taking
upon Himself the full weight of our rejection, bearing our sin against Him all
the way to death, even death on a Roman cross...
§ He remained faithful to the
Father's original commission to human beings to participate in the community of
the Trinity and to spread that way of life everywhere He went, and He did so
through to the very end...
o
And though
He died, He was vindicated in His resurrection from dead, which was a
demonstration that the life of Agape, the life of self-giving love, lasts, and
that it wins, not only over sin but also over death.
o
After His
Ascension to the right hand of His Father, the Father and the Son sent the Holy
Spirit to take this Life lived by Jesus in our human flesh and make it
available to us so that we…so that
each one of you, according to God's
original plan, could get on with the mission of enjoying God and spreading His
joyous way of being human throughout the earth.
This is what
Paul is saying: the age-old plan of God is back on line!
-
Humanity
can, finally, get back to fulfilling their original purpose of knowing Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit intimately and personally, and then, from within that relationship,
bring goodness and joy and freedom and blessing to all of creation.
-
It is now
possible, because of Jesus' work and the Holy Spirit's presence, for us to become the very "righteousness
of God..."
o
The
embodiment of God's faithfulness to His original mission to spread the
Trinitarian life throughout the creation.
-
Paul is
saying that, because of what has happened, the whole cosmos is back in
business!
-
And that we are a part of it!
o
And that
there isn't a moment to waste...
o
That it's
time to get to work...
This is why Paul
is imploring us: because a whole new form of life is now possible as a result
of what Jesus has done, bearing our rejection and remaining faithful to His
Father...
-
This is what the church is for: to
implore everyone to turn toward the Father who has set things right in His Son,
and to equip all people to join the Spirit in His ongoing work of spreading
this Divine Life of suffering, self-giving love throughout the world.
-
This is why
we gather here, each Sunday: to get ourselves oriented toward (to “worship”)
God, so that that orientation can permeate our persons and radiate out into
every facet of our existence. (Pause)
So the question is, is that what
we're doing here?
-
First, do we
sense the urgency?
o
Do we
recognize that what Jesus did changed the history of creation?
§ …that this event was the most
important thing that ever happened on this planet?
§ …that it was done so that we
could get on with Life, real life, deep life, the life we were meant for?
§ …and that there is not a moment
to spare in getting in on it? (pause)
-
Second, are
we coming to understand, more and more, the depth of just what, exactly, Jesus
has done, and the possibilities that He has unlocked for us to take part in
God’s mission in the world?
o
We can work
with God! (Pause)
-
Third, are
we working together to figure out, not how to get people in our doors or how to
raise more money, but how to help equip people to co-labor with God in their
unique situations to share the blessed Life of the Trinity with the world?
o
Are we being
formed, day-by-day, week-by-week, into persons who reflect the image of Jesus
in their day-to-day lives?
§ …whether in a school or in a gas
station, in a home or a hospital, in a law court or on an assembly line?
o
Are we
devoting our lives to discerning and practicing how to participate with God in
the mission that He has opened up to us?
(Pause)Jesus, our Lord and Savior, our God, thought that this mission and our participation in it was worth dying for.
(Pause)
Paul, His apostle, implores us to think the same, and to get on with it.
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