This week we have spoken of kingdoms and kings, and of God’s power over crowns and countries. God chooses to work alongside humanity through history toward an end we can imagine, but which we do not yet understand fully. What is God up to in all of this? Sometimes we wish that God would just give us a special pair of glasses, ones that will let us see things from a heavenly perspective. Maybe a really tiny angel (you know, one of those small enough to fit on the head of a pin) could sit on our shoulder, not to tell us what to do, but to help us hear the kingdom perspective in the conversations around us.
Perhaps Paul can help us out:
For the love of Christ urges us on,
because we are convinced that one has died for all;
therefore all have died.
And he died for all,
so that those who live might live no longer for themselves,
but for him who died and was raised for them.
There is something convincing about the love of Christ, something convicting about the willingness of Jesus to share in our humanity. Even though we can’t altogether see it, or understand it, the confrontation of death by Jesus Christ fascinates us. The creator of life, the eternal, chooses to share in human death. When Jesus experiences death, something happens that takes away the power and permanence of the death that is the separation from life with God. Jesus restores communion between God and God’s people.
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.
Before we imitated Jesus, we had a glimpse of who he might be, and a hope for what he might do. Now that we have mimicked his death, and his victory over death, we are in conversation with God. Since his word and his Spirit now shape who we are, our perspective changes radically, much more than a new “pair of glasses” could hope to change our vision. How we hear the events happening in our presence is no longer from the “human point of view” either. How we see Jesus, and how we hear his word, has changed forever.
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, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
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.
So, now that we can see things from a heavenly point of view, what is our challenge? It is to help others see Jesus, too. Why? Because if they see Jesus, then they can be reconciled to God, too. God restored fellowship through Jesus, and he still does this. Yet now God works through the Jesus that is in us. The new creation in us, the reconciled human in us, now must imitate the ministry of Jesus in a way similar to the way that we have imitated the mission of Jesus. We are ambassadors of the kingdom of God to people who find themselves citizens or captives in all sorts of other kingdoms, kingdoms which do not bring about fellowship with God. When we deliver this message of reconciliation, God can and will bring about restored relationships to those around us.
Yet this is slow work. Even when a person sees the way to God, it takes a lifetime to learn to walk the pathway to God. Let’s learn to be patient with others beginning this walk in the same way that Jesus has been patient with us.
Grace and peace,
Ron
2 Corinthians 5:14-21 – NRSV
