Most people are surprised to learn that I applied to colleges as an art major. I didn’t last long. I ended up switching to physics during orientation. But in retrospect, this was an excellent decision for one very important reason… my art was terrible. I mean my art, made Napoleon Dynamite look like Caravaggio.
But throughout my undergraduate education, I would often stop by little gallery in the basement of the union where the art department displayed their work to see what my alternate life might have been like. One day, I walked in, and there, in the back of the room, in the position of honor, was a little 3 inch sculpture of Jesus on the cross. What made this sculpture memorable was that it was constructed entirely out of cigarette butts.
Now I was pretty new to the Jesus following thing and to be honest, it startled me. But years later I learned that it was not that different than the earliest depiction of Jesus ever found. The first image we have of Jesus is not sympathetic. It is a caricature that was found on the wall of a Roman prison. It pictures him on the cross, with the head of a donkey, with the inscription: “Alexamenos sebete theon”
Alexamenos worships his god.
Two different artists, two thousand years apart, the same idea. A dying God is absurd.
A lot of people find this aspect of Christianity weird. I was talking to my friend Mark, a couple years ago. He told me that he found out that he shared a name with one of the books of the Bible, so he decided to read it. So I asked him what he thought. His comment was striking to me. He said, “Honestly, it kind of bummed out. It turns out that’s the one Jesus dies in.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him, that it was just one of four that Jesus dies in. But I kind of get that. We can deal with the picture of Jesus as a baby – I mean, it’s a little weird, but we’ve kind of gotten used to it. We can deal with Jesus as a teacher; that one is easy, that is what we expect out of our religious figures. But there is a kind of indignity even an immodesty to Jesus stripped naked and nailed to a cross bar until his lungs fill with blood and his heart explodes. It can seem incongruous with the rest of the story.
So if you are going to understand Christianity, you are going to have to come to terms with the question: “Why did Jesus die?” Why is the cross at the center of our iconography? What’s the point?
Today’s passage takes that question on. I have often considered the second half of 2 Corinthians 5 to one of the clearest articulations of the central ideas of Christianity.[1] If you are looking for the cliff notes version, of this big book, If you are trying to get your head around the big message…you came on the right night. This passage argues that the death and resurrection of Jesus are the heart of the Christian message and the Christian mission. These events are the primary motivation of what we believe and what we do.
I. The Message
The first thing you need to know about the death of Jesus is that it somehow confers a benefit to people. Look with me at the first verse. At the center of the Christian message is the message that: one died for all.
Jesus’ death was purposeful. It was for me and it was for you. But you already knew that…because it seems that Christians feel inclined to write something to this effect in the strangest places…
And sometimes with less skill that the task calls for…
The cool thing about this passage is that it unpacks the details of that idea. It answers the questions: why did we need him to die for us and how does this work. First Why? Look with me in verses 18 and 19
1. Why: to reconcile us to God
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them”
The point of Jesus’ death is reconciliation. His mission was to make things good between you and God. Of course, there is a countercultural assumption built into that answer. It assumes that you and God aren’t already good. It assumes that things between you and God are not cool. Reconciliation assumes a starting point of enmity. And this is what the Bible means when it talks about sin.
Now sin is a word that has ceased to have meaning. For most people I know, the only real concrete thing that sin corresponds to is the derivative of cos.
For other people, it is shorthand for a simple indulgence…things are sinfully delicious or a couple who is living together will smirk that they are ‘living in sin’…It is a simple shorthand for fun.
Chuck Klosterman kind of got at this idea in his brilliant book: Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs – A Low Culture Manifesto. One of his essays is on the book Left Behind, a book that was written from a theological perspective that believes that God will eventually take Christians out of the world. He writes:
But the Bible means something much more fundamental when it uses the word “sin.” It argues that we each have a fundamental tendency to make ourselves the center of our lives, in the process, revolting against God’s right to occupy that position. It is more than just a few mistakes, it is a condition of enmity. If you don’t understand this, the cross will seem absurd. If you operate from the perspective, “well, I’ve made a few mistakes, but no one is perfect and God will overlook it” – the cross will seem absurd. But if you get a hold of the idea that our attempts to forge our own lives for our own happiness and our own advancement is a rebellion against God’s claims to direct our lives based on the fact that he made us…the cross starts to make more sense.
The problem isn’t a few mistakes that God needs to overlook, it is a fractured relationship that needs to be healing. You and God are not ok. Me and God, we’re not ok either. We all need to be reconciled. We have knowingly or unknowingly made ourselves into God’s enemies. In a sense, our lives represent a mutiny. God designed our lives with a purpose and a destination…but have taken over the ship and are sailing it wherever we want. We are in a state of fractured relationship
The good news is that he has taken the initiative to bring healing to this fractured relationship. Jesus. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are the mechanism of reconciliation…the means by which you can be restored to God. The passage, says that because of Jesus, people’s sins, their rebellions, are not counted against them.
So, that is the why. Why did Jesus die – to reconcile us to God…But how does that work? How does Jesus dying end up with your sin not counting against you? It sets up a cosmic exchange.
2. How: By exchanging our rebellion for his innocence
5:21 “We implore you, on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin, to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
I remember the summer that aluminum cans became recyclable. I was twelve. In NY, where I grew up, they do recycling a little differently. You pay 5 cents a can when you buy them and can get 5 cents a can by bringing them to any grocery store. So my brother and I went to a memorial day parade in a little town called Theresa NY they passed the recycling law. Now Theresa is a little rural town that is 3 blocks long and has 3 bars and a liquor store…so let’s just say that not only were there discarded empties everywhere, but a substantial fraction of them were 40’s. Nic and I were skeptical, but we got a bag and started walking around collecting empties. Now you have to remember, no one used to do this. Up until that summer, we just threw cans out. And we got some strange looks from the very gentlemen who were discarding the empties. The whole thing was kind of humiliating. But eventually, we walked into the Big M grocery store with an overflowing bag of cans. We were embarrassed and smelled of sweat and Pabst Blue Ribbon. But then, in our little pre adolescent minds, something magical happened. We handed the lady at the register a bag of trash, and she gave us money. It felt like stealing.
That is how the cross works. It's an unfair exchange. It’s an exchange in which we had over the trash of sin, self-absorption, and compromise, and we receive the cash of forgiveness, new life, and adoption into God’s family.
"God made him who had no sin, to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
Jesus, who was himself, in a fundamental but confusing way, God himself, and was totally innocent, totally without sin died the death of a rebel and a traitor. But this made way for a cosmic exchange…where we can trade our sin for his righteousness (to use the language of the passage). Or to use other language, we can trade our rebellion for his innocence. We can trade our estrangement from God for his intimacy with God. Our indifference to the poor for his generosity. Our lustful objectification of women for his loving respect for women. Our self centeredness for his God-centered and other centeredness.[2] This transaction does not make us good, but it makes us as if we were good in God’s eyes, and then we try to live like God sees us.
He identified with our brokenness and we were cosmically associated with his goodness and his justice. We are not good…not really, we are not really just, we are not really generous, we are not really loving – we dabble in these things…and you might even be able to talk yourself into thinking that these things define you, but the results are always tainted with self interest and mixed motives. But in this cosmic exchange, we can be considered just, good and generous, and, in exchange, Jesus takes on our pettiness, self centeredness and bigotry.
And God’s offer of reconciliation is universal. It’s for absolutely everyone. Look with me in the text:
v. 14 – “one died for all”
v. 15 – “he died for all”
v. 19 – “God was reconciling the world to himself”
But it has to be appropriated. He does not force reconciliation on anyone. As it stands it is just an offer, and unless you accept it you remain in the ambient state…of fractured relationship with God. Which brings us to Paul’s punch line in verse 20:
“We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.”
If you had to choose 4 words to summarize the message of the Bible, these four would be a pretty good choice. “Be reconciled to God.” Appropriate the reconciliation Jesus made available to you.
So, the Message is that Jesus died and raised so that we could be reconciled to God through an exchange of our sin for his goodness. But, surprisingly, this passage also contends that the death of Jesus not only motivates the Christian message, it also motivates the Christian Mission:
II. The Mission
You see, the cross is not all about you. I mean, it is clear, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have the opportunity to be made right with God. Because of those events, your sin does not have to count against you. But there is another level of this. Look at v 15.
“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.”
Reconciliation re-establishes the correct order where you no longer live for yourself but for God. Now, on the face of things, this seems like a cost. It sounds like Jesus is saying “Listen, I’ll make things good between you and God…but then I own your ass.” But it is actually part of the rescue. Jesus not only saves us from the consequences of our self involvement, he saves us from our actual self involvement. You were not designed to live for yourself. Living for yourself is a psychological cul-de-sac. You end up obsessing over your desires and neurosis. Part of the rescue that Jesus brings is a new mission of living for Jesus which manifests as living for others. Here is the thing, the reconciliation Jesus brings does not make you reconciled. It makes you a reconciler. There is no intermediate state where you receive the benefits of reconciliation but do not reorder your life to pass them on to others:
18 "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation"
19 "And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."
20 "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
What Jesus offers is not just a rescue, it is a rescue into a mission."
So before Battlestar Galactica put the Syfy channel on the mainstream map, they made their living off the stargate series. In Stargate Atlantis, there were two characters Tayla and Ronin, who were part of the team that was trying to save the Pegasus galaxy from a malevolent, oppressive, ruthless enemy. But the interesting thing about these two characters is that they had both been enslaved by this enemy. So when they were freed, they immediately joined the mission of resistance and rescue. They weren’t just rescued to move on with the rest of their lives. Neither of these characters could conceive of being squandering their rescue on themselves, they had to use it to become agents of rescue. They were rescued into the mission. And that is the way Christianity works. We are not just made good with God so we can move on with the rest of our lives for our selves with the God box checked off. We are reconciled to become reconcilers.
One of my soccer buddies from high school went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to study Mechanical Engineering. So I ended up doing numerical modeling of rivers and he ended up designing submarines…but we found that these very different fields converged on a shared passion. We both loved fluid dynamics. He told me the story of his fluid dynamics class. Apparently the professor offered two exams. Everyone had to show up for the first one. If you passed, you got a B. Those that passed, could call it good, or they could show up the next day for a harder test, which would give them a shot at an A. What surprised him was how few people showed up for the second exam. But I feel like this is how a lot of Christians view the gospel. That accepting the reconciling exchange of the cross to make us good with God is like the mandatory B exam…but becoming agents of reconciliation is extra credit. It is the optional A exam for the overachievers or the nerds who want to go to Grad School.
But here’s the thing, it is impossible to disentangle the message of reconciliation and the mission of offering that reconciliation to others. Paul speaks of them together. They are the same thing. I went through the passage and marked the parts that talk about the message and the parts that talk about the mission…and there is no tidy sequential separation. They are intertwined:
Reconciliation doesn’t just make you reconciled…it makes you a reconciler.
Now the immediate context here refers to offering the Message of reconciliation to anyone who is interested. And that is the primary meaning. Most people only have the vaguest understanding of the Message of God’s reconciliation mission in Jesus, and so we should offer the story to anyone who is interested. But in the broader scope of the Scriptures it can also include acts of care and justice…acts of practical good that demonstrate God’s intent for a restored creation. This is one of the reasons I really like the “Ambassador” language this text uses. An lives in one country but their primary allegiance is to a different country. Their primary mission is to deliver the message from their home. But they also live and work for the practical good of the people they live among out of a general affection for them and to demonstrate offer of peaceful relations between the two nations.
These are not primarily programmatic sorts of thing. You just need to be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to be agents of reconciliation, both in terms of offering the message and, what we refer to in our mission statement as practical ‘creative acts of courageous love.’ But there will be some community wide opportunities coming up. Next week Layeah will be talking about global opportunities and the week after Alyssa and Mike will be talking about local opportunities to be agents of reconciliation.
So, we say all the time here that our hope is that this gathering would be a place for two kinds of people. We hope that it is a safe place where those of you who are spiritually curious could investigate and experiment with Jesus and Christian community. And we hope that it is a place where those of you who have made a commitment to Jesus could come together and figure out what that looks like. And so it would seem like this talk divides[3] along those lines. For those of you who have experienced and continue to experience intimacy with God because of the reconciliation of Jesus, you were reconciled to become reconcilers. The Mission of the Cross is to become agents of reconciliation. For those of you who are checking Jesus out: The Message of the cross is pretty simple. Take Jesus up on the offer to exchange his goodness for your brokenness…“We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.”
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[1] This text is exceedingly full of matter, and might require many treatises, and even multitudes of folios, to bring forth all its meaning. Holy Scripture is notably sententious. Human teachers are given to verbiage; we multiply words to express our meaning, but the Lord is wondrously laconic; he writeth as it were in shorthand, and gives us much in little. One single grain of the precious gold of Scripture may be beaten out into acres of human gold leaf, and spread far and wide. -Spurgeon
[2] Reconciliation is an act of remaking – it is an innocence infusion. Like a medical procedure where contaminated blood is exchanged for pure blood
[3] But it is actually not as tidy as that. You see, for the spiritually curious, The Mission is the fine print. We, like Paul, sincerely hope that you will decide to accept the reconciliation with God offered to you in Christ, but you need to know the implications of that is a massive priority change.
And Christians need to recognize that The Message of the Cross is not just for the spiritually curious. We do not graduate beyond the gospel. The minute we think we are good with God based on our own goodness, we become self-righteous, religious prudes. We are tempted to exchange self-centered hedonism for a self-centered moralims, which is a little more refined but just as broken. The exchange of our sin for Jesus goodness happens once and for all, but we keep bringing sin to the table. The gospel is for Christians. That is what keeps us from lapsing into self righteousness, when things work right…because the righteousness is not ours. The more often and the more deeply we recognize that our relationship with God is not based on our goodness but Jesus’ the less likely we are to be condescending jerks to those who don’t accept the Christian story.
Paul offers two, motivations for substantial and sustained life change: fear and love. Does that strike you as odd? I mean, these hardly seem like compatible motivations. And many people would contend that they are not. In fact one of the great poets of my generation, Ben Gibbard of DCFC, articulated his resistance to this:
He takes it as axiomatic that fear and love are not compatible motivations…a sovereign can only select one to motivate his kingdom…and was better off choosing fear.
When we hear ‘fear’ and ‘love’ in terms of motivation we think ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’. We think God is holding out the cosmic Carrot and stick – what psychologists call extrinsic motivations – trying to coax us into good behavior with pie and spankings. But psychologists who study motivation suggest that punishment/reward motivators can generally only produce short term results. They don’t have the power to generate long term change.
At the bottom of the question of whether we should be motivated by fear or love is a fundamental question of what God is like. There are two basic ways to approach God. The first is to stress transcendence. This is the approach taken, for example, by our Muslim friends. Stressing god’s transcendence stresses distinction. Got is totally other. He is characterized by qualities like omnipotence, and inscrutability and holiness.
The other basic way to approach God is to stress immanence. This is at the heart of the approach taken by our Hindu friends. God is literally everywhere…all around us, in us. God is indistinguishable from the world, and fundamentally is expressed in each one of us. God is fundamentally accessible.
Christians believe in a Trinitarian God. Who is entirely transcendent but fully immanent. He is holy, totally other, and morally inapproachable in his perfect justice in the person of the Father…but in the person of the Spirit, he is nearer to you than the person sitting next to you, giving you constant and total access. And in Jesus, God become flesh, the cosmic king of the universe soils his swaddle in a cold barn in a backwater town on the edge of the Roman Empire. He is simultaneously totally other and as identifiable as he possibly could be. That which was unapproachable invades our reality and works our salvation. Incidentally, that is what Christmas is about. In the incarnation, Jesus becomes the living embodiment of the transcendent immanent.
