Live Like a Champion – Week 15
The Promise of a New Beginning!
2 Corinthians 5:14-21 (NAS95)
In this sermon series, we are learning how to live like a champion by learning how to live according to the victory of the promises of God. Our guiding image for this series is being a member of an NFL team who wins the Superbowl. We live like champions so that others will come to know the One who gave us His Victory—Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and coming again!
He is risen! My savior lives!
The play of the week is “The Promise of a New Beginning!” The memory verse for this promise is 2 Corinthians 5:17, when Paul victoriously proclaims,
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
This is the promise of spring! Even after the worst of winters, the spring brings new life! As the saying goes, “April showers. May flowers.” The same is true for even the worst of sinners! When God’s grace rains down on you and your respond in faith, then the Lord Jesus Christ will reign in you and He will bring new life because Jesus’ kingdom is about resurrection power—making all things new (Revelation 21:5).
As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, this promise is the good fruit of those who are “in Christ”!
Are you “in Christ”? Are you walking in a personal relationship with Him?
As you heard from the scripture reading this morning, this memory verse is a part of larger passage about how and why we have received the promise of a new beginning. Let’s find our answers from God’s Word.
“For the love of Christ compels us…”
“We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.”
Are you abiding in Christ or abiding in death? The simple test is always found in one word: LOVE!
Who or what directs your path? What compels you to act and constrains you to not act? What sets your agenda and what gives you the motivation to get it done? How do you make decisions?
“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.”
This is the mystery of the resurrection—life comes from death! As Jesus said in John 12:24-26,
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.
We are unwilling to begin a new life when we remain codependent with the old man—you can’t keep the old man on life support just in case Jesus doesn’t work for you! Paul knew this intimately as a former religious leader. He had to die to religion in order to be born again to a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”
You can’t live the old life and experience the promise of a new beginning at the same time. Beauty comes from ashes—that’s a promise!
Maybe you are hanging on to some hurt, habit, or hang up, an addiction or secret sin, or maybe you are not willing to die to religion in order to be born again through personal relationship…
Are you living a co-dependent life with your old self? You don’t need the old anymore. You can experience satisfaction and joy in your new life; you can feel accomplished and successful in Christ alone; you can know who you are and have a unique identity in your life.
What must you crucify so that you are living as the new creation Jesus Christ says you are?
“Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.”
“the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
We live by faith in the Son of God who loved me! This faith becomes our power source because of God’s Holy Spirit living in us—given to us by the Father and Son to fulfill God’s purposes for our lives.
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
How do we become the righteousness of God in Christ?
You have been regenerated (born again!) by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God has given you the gift of His righteousness—His presence in you. Holiness is Christ in you! What comes out of you is determined by who lives in you. The tree is known by its fruit! You are already a new creation, a new person, as Paul says, the old has gone, behold, the new has come. This is the new beginning of being “in Christ”!
Jesus took your sin upon Himself and filled you with His right standing with God so you can live in Him. Listen to Romans 6:4-11 explains this as he teaches us about the ancient practice of baptism:
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Why has God done this?
There is a reason God has commanded us to walk in this way, in the promise of a new beginning!
For God’s glory, we are created in Christ Jesus to be signposts of His new creation! We are not yet in the New Heaven and New Earth, that is at the end of all things when Christs makes all things new (Revelation 21:5), but we are to point people to the new creation!
“For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
As a part of His new creation, Jesus has invited you into the mission of Jesus. Listen to our last two verses of our scripture lesson, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20,
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
If you are in Christ, you are on mission!
No additional call to ministry required because you are immediately a “minister of reconciliation.” When God calls you to Himself, He calls you to His plans and purposes for creating you (Ephesians 2:10).
You are a signpost of the New Heaven and New Earth! You are already a new creation, reconciled to God through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ! This is the reality of your baptism of the Holy Spirit—you are infused with the Light of God, His Holy Spirit, immersed in God for the world to see!
“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Now, as a new creation, chosen by God, reconciled by the Son and empowered by the Holy Spirit, compelled by His love go in grace as ambassadors for Christ—signposts of the new creation!