Sunday Sermon: In Christ a New Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the Corinthians.

This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, beginning in verse 16. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is 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 and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Let us pray. Our God and Savior, we come to you again this morning asking that your Spirit would be upon us, that it would so condition our mind and our heart to receive and understand the Word of God.

For as we looked at last week in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, who can know the mind of a person except for the Spirit that is in that person? And so we know the mind of God according to the Spirit of God that is in us, that has been poured into the hearts of every believer and follower of Jesus Christ.

And so it is by your Spirit that we understand what your Word says, that we get to know the will of God, test and approve what is good and pleasing to you. And so I pray that your Spirit would illuminate these things to us, that we would come to understand all the more what it means to be a new creation in Christ.

That the old is passed away and the new has come. Grow us as this new creation. We pray and ask these things in the name of Christ and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So last couple of weeks we've been in verse 16.

It's taken us two weeks to get through verse 16. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Our understanding of that was very simply that there is no division and no prejudice in the body of Christ.

There is no reason for us to look down on one another, certainly not because of the color of our skin. And whenever we talk about prejudice in our American context, that's generally where our mind goes.

Prejudice in the history of racism that has existed in this nation. That is about one of the most shallow forms of discrimination that you could have against one another because somebody looks different than you, which is absurd.

And there should absolutely be no separation in the body of Christ simply because of the way that a person looks on the outside. But even deeper than that, there is nothing on the inside that should separate us from one another either.

For we have all been bound together into one in the spirit of our God. The spirit of God that inhabits the people of God. We are a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And we have one God and Father who is over us all.

We have one Savior in whom we have been reconciled to God. And so as God is over all and through all and in all, we regard no one according to the flesh, but we are one together in spirit. But just as we consider the body of Christ this way, so we may also even look at people outside the church this way.

We do not discriminate against anyone, but knowing that everyone needs to hear the life-saving message of the gospel of Christ. And we might consider the spirit of a person as to whether or not they are a God-fearer and walking after the knowledge of God, worshiping our Savior Christ, or are they a person that is still walking in the course of this world in rebellion against God.

And so we measure the spirit of a person to know whether or not they are walking in the gospel or need to hear the gospel. And so even in this way, we regard no one according to the flesh, but share the gospel with all.

Then that next part we looked at last week, the next part of verse 16, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. There was a time for every single one of us when you did not worship Jesus Christ as God.

You may have grown up in a Christian home and have always heard the name of Jesus, but until your heart was transformed to know him as God, you did not worship him or honor him as Lord. He was just another great teacher in a long line of influential men in the history of the world.

Probably the most influential because we base our calendar system around this guy. But you did not know Jesus Christ as God until the Holy Spirit of God changed your heart from being a person who regarded him in the flesh to a person who regards him as spirit, as eternal, as the one through whom all things were created.

By his voice, all things came into existence. And your heart was changed from that person who regarded Christ in the flesh to understanding him and knowing him as God. We once regarded Christ according to the flesh.

We regard him thus no longer. The very first words that Jesus came and preached in Matthew 4, 17 were these, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. We saw those same words used in the chapter before.

It was John the Baptist that was preaching that, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John the Baptist prepared the way Jesus Christ picked up with the very message of God that was given to the forbearer of this ministry that Christ was going to begin.

And so Christ, his first words were repent. And you understand that word repent meaning to turn from sin, to change your course, no longer walking in the pattern of this world, but having a mind that is transformed to be after God and his kingdom.

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But more specifically, the context of this message to repent, of this call to repentance that Jesus gave the people in his very first sermon cry as he began to preach.

Very specifically, he is calling the people to change their mind about God. Repent. Change your mind about God. And where was he preaching this? In perhaps the most God-minded culture on the planet, in Judea.

But though they acknowledged God with their lips, their hearts were far from him. They did not truly know God. They did not actually worship God. But the righteousness that they portrayed in their lives was a self-righteousness.

If I keep the law, if I do all of these things that Moses had set out for us, that God told him to write down, then I will be favored by God. And it was a belief that salvation was meritorious. It was by works that I can claim this salvation that I have.

I can ascend to the place of God if I just do all these things right. And righteousness is not something that we can do, that we can attain by our works, because we are such rotten sinners who are unholy and fallen from God's glory and his place, his holy habitation there in his heaven.

We cannot ascend to that place. These people did not truly honor or worship God, but believe that they themselves by their own works could be as holy as God. And so when Jesus comes proclaiming, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, he's saying, change your mind about God.

Fear God and know that he is holy and you are not. And it was a change in attitude. And so likewise, when we come to know Christ and worship Christ, we change our mind and our attitude about Christ. Previously thinking, we could attain a righteousness of our own.

Folks, everyone in this world who is not a follower of Jesus Christ essentially believes that they can attain righteousness by their own merit. I can do enough nice things for people that eventually I will, you know, how could God possibly refuse me on that day of judgment?

Look at all the good things that I did. And yet Jesus said in Matthew 7, there are plenty of people on that day of judgment who are going to stand before him and say, Lord, didn't we do all of these mighty works in your name?

And he's going to say to them, depart from me, you worker of iniquity. I never knew you. We can have a religion that looks like it's Christian and yet not actually have hearts that desire God or worship him or submit to him in all that we do.

So as we get closer to verse 17 here, let me ask you this. Are you a person who believes or who thinks with everything that you are, you are trying to attain the things that you want and that you desire?

Day by day, every day that passes by, all that you are is after the stuff that you can attain, that you want, that you're passionate about. I want all the things that I desire. Is that how you invest all of your energies on a daily basis?

How you can acquire the things that you want. And maybe there are occasions even in that quest where you might sideline a little bit from your own interests and your own pursuits to consider somebody else every once in a while, somebody who is hurt, somebody who is broken, somebody who is in need, or somebody who really needs some help and you might even give of your money to them to help them charitably so that they might have the things that they desperately need.

And then you think to yourself there, I've done my good deed for the week, I've thought less of myself and I've thought of somebody else and I've given to them and now I can continue with my pursuits and with my own interests and passions.

Is that the way that you invest your days? Day by day, week by week, year by year, you are just looking out for number one. You're just trying to get the things and acquire the things that you want. Is that you?

Or are you a person who with everything that you are and day by day and moment by moment, you are trying to find ways to honor God with everything that you do and with everything that you are? See the difference between those two people?

One who does everything for themselves to acquire everything for themselves that they could possibly have versus the person who does everything that they do to the glory of God. That's what Paul said to the Corinthians in his previous letter, that's what he says in Colossians chapter 3, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

And what I've just described here is the difference between the old person and the new person. Every single one of us at one point, we were all out for our own interests. We were all desiring our own thing and chasing after our own pursuits.

And everything that we are, even the religion that we had, it was just for us. We were trying to gain a righteousness that we could call our own, that we could say, we did, I worked for this, I got this, how could God possibly refuse me?

On the day of judgment, I can say, look, God, at all the things that I have done for you. But as Paul laid out in Acts chapter 17, God doesn't need anything from us. We can't do anything for God. Romans chapter 11, saying the same thing.

There's nothing that we can give to God that he is therefore obligated to have to owe us anything or pay us back for anything. He doesn't need anything and we deserve nothing. And so as long as we try to pursue righteousness, thinking that we can do something in order to acquire this, we're going to fall short of that mark every time.

And it's just trying to honor ourselves instead of honoring God. This is the way that we all were before we came to Christ. But now in Christ, we're different, we're a new creation. Everything that we do is now to the glory of God.

How can I honor God with this day? How can I honor God with my life? How can I honor the Lord in the workplace today? How can I honor the Lord in the ways that I love my spouse? How can I honor the Lord in the ways that I am raising my children?

How can I honor the Lord as I walk out of the mailbox to get the mail? I mean, however mundane the thing might be, this is the very thing that Paul is talking about here when he says, whether you eat or drink or whatever it is that you do, give God the glory in all things and everything.

This is the first and greatest commandment that our Lord Christ had given us, that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, not just on Sunday or Wednesday night.

We get a recharge on Sunday. We get fellowship with the body of Christ. We get to hear the word of Christ proclaimed. We lift our voices together in praise to God, which, by the way, is heaven practice because we're all going to be doing this together in heaven one day, praising God around the throne.

But then throughout our week, when we're going about all the other tasks that we have, do the things that you heard on Sunday, do those things, then also infiltrate your life in all of these other different areas so that Christ might be glorified in all that you are and in everything that you do.

And this is a transformation that happens in a person by the spirit of God, by the power of God, that you've gone from being the old person who is dead and dying and passing away that will perish with this world, and instead, you become a new creation in Christ that is not perishing but is eternal, that is growing and is flourishing, and will ultimately attain a Christ-likeness, so holy and righteous you can barely comprehend it now, but we have from John in 1 John 3 that we will see him as he is because on that day, we will be made to be like him.

Putting Off the Old Self and Putting On the New

Let's examine further this understanding of being a new creation. Our passage today, 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. The way that Paul puts it in Romans, the old man is dead.

He's died. He's been...or the way Paul puts it with the Galatians, he's been crucified with Christ. It is now no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. The old is passed away, and behold, the new has come.

This is a very common lesson that Paul gives in his letters, encouraging his readers to put off the old and put on the new. In fact, Jesus even says this through the Apostle John in Revelation, when he says, put on new garments, these new robes that I give you.

In the parable of the wedding feast that Jesus gave in the book of Matthew, there is a man who tries to get into the wedding wearing his old soiled garments. And Jesus says to him, or well, Jesus, the master of the house in the parable says to him, how did you get in here to this wedding wearing those old garments?

Weren't you given a new garment when you came in? The man basically, yeah, well, it's not my size. I didn't want to wear it. So the master of the house has him bound hand and foot, says it is the easiest thing for you to just wear the garment that I gave you, the wedding garment, and you wouldn't even do that.

And he says, these people will be bound and thrown outside with the hypocrites where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So we have this charge that's given to us over and over again in the Scriptures to put off the old and put on the new.

And those new things that we're supposed to be wearing very specifically is the righteousness of Christ. And this ultimately reaches its apex, its conclusion, in this section that we are reading here when we get to verse 21.

For our sake, God made him, Christ, to be sin who knew no sin so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. Wearing the righteousness of Christ and received and accepted by God, not because of anything that we did, but because of what Christ did for us.

Let's look at a couple of other places where Paul talks about taking off the old, putting on the new. Go with me to, let's do Ephesians first. Go to Ephesians 4. These passages are in your bulletin as well if you don't have your Bible.

Ephesians 4, we'll start in verse 17. Ephesians 4, verse 17. Paul says, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. Now, that can also be translated pagans.

The words Gentiles and pagans are kind of interchangeable there. You must no longer walk as the pagans do in the futility of their minds. Meaning what? Meaning that all those who do not know God and do not know Jesus Christ, they walk in futility and they go from bad to worse.

If the Holy Spirit of God does not intersect at the junction of a person's life, if they don't stop a person on the trajectory that they are on, where they are headed is destruction. This is why that whole concept of repentance is understood as turning around, going the other direction, doing a complete 180 and heading the other way.

The way that we described it this morning so far was that you would change your mind about God. You thought about God one way, but then after you have repented, you've completely changed your mind about God and thought about Him a different way.

So here, Paul is even saying those who are pagan, who do not know Christ, they are heading a particular direction, and you can't go that way. So if you're a new creation in Christ, you're also a person with a new direction.

You were headed south, now you're going north, and you can't go south anymore and continue to head toward God, you would be going away from Him. So you have to go north in the direction of God to continue to get closer and closer to the Lord.

So Paul says you must no longer walk as the pagans do in the futility of their minds, worse and worse until ultimately they will fall in destruction. Verse 18, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart.

Their heart is hard. Their heart only knows one direction, and that's away from God until the Holy Spirit changes their heart to turn the other way. And how does the Holy Spirit do that? Through the hearing of the gospel.

It is the only way that a person changes their direction is when they hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. You know, you can pray for somebody that they would change their direction and change their course in life, but you also must share the gospel with them.

For they don't know that they need to change a direction in their life until they hear in the law of God the sinfulness that they've committed against God and then hear in the gospel the solution to this rebellion that they have been doing against God.

The gospel message is what we've been reading about even here in 2 Corinthians 5, that through Christ, God is reconciling all things to himself. Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave that all who would believe in him would have this wonderful precious grace of God that will not be poured out in judgment upon a person, but rather will be received as a fellow son or daughter of God, a fellow heir of the kingdom of God because of what Christ has done.

Jesus took our sins upon himself when he died on the cross and he gave us his righteousness. And how do you receive this wonderful gift of grace? By faith. By faith. By believing in Jesus. But if you have faith that has been given to you by God, you will not be doing the things that you did before, but your mind concerning God will have been changed and you'll instead be moving in a direction toward God instead of away from him.

You can't be walking in the sinfulness of your flesh that you were in before Christ when you were B .C., right? When you were Dave B .C., you can't be going that way anymore. You have to be Dave A .D. and Odomany in the year of our Lord moving in the direction of Christ.

Can't be in the same walk of life that we were in before we were changed and transformed by the spirit of God. If you continue in the sinfulness that you were in before you heard the gospel, then there really was not any transformation of the gospel that happened in your life.

You're still the same sinful person just using Christianese, using Jesus' words, but there's not actually a change in heart, which makes your speech even more blasphemous than it was before. Paul said in Romans 6, if we have died to sin, how can we who have died to sin still live in it?

You would show yourself as still a slave to sin instead of a slave to the righteousness of Christ. So no longer walk in the old self like the pagans who are hardened in their heart. Verse 19, they have become callous and they have given themselves up to sensuality, chasing after the passions of their flesh, which I talked about earlier, just the things that they want, their own desires, everything that they want to have, whatever that might be, money, greed, sex, any of these things, whatever would satisfy the passions in their flesh, that's the stuff that they're after.

The thing that'll give me that next kick, that next thrill, the feelings that I want, the stuff that will make me happy. And this is a very, a culture that is very much charged by happiness. Everything is the pursuit of happiness.

It's in the Declaration of Independence that we would have the freedom for the pursuit of happiness. Whatever makes you happy, you have the freedom to pursue that thing, but the thing that makes you happy may be the thing that is taking you farther and farther from God.

Happiness is cheap, it is fleeting, and the thing that makes you happy today may not even be the thing that makes you happy tomorrow, and certainly may not be the thing that makes you happy next year.

I was thinking about this just recently when I was reflecting upon the friends that I had 15, 20 years ago, when I was in my first years in college. And I've even looked some of those friends up, and every once in a while, one of those friends will look me up and will send me an email, and it's very sad that I have yet to have an experience with one of those friends that I hung out with in college who's actually walking faithfully with the Lord today.

Most of them have apostatized, meaning they have left the faith, or they have taken on a faith that is so liberal it hardly looks like Christianity. And why is it that somebody can have such a radical change in their lives when at one point we were all Christians and happy together and attending church and all hanging out together, and now suddenly they have a life that looks so different, so vastly different from Christianity than what the Bible says that Christianity is?

How could that change so drastically? Well, knowing from my own experience at that particular time, it's because we were chasing feelings instead of worshiping because we knew the truth. And the same was true for me.

I wasn't any better than the rest of them. I was doing what made me feel good rather than worshiping God because I knew that it was true. And because feelings change and attitudes about those things that make us happy change, if you have a faith that is based just on the feelings that you have, there's going to come a time where eventually that faith is just not going to be all that important to you anymore.

Because it was based on your feelings and your experiences and not on the truth of what God's word has to say. And you'll abandon it because you'll look for something else that will give you that same thrill that that religion had in that season of your life, but now I need something else in order to get the kick that I was looking for.

And it is only by the grace of God that I didn't apostatize with the rest of my friends. And I'm grateful that God brought me back to an understanding of the word as the foundation of my faith, not the feelings that I had in my body.

The faith that we have in Christ is not physiological. It's spiritual. It is not dependent upon our feelings. It is grounded in truth. On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

So those who are pagan, chasing after the desires of their flesh, the feelings that they have, they've given themselves up to sensuality, greed, they practice every kind of impurity. Whatever sin that you can name, anyone who is not in Christ, you would find somebody who is practicing that sin.

Now, it doesn't mean that everyone who is not a follower of Christ is practicing every sin that you could possibly do. That's not what that means. But there has yet to be a sin that is invented that somebody who isn't a follower of Christ Jesus is not doing.

Did I say that right or did I have too many double negatives in there? But you understand what it is that I'm saying. They've given themselves up to the stuff that they want to do in their flesh. You invent a new sin, they'll find a way to do it.

Verse 20, but that is not the way that you learn Christ. And I love the caveat that's added in here. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. Again, it's not about feelings.

It's not about chasing a passion of the flesh, but it's knowing the truth. And because the truth is immovable, and it's the same for everybody, regardless of how you feel about it, as Ben Shapiro is famous for saying, facts don't care about your feelings.

But you know the truth applies to you regardless of how you feel about it. You will repent of your sin and follow Jesus Christ, knowing that he is the only way that you can be saved from the rebellion that you have perpetrated against God.

Christ has died for those sins. He is atoned for those sins so that by faith in him, we now have favor from God instead of his wrath. But Paul adds in here, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him.

Now Paul spent several years in Ephesus teaching the gospel, growing the church there, raising up disciples. He had men that he had so blessed with the Holy Spirit that they could do the same miraculous things that he was doing.

And so they went about in the towns and all the surrounding areas preaching the gospel. He spent a lot of time there in Ephesus, loved the Ephesian church, loved the elders that were there. But in the time that Paul has been away from Ephesus, there may be some other people who have come into that church that he's not personally acquainted with, and he doesn't know if they're just kind of there because somebody invited him.

You know, somebody extended an invitation, hey, come to the next great, hip, awesome place that I go to every Sunday morning. Really? I got to miss chariot races for this? You know, so they go to church with him in the morning on Sundays, on the Lord's Day, but they're just there and they're not really, you know, all that interested in what's going on.

Or maybe it's just another philosophy to them. Or maybe they even feel like they're doing their religious duty and God will show favor. This God that they're worshiping will show favor upon me because here I am in church on a Sunday morning.

And maybe they still consider Christ according to the flesh. Their hearts have not yet been transformed to know him and know that he is truth and all other ground is sinking sand. Maybe they don't know that yet.

So Paul says, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. So I'm assuming that you know this, but in case there's somebody there that doesn't know this, you need to know the truth about Christ.

That it is not something that you can just change your mind about or have these same thoughts about any of these other gods or deities that the Romans and the Greeks worship, but it is Christ alone who is worthy of our worship.

As we talked about last week, considering Christ in the flesh. You know, these teachings are still common in the church now to think of Christ in the flesh and not according to the spirit or according to what the Bible says about him.

This is what Joel Osteen said on a news program when he was being interviewed about Jesus. He said, of course, I believe in Christ as the savior and all, but I've spent a lot of time in India. I've been with a lot of Hindu people.

They're nice, kind people who love God as well. No, they don't. That's why they're Hindus. It's because they don't love Christ. They don't love God. The plethora of gods that the Hindus worship does not bring them any closer to salvation, regardless of how they feel or believe about Jesus.

Gandhi, who was a Hindu, just thought of Jesus as a great teacher. And I don't know if you've seen, but Gandhi was in the news just a couple of months ago. Did anybody see this? There was a letter that was handwritten by Gandhi that was sold at auction.

I think it went for like $60 ,000 or something like that. It is the only known writing from Gandhi in which he actually states in this letter, his feelings about Jesus Christ. And he says in the letter that Jesus was only a great teacher, but he cannot resolve himself to believe in Christ as anything other than that.

And he was writing this letter to a minister here in the United States. And I don't know what this was in response to what the minister originally said to Gandhi, but I imagine this minister was trying to share the gospel with him, but Gandhi was responding, Jesus was just a great teacher.

I can't see him as God. I cannot worship him as the Lord. And this is because Gandhi has, or he had rather, he'd become callous. He had that hardened heart. He could not see Christ as anyone other than a man in the flesh, did not know him as God.

And he loved his Hinduism instead of Jesus. Victoria Osteen, Joel Osteen's wife has said this, Jesus was man until God touched him and put the spirit of the living God on the inside of him. And that's encouraging today.

No, that's heresy today. Jesus is and always has been God. There was never a time when Jesus was not God. He didn't exist as merely a man for 30 years until the Holy Spirit came out of heaven and rested upon him at his baptism.

He was God even before that. But the voice of God from heaven that said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, affirmed that Jesus was who he said he was. It did not make him into the thing that he said he was.

Until the sinner is convinced of sin, he can never be converted from his sin. Christ's coming was as a savior to die for sinners. The Spirit's coming is to convince us of sin that we may be close with Christ as our savior.

So long as sin is unseen, Christ will be unsought. And the Spirit reveals to us our sinfulness and our need for a savior who is Christ the Lord. Friend of mine, a pastor friend of mine, Alan Nelson, was talking about repentance this morning.

And he said the following. This is what he's preaching today. So he's preaching this at the same time that I'm reading his comments. Wouldn't it be cool if I'm saying this at the exact same time that he's saying it?

Repentance isn't just about turning from something, but also turning to something. Biblical repentance is turning from sin and turning to Christ. Jesus isn't just a chain breaker to set you free from sin.

He sets us free from sin to bring us to God that we may live holy and godly lives in the present age. So as Paul goes on here with the Ephesians, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

My friends, if you're a follower of Jesus, there should be an evidence of that in your life. You are no longer the old person that you were. You are a brand new creation in Jesus Christ. Chris, are you even a shadow of who you were before you came to Christ?

Totally different. If you knew Chris before he became a Christian and you looked at Chris now, they would be two starkly, drastically different people. They do not look anywhere near the same. And I've had the blessing in my life of knowing people and I have only known them in their walk of righteousness and I have never known them as the sinner they were before they came to Christ.

And once they share with me their story, who they were before Christ changed them, it's like, oh my good, I could never imagine you doing some of the things that you were saying that you did before you came to Christ.

That's how much the spirit of God should be changing us when we come to Christ. And yet, folks, there are people that I've witnessed to even here in this community who are drunk as I'm talking to them.

And they say, oh yeah, I love Jesus. I was baptized when I was 14. I said the prayer at kid's camp. I've come to know Jesus, and I'm a Christian. And there's no difference between them and any other drunk stumbling out of the bar down on Washington.