New Creation
Love Your Enemies • Sermon • Submitted
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If Anyone is?
If Anyone is?
This is an important distinction. From now on. (NRSV)
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. What has happened to change things because if you say from now on something has changed hasn’t it. Isn’t it our point of view. The reference here is to us once knowing Christ in human form.
Remember Jesus came to us born of the Virgin Mary. He lived a life of complete humanness. So did Jesus change? No, He was born completely human and completely god. What changed was our understanding of what he was. In this time, that Paul writes about, Paul tells us that they once thought of Jesus as human. But Paul states that we know him that way no longer. What changed?
When we realize that Jesus is of the father and from the father, we changed.
(NRSV)
17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God. In other words, we did not understand this without the understanding that God provides when we ask.
Remember that before Paul became a follower, he was a persecutor of Christ followers. Prevenient Grace is that which goes before us. Paul was known as Saul before his incident on the road to Damascus. But God saw in him something different. when I began to have visions I heard a loud voice say, “you are not the little boy that I created you to be.” Paul had his life changing encounter on the Damascus road and it changed him. “A New Creation” and from that day forward he was known as Paul.
What Paul is telling us is that before we knew Christ Jesus we knew Jesus. Before we knew that he was of God we saw him as of man.
God is using the Son to bring us to the Father. (NRSV)
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; not counting on us but the Son to bring us home to the Father.
So how have we become ambassadors for Christ?
We who believe in the deity of christ Jesus, are becoming witnesses to His life. (NRSV)
20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
We know that Saul was a persecutor of the early Christians. As a good Roman, Saul was doing what he thought was only right. Just as we also know what we believe to be true until we discover the reality of Christ being our savior.
(NRSV)
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.