Re-Created by Grace
2 Corinthians 5:6 – 10, 14 – 17
Our lesson today comes almost directly after where we left off last week. As you may recall last week Paul was imploring us Do Not Lose Heart, despite the challenges and afflictions that we face, because we know that they are meaningless in the long run. They are meaningless because we too, like Jesus, will be resurrected, to live in a new place, with a newly perfected body. Paul believed in the resurrection of the body for all Christians. If you recited the Apostle’s Creed just a few moments ago, you also claimed a perfected body after death.
We must look beyond the transient, the momentary, the earthly, the seen, and look toward things unseen, greater things of eternal value and divine glory! Where we are now and where are going then are vastly different. As Christians we yearn for place to live together with our loved ones and with our Father, to live in a more glorious place for eternity. Last week Paul was talking about resurrection of the body, this week he is talking about renewal of our soul, refreshing of our spirit, a new creation, Re-created by Grace.
Michael Collins was the “third person” as part of the Apollo 11 crew that made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first of mankind to land to the Moon. Collins flew the Command Module within just a few miles above the surface of the Moon, while the other two landed and made that historic walk. In his book, Carrying the Fire Collins described what he felt as he orbited the Moon all alone in the vastness of space, the Moon out one window and the Earth in the opposite direction.
He was a man looking toward a place where everything and everyone he loved were, yet he was near enough to touch another world that seemed desolate, cold, harsh and unforgiving. His thoughts were not unlike the tug on Paul’s heartstrings as he contemplated the heavenly realm that awaited him. Like Paul he was far away from where he wanted to be, confident in only the power and authority of Jesus over his life. To paraphrase Paul in verse 6
“Therefore, we are always confident in the grace of Christ to save and sustain us while we are absent from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight.”
In those words, we don’t see confidence in ourselves to change your situation, to save us or to sustain us when we are separated from God, but rather confidence is found in the Grace of Jesus. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and all will die. He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but rather for him, who died for them and was raised again.
Paul tells us that since we believe that Christ died to his old self, for our benefit, we should also believe that we have died to the old life we used to live. He died for all so that all who live, having received eternal life from him, might not live for themselves, to please themselves, but to spend their lives pleasing Christ who died and rose again for them.
Paul says so stop looking at people, at Christians that have Christ in them, by what the world thinks about them or by what they seem to be like on the outside. Paul says that once “I mistakenly thought of Christ in that way, merely as a human being like myself. How differently I feel now!” When someone becomes a Christian, having Christ in them, they become a brand-new person inside. He is not the same anymore. A new life has begun!
The point of what Paul is saying is clear, if your faith is in Jesus, if you have trusted Christ as your only hope to come before God, for this life and the next, then you are “new”. There is a part of that is gone. It has “passed away” because something new has come. But what exactly does it mean to be new? What exactly is “new” if I am “in Christ” by grace, through faith?
Being “in Christ” means to have an all-encompassing relationship with Christ Jesus, a relationship that has saving power. That relationship involves being made righteous as a gift rather than as an achievement, which makes us all equal at the foot of the cross. There is no room for boastfulness “in Christ,” because we have all received the same gift.
Christians are brand-new people on the inside. The Holy Spirit gives them new life, and they are not the same anymore. We are not simply reformed, rehabilitated, or reeducated but rather we are Re-created by Grace, living in divine union with Christ (Colossians 2:6, 7). At our redemption we are not merely turning over a new leaf; we are beginning a new life under a new Master.
This is how Paul expressed these ideas to the church in Rome:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)
Friends, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ, reconciled us to himself through his Son Jesus Christ. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Hear the Good News my Friends…….
If you are in Christ today, if you are saved, then you are a new creation. “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” You see, the fact is that you have been transformed into a new creation. Transformation in Jesus is based on his power, not yours. Faith is based on his sacrifice, not your actions. You are a new creation totally and completely by the grace of God, apart from any of your works,
Don’t live today with your experience as your truth. Don’t see yourself based on your old life but rather on the truth of what Scripture says about you. If you will begin to believe that God truly has already transformed you into a new creation and reconciled you to himself simply by grace, then you will live and act as one that has been Re-created by Grace.
One last story, everyone knows the process by which a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly. Their instincts tell the caterpillar to stuff itself with leaves, growing plumper. One day, the caterpillar stops eating, hangs upside down from a twig or leaf and spins itself a silky cocoon. Within its protective casing, the caterpillar’s being is radically transformed, eventually emerging as a butterfly. But how does that happen, what makes a new creation happen.
It turns out that there is something inside the caterpillar that tells it that it needs to change, to transform into something else, to become what God intended it to be. So the caterpillar releases enzymes to dissolve all its old tissue and with that the process of transformation begins. During this transformation cells begin to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes and all the other features of a beautiful adult butterfly. Not only has its’ physical body been perfected but the way that interacts with the world has also changed.
Once it had to move about slowly crawling from place to place, now it freely flies wherever wants to go souring to heights that were once unimaginable, seeing things from a new perspective, becoming a new creation, the creation that God had intended from the beginning.
Friends listen to voice of the Spirit to change, to transform into something else, to become what God intended you to be. Stop crawling from place to place, stop limiting the transformation that God has planned up for you, rather, allow yourself to be fully Re-created by Grace, soaring to new heights and seeing the world from a new perspective, the perspective of a fully redeemed, empowered, transformed Re-creation of God.
Dear ones if you are “in Christ”, if you have been redeemed through the sacrifice of Jesus and baptized by the Holy Spirit then you are new creation of God. Go out and spread your wings and fly, you have been Re-created by Grace! Amen.