Good Friday
2
Cor 5:14-21
4/18/25
“And I, when I came to you,
brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with
lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you
except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
That is how the apostle Paul described his missionary activity when he
came to Corinth.
The Greco-Roman world’s education
system was focused on rhetoric. It taught how to develop arguments and present
them in a persuasive and appealing manner. An educated person learned the
conventions by which this was done, and could recognize them when others were
doing so.
It was also a world filled with
philosophy. This was not the abstract academic
exercise that comes to mind today when we hear the word. Instead, philosophy
described how one was to live in the world in light of the principles that were
true. It dealt with wisdom for life
based on an understanding about the ultimate realities of the world. Individual teachers went around sharing this
wisdom, and gathering hearers around themselves.
Paul freely admitted that when he
came to Corinth he did not proclaim the testimony of God using lofty speech or
wisdom. He did not employ the rhetoric
that an educated person expected to hear. He did not speak wisdom that sounded
like what the philosophers taught.
Instead, Paul had proclaimed Jesus
Christ and him crucified. To the outside
observer, this didn’t make any sense. In
fact, it was just stupid. Paul certainly
knew this. He said, “For Jews
demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
but
we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to
Gentiles.”
Christ crucified was a stumbling
block to Jews – it was a scandal. Indeed,
Christ crucified was an oxymoron. “Christ” and “crucified” were mutually
exclusive. The Christ – the Messiah –
was the descendant of King David who brought God’s end time salvation. In the
Scriptures he was mighty and victorious.
By definition, anyone who had been killed by the Romans could not be the
Christ. And Deuteronomy said that a person hung on a tree was cursed by God.
Christ crucified was folly to
Gentiles – it was moronic. Jesus was
from that odd and disdained group of people, the Jews. He had been executed as a criminal. And he
had not just been executed. He had
been crucified. He had been
subjected to the most humiliating form of death known in the ancient
world. After all, crucifixion was something
that polite people didn’t even talked about.
He had died, powerless and helpless – placed on display by the Romans
for all to see.
Christ crucified was a scandal to
Jews and moronic to Gentiles. And yet, this is what Paul had proclaimed in
Corinth. He explains why in our text as he says, “For the love of
Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died
for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live
might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died
and was raised.”
Paul says that Christ’s love
controls him, because he had concluded that Jesus died for all, and therefore
all have died. This death on Good Friday that we heard about in the Gospel
reading from John was not an isolated event. Instead, it was something which
affected all people. Jesus Christ had
died for all, and then he had risen from the dead. Now people are no longer to live for
themselves, but instead for this Christ who died for their sake and was raised.
Jesus Christ died for all and rose
from the dead. And the apostle draws a conclusion from this. In our text he says, “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.”
To regard things “according to the
flesh” is to perceive them in a worldly way – in a manner that has no spiritual
insight. When viewed “according to the
flesh” the death of Jesus on the cross appeared to be an event of weakness,
failure, and humiliation. Paul had
certainly once viewed it that way. For
him it was proof that Jesus was no Christ at all, as he sought to persecute and
destroy the Church which confessed Jesus.
But the risen Lord had confronted
Paul on the road to Damascus. Now, he no
longer looked at Christ and his death “according to the flesh.” Instead, he
recognized that God had been acting in that death to give forgiveness and
salvation. The apostle says in our text,
“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.”
Paul says that God was acting in
Christ’s death to reconcile us to himself.
In fact, God was doing this for the whole world – for all people. The
apostle uses the language of reconciliation to describe what God has done. Reconciliation is needed when there is
disagreement and antagonism between two sides – when opposition and division
exist between them.
The apostle identifies our
trespasses as the cause of this division.
Our trespasses – our sins – put us in opposition to the holy God. Created in the image of God to live in fellowship
with him, Adam did not trust God’s word. He disobeyed God and sinned as he ate
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In his action he brought sin and death to all
people. As Paul told the Romans, “Therefore, just as sin came into the
world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to
all men because all sinned.”
This sin continues to be present in
our lives. We do not trust God’s will
and loving care when things don’t go the way we want them to. We get angry with others and speak words that
are meant to hurt. We act in selfish ways as we look out for ourselves and
ignore the needs of others.
We were under the power of sin and
unable to do anything about this. But Paul tells us that “in Christ God was
reconciling the world to himself.” It was God who acted as he sent his Son
into the world when Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of
the virgin Mary. Jesus lived his life
with a purpose and mission before him. He carried out a mission that led to the
cross.
The apostle says, “in Christ
God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their
trespasses against them.” God has
reconciled us to himself. He has done this because he does not count our
trespasses against us.
Yet in doing so, God did not cease to be the holy God. He did not cease to be the just God. Instead,
he is the God who judges justly. As Paul told the Romans, “He will render to
each one according to his works.” Then he added, “There will be tribulation and
distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also
the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does
good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”
Sin evokes God’s wrath and judgment. It cannot be otherwise. And so on Good Friday God judged our
sin. He poured out his wrath on our
sin. He did this in the person of Jesus
Christ. Paul says in our text, “For our
sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.”
Jesus Christ had no sin. As
the incarnate Son of God he did not receive the original sin that has been
passed on since Adam. And then, he lived
perfectly according to God’s will. He
was the sinless one. But in a striking
turn of phrase, Paul tells us that God “made him to be sin.” Jesus had no sin of his own. Instead, he took our sin as if it was his
own. The apostle told the Romans
about God’s action in Christ: “By sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
Paul says in our text that because God has done this, we have now
“become the righteousness of God.” We
are now righteous and holy before God. We
are because of faith in Jesus Christ. This faith is not a work of our own.
Instead, Paul defines faith as the opposite of doing.
He told the Romans, “And to the one who does not work
but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted
as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom
God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless
deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom
the Lord will not count his sin.’” This faith worked by the Holy Spirit
trusts and believes in what God has done through Christ, and so God counts us
as righteous. He says that we are righteous because of Christ. And because God
declares this, it is true.
It is true, and so now we have a new status. Paul addresses this
letter, “To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who
are in the whole of Achaia.” All who believe in Jesus Christ are now saints –
we are holy ones in God’s eyes.
You have this status because you have been baptized into
Christ. You have received the washing of
rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit in the waters of baptism. Your life has been joined to Christ. You now live as one who is in Christ – you
have come to share in Christ’s saving work.
Paul tells us in our text, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he
is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Already now you are a new creation in Christ. Through the work of the Spirit the life of
Christ is present in you to live in ways that share his love in word and
deed. As Paul told the Galatians, “I
have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ
who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
On Good Friday we remember that Jesus Christ died for us. This was
the action by which the holy God reconciled us to himself. Paul tells us that
“in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting
their trespasses against them.” We are
now righteous and holy before God, because he judged and condemned our sin in
Christ. As Paul says in our text, “For our sake he made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
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