How Do You See Me? - Part III

What lenses do you look through when you look at another person? Do you see their skin color? Do you hear their dialect? Do you observe their economic standing? Do you judge whether or not they are a beautiful person?

We all bring a pair of glasses to our relationships. We look and judge and generalize our findings into nice, neat little categories. We do this so we can esteem some and demean others. Now on this third day of teasing out II Corinthians 5:14-21, we come to verses 16 & 17:

"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! "

Paul has just stated in verse 14 that he was convinced that when Jesus died, ALL died (implicit is our participation in His resurrection, too). And, that we all need to surrender to this reality and live for Jesus and not ourselves. Now we hear Paul say that it has totally transformed the way he sees everyone. He goes so far as to state that to see someone excluded from Jesus is to have a "worldly" perspective and not a Christian (or Christ-centered) perspective.

To paraphrase Paul -"I can't look at anyone and see them apart from Jesus Christ and His all encompassing work of death and resurrection. Everyone I see was included in Christ's death and resurrection and to think otherwise is to deny His lordship - which is just what the world does and I once did, too!"

To see Jesus as He is, as Lord incarnate, is to have your prescription lenses completely overhauled which revolutionizes the way you see the world around you. To know that Jesus Christ is Lord tells you the secret (mystery is the biblical language) that is hidden in everyone you meet. It drives you... compels you... constrains you... to tell the folks you encounter the Good News of who they are in Christ.

The passage further declares that everyone is a new creation in Christ!

What? That's not what it says, Mark. Someone only becomes a new creation IF they are in Christ and you can't get into Christ unless you pray the prayer. Only after that are you included in Christ and then you are recreated and old things pass away and everything becomes new. You have to get into Christ and only the saved are in Christ.

Hold your horses, that is not what the passage states. I realize that most of us evangelicals were raised hearing the verse, "if anyone is in Christ..." on the heals of praying the prayer or extended as a promise of what is to come when and if we say the prayer, BUT just because we have always heard something doesn't make it so.

Verse 17 starts with the word "therefore" which means that everything that is about to be said hinges on the preceding thought. "Based on all that I have just said, the following is true." What did Paul just state? Who did Paul just say was in Christ dying? ALL! All are in Christ already. He states it again in Colossians 1:17:

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

Therefore, carrying forward the Christological argument he started, he declares if the preceding is true then it stands to reason that in Christ's death and resurrection a whole new creation has been birthed in the person of Jesus. The old man was taken down in Christ and the New Man has arrived in His resurrection.

Peter echoes this in his first epistle, chapter 1:3:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..."

How cool is that! Jesus didn't just come to do the work. He is The Work. Ephesians 2:15b-16 says:

"His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them [Jews and Gentiles] to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility."

In Jesus Christ, and through His death and resurrection, old has been destroyed and the new has been ushered in!

Do you see His new creation in you? Have you trusted in the message of truth? I know it's hard. Everything else around you says something to the contrary. The cold, hard facts of your existence tell you a different story.

But which word will you believe? The word of this world which is passing away as we speak? Or the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ, who has overcome this world and your death and has made all things new?

Tomorrow: What's Your Ministry and Message?