A Sermon by Ben Phillips

A New Creation

Ben Phillips

St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School

Job 38:1-11, 16-18 | Psalm 107 | 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 | Mark 4:35-41, 5:1-20

We live in a culture that loves new things. We get excited about shopping and buying new things, getting that new look. Many TV shows feature a variety of ordinary people who get to undergo a professional makeover, and the audience oos and ahhs over the change. But our reading today in 2 Corinthians speaks to us of something much deep than just a makeover, something Paul refers to as "a new creation."

We can get caught up in making outsides look so good, that we forget about the inside. Whenever I would see a talk show where someone got a makeover, I always wondered what happened to that person when they went home. Was their life miraculously transformed because they got a good haircut and some strategically placed make-up? Perhaps. Or did their life just go on as it always had. Perhaps But I think in this day and age we fall into the trap of automatically connecting outer makeovers with inner ones. You can be radically transformed on the outside, and still have a mess on the inside.

Anyone ever feel that way? Focusing on the outside so much that the inside is left eating you away. Beautiful on the outside, and broken on the inside. But God is not merely a God of makeovers; he’s a God of new creation. He wants to make us whole – inside and out. So what I want to look at today is the nature of this new creation, to look at what God has done to make us whole, so that we can be equipped to mend broken hearts, broken relationships, and a broken world.

Look with me at our reading in 2 Corinthians, and keep your hand there, as we will be referring back to it throughout our time together. The key passage is verse 17, where we are told that "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" The first part of the ‘new creation’ is that the "old has passed away," which makes sense, right, out with the old, in with the new. So what is the "old’ that has passed away. It is not old hairstyles (although some of us may have been glad to see our old hair styles pass away) but I think that Paul is referring to the nature of sin.

The world is a fallen sinful world, and indeed one has only to look at the six o’clock news to see the effects of sin in our world. And not only is the world fallen and sinful, but so are we; since Adam’s fateful disobedience we all have been subject to the power of sin. Romans 3:23 tells us that "all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God." I remember in college talking to people on campus and sharing my faith, and in the course of our conversation the topic of "being a good person" would often come up. I remember asking one guy if he was a good person, and he said, "yes," and I asked him, "how do you know this to be true?" to which he replied, "Well, I’ve never killed anyone." One of the great dangers that we make with sin is to make it relative. I haven’t done anything monumentally bad, so therefore a little bad is the same as being "good."

Picture the entire human race 100 feet underwater. If one person swims up 10 feet and another swims up 90 feet, they are both still underwater! So from a breathing perspective, they’re both out of luck. So it is with God and us – from a righteousness perspective, we’re all still underwater. And if I may add, there is nothing we can do on our own to get to the surface, to attain to God’s glory.

However, the bible tells us this, in Romans 5:8, "That God demonstrates his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." And Paul reinforces this concept in our Corinthians reading today, in verse 19, "In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them." Not counting their sins against them.

How on earth can God do this? If he is indeed a just and holy God, he cannot simply ignore our sins, for to do so would contradict his holy nature. As much as God loves the sinner, He cannot ignore His own holiness. Paul tells us at the end of our Corinthians reading what God has done. Look with me at the closing sentence, verse 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." Don’t read over that too quickly. God "made him to be sin who knew no sin."

This is the first part in God’s two-step process to mend human kind, a process theologically called a double transfer. The first part of this transfer is the "out with the old step" - that somehow, when God the father looked upon that Cross outside Jerusalem with his one and only Son Jesus Christ hanging there, He saw all the sin of the world, my sin, your sin. God made him who knew no sin, for Jesus was perfectly righteous in God’s sight, God made him to be our sin. And there on that Cross our sin died with Jesus Christ, For the Bible tells us that "The wages of sin is death" and therefore to demonstrate his justice and holiness, God had to have Jesus Christ die, not just for our sins, but to become our sin, that God’s wrath might be satisfied. God’s wrath being that part of his holy nature which must see sin done away with, and the only way to get rid of sin is to kill it.

One of my all time favorite worship songs is called "In Christ Alone" and the second verse describes this event "’till on the Cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on him was laid, here in the death of Christ I’ll live."

So step one in God’s plan of making us into a new creation is to transfer our sin to Jesus, where Jesus died as our sin, and we are connected to Christ’s death by faith.

Now that in and of itself is truly a remarkable act of grace, but God does not stop here. You see, if we in sinning took one step back, God’s goal is not merely to give us one step forward, thus returning us to where we were, but he wants to take us one more step forward. You see, it’s not just, "whoever is in Christ is a new creation, the old has gone," end of sentence. Many of us may have the mindset that God’s work of redemption through Christ stops there, with the removal of our sins, but the truth is that it goes on to tell us "everything has been made new."

So let’s look at this second part of the new creation, and also our second step in what we referred to as the double transfer. Recall our closing verse from our Corinthians reading "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin," and then what? See, the sentence doesn’t end there does it? It goes on to say, "So that in him we might become the righteousness of God." So the new thing that has come, Paul is getting at, is the righteousness of God. To further investigate this, there is a passage in Philippians which I think will shed some light on the issue

Allow me to read to you Philippians 3:8-9, "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him." Now here is the key verse, "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith."

If all have sinned and fall short, then what each and every one of us needs more than anything is to be righteous before God, to be in a right standing with him. How is this righteousness accomplished? Paul tells us that the way we can’t get it is by our own actions. None of us are capable of producing our own righteousness, because none of us can keep all of God’s holy laws in perfect order our whole lives. Therefore, God has sent his son Jesus, to live a perfect righteous life. So our source of righteousness is Jesus himself, and we receive His righteousness through faith, because the bible tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God, and this faith connects us to Jesus, who IS pleasing to God. Just as Paul tells us, "not having a righteousness of my own which comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith."

So this then is the new thing that comes. Not only have our sins been destroyed by the death of Jesus, but through faith in him and him alone we receive a divine righteousness, thus completing the double transfer. Christ takes our sin, and in it’s place we receive his righteousness. One of the greatest preachers I have ever heard, a man name Derek Cleave, an Englishman whom I heard at my grandmother’s church when I was visiting my family in Bristol. He describes it this way: Imagine our lives written in a book. Every thought, every action, every word recorded. We will all have to present this book to God, and by our own book we would stand condemned. Guilty. But Jesus comes to us and says, "Here, take a look at the book of my life. It’s perfect. If you will let me, I will take your book and give you mine in return."

That is the gift of salvation in Christ a new creation. And Paul reminds us in Corinthians, "All this comes from God." Not because we deserve or earned it, but it is unmerited favor with a loving God. We call this grace, and we receive this grace through faith in Christ. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – And this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works so that none may boast." This is the miracle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that through His sacrifice on the Cross, God counted our sins in his place, and through faith in him we receive His righteousness. This is the miracle of the ‘new creation’

There is one other matter inherent in this wonderful doctrine of new creation. We’ve talked about God’s two-step, double transfer, but there is also an understood third step. Given the riches of God’s grace, and all that he has done for us to make us whole in Jesus Christ, this question remains, "How then shall we live." You see, in Christ, we are in a right standing before God, and that cannot change. By faith in Christ, our sinful lives are now justified before a holy God, and we call that justification by faith. If this is the case, then our challenge as Christians is to begin living in a manner befitting our status. We have an obligation to live according to the Spirit of God.

Learning to live in a holy manner befitting this gift of righteousness is difficult and lengthy, requiring sacrifice, repentance and perseverance. It is a process, and this process is called sanctification, which essentially means, "being made holy." In Jesus Christ we are a work in progress that is already approved. It’s like all those pre approved credit card applications I keep getting in the mail. Pre approved by faith in Jesus, but now I have to figure out the best way to fill out the application, knowing that I will mess up on it, need help, but confident that Jesus’ promise of righteousness is binding. That’s why God sent His Holy Spirit, to guide us in this process of Sanctification. So how then shall we live?

Christ sets us free not to return to our sinful ways, for then we would be returning to the brokenness for which he came to set us free. Our third step is responding to God’s grace, and in the matter of being made whole, we must look at our sinful nature – our bad habits, our selfish tendencies, our lust, and so on – as rubbish. So like Paul states in Philippians, "I consider them rubbish, that I may be found in Christ." Through faith in Jesus, we are set free to serve God, and not serve our sinful nature, which is what produced our broken lives in the first place.

I would like to close with this. There is one particular matter of our response to God’s gift in our lives that Paul addresses in our reading. In verse 20 he states this, "God has given us the ministry of reconciliation…So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us."

As Christians we are God’s ambassadors to the world. An ambassador is one who speaks on behalf of the one whose interests are being represented. For some reason, God has chosen to use us, you and me, to be His instruments of the message of the reconciling work he has done through Christ. So the new creation is not meant to be withheld, but shared. Do you know someone who is broken? Someone who tries so hard to get it right on the outside but is really hurting on the inside. Do you know someone who needs to be made whole? Perhaps you know someone who is a Christian already, who needs to be lovingly encouraged and reminded of the miraculous work of the new creation they have in Christ. The only way a broken world will know of the healing power of Christ is if we tell them. New creation does not occur by osmosis if you live within a three-block radius of a church, and I believe that the joy of the gift of salvation is made complete when we share it with others.

The world needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It needs to be shared. If not us, who? If not now, when? So be a work in progress ambassador for Jesus Christ. Stand firm in the knowledge that when God looks at me, because of faith in Christ, he doesn’t see crazy messed up Ben; he sees his son and his righteousness. Yes we will mess up, but don’t let that stop you from pressing on. We can not possibly repay him for such a wonderful gift of new creation, so let us live as "work in progress" ambassadors, telling our broken friends and families, our broken communities, and our broken world about the miracle of new creation in Jesus, for it is God’s will to shape us whole. AMEN

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