Becoming a Christian is not about repairing the old, fallen self, but about being made part of God’s new creation in Christ. “The Old has passed away; behold, the New has come!” The “old” is the humanity in Adam which fell. The “new” is Christ and the humanity based on Him. This is possible because the Godhead was bodily totally in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our trespasses against us. Through this divine exchange, He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, so that we in Him might become the very righteousness of God. When you truly rest in this finished work, you can live without fear of the past with its guilt but find the Christian life as a wonderful growing adventure.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] This emphasis on the two aspects of salvation is a major contribution that the Apostle Paul made, and we’ve heard from one verse in Romans along that line, but also in Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians, and chapter 5 as you see up in the screen, and verses 17 to 21 is the major part I want us to look at now, but it’s saying the same thing. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that’s what you are when you become a Christian. There’s a spiritual connection that’s made between you and Christ, but not only because of the very fact that his spirit is in you of life and is changing you, that regeneration Christian conversion does, but also because it’s a part of a bigger work by God. I was burdened to bring an awareness this morning of the fact that when we become Christians,

[00:01:06] this passage is telling us we become a part of the new creation. The old creation was Adam and Eve of the Garden of Eden, that trial period that the human race failed, and God chased them out of the garden, and we the whole human race became lost. That’s the old creation. It’s amazing to me how many people in religious circles I come across, and when listening to them, have never woken up to the fact that becoming a Christian or going to church or taking on religion however they may constitute, it’s not just an exercise of turning a new leaf in the old dirty book, not just a matter of having a fresh go, of being a little bit better,

[00:02:01] but what Christian conversion is, is us being grafted in to God’s new creation, because he’s having no bar of the old. Adam and Eve and the humanity that he bequeathed to us has been condemned of God, and will never be acceptable to him. We the people who participated in its fall and find ourselves coming up with sins, that’s the consequence of the original sin coming up again and again and again in us, and you all have it, or you, how I would it, it’s how you came into existence as a part of the fallen race. God has offered to become a part of his new creation. He’s not in the business of repairing the old. I’ve got a car that’s, what is it, 10 years old or something,

[00:02:58] I get it washed every now and then, it looks nice and red, but there’s lots of things that go wrong with it, and originally, just a few months back, I could hardly get it to crawl along. I took it off to a place which repaired it and replaced the double turbo in it, and a whole lot of other things going wrong, and when I picked it up, they told me, well, we were aware of you’ve done, you know, 230,000 kilometres, whatever it is, and these cars these days are only made to last a short time. They’re almost telling me it might be better to just get a new one, but they did fix up the old, and I’m jocking it along, it actually got a lot of pep back in it with those new turbos,

[00:03:46] but I’m aware of the rattles all the time. You know, when God makes you a Christian, it’s not like him just you being taken to the human garage and getting a bit of a tweaking, but you go home, we’ve still got the rattles. I’d better not talk about that too much. I have my share. But with our Christian salvation, what it is is that God has made a new creation, and that new creation is in the person of his Son, who came into the world as a new man, and who’s done all that’s necessary to obey the law and qualify that he might be a sacrifice, a pure and sinless sacrifice on the cross for our sins. That first half of salvation when Jesus died in our place and bore our sins is what this passage is talking about.

[00:04:44] And so becoming a Christian isn’t a matter of just getting a repair job or having a second start. Maybe you mucked up your youth and you saw you change where you live and go to church in that new place and try and be a better person. You’d be staggered at how many people think that’s what being a Christian is all about, trying to be a better person. Read it. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. And 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.

[00:05:42] That’s what preaching’s all about. Have you realised that? There is a dynamic in preaching when you tell this message. The preacher doesn’t have to make it. I used to… I was a preacher’s daughter when I was 16, I think. And there was a bit of a thing around Baptist churches where young preachers would get a go, but they put on a preaching voice. I could never quite do it. I just talk. But I want to tell you, I learned early, you, the preacher, don’t do the business. You just pass the message, but it’s Christ doing a calling. Look at it there, entrusting to us the message of salvation, of reconciliation.

[00:06:29] God, it says, is making his appeal through us. We’re yet to get to that bit, but anyway, therefore we’re ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us. And I learned early, just rely on Christ. And he does something through the message of the Gospel and people hear from God. I also learned listening in to other evangelists, what to do with people when they responded. And I learned a prayer to lead people in. It goes like this, oh God in heaven. It’s talking about the one God, the one God that we come to know. But what about… don’t we tell them about Christ and come to Christ?

[00:07:26] Don’t we get them to pray Jesus? Well, Jesus, that would be a prayer that we’ll get through, of course. But we pray to the God of heaven. But this message comes through what that one God has done through his Son. Let me just go on for a bit. This idea that we have is one where, look at verse 18, all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself. This one God has reconciled us to himself through Christ. Now, just recently in the church there was a sermon. Actually, it was in researching, it was an eye opener for me that week when I suddenly realized that the Bible teaches that in Christ,

[00:08:29] the fullness of the Godhead is present bodily. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, right? So when Jesus came and lived and died for us, it wasn’t like him doing the action of the third of the Trinity. It was the action of the one God in his Son who took on humanity and then all that the Godhead was dwelling in him. So he’s not one third of God, Jesus. He is the expression of the very God who through him reconciled the world to himself. The one God, the God that when you come to Christ, someone might lead you to pray, oh God in heaven,

[00:09:15] please forgive me for all of my sin, please make me clean in the deepest part of wronging me because this Christ, this one was all that God is in him going to the cross and dying for your sins. Can you understand what I’m saying? What this verse is, verse 18, all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself God and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. And then explaining it because Paul is good at deep things and sometimes people don’t get the point, but he goes on, that is in Christ.

[00:09:57] God was reconciling the world to himself. God not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. The one God who was in Christ, all that God is was in Christ, bodily. That one God who threw Jesus, coming into the world is the new creation. The one who came and then bore our sins and carried them away. The one who went into death went to Hades, took the thief on the cross who repented there to Hades.

[00:10:31] Hades is the place of the Dead is not necessarily the fire and the brimstone, but it can be but their Hades is the place of the dead the Old Testament shield Is a word that carries even more than just the place of the dead it means the place of hell fire I think but anyway Hades is where Jesus went with a thief and the cross and then he rose again and God raised him that he might be the Savior. Oh Oh, these are truths, you know, I’m a staggered at how little I’m finding out some of the truths of the Gospel now and I’m not young. How is it that there are so many people who’ve just got such a shallow understanding of what God has done but he did it in Christ?

[00:11:17] All that God is in the action of Christ is to bring you to God, to reconcile you. Do you like that word reconcile? It’s a very interesting word depending on what business you’re in. If you’re an accountant, my dad was an accountant before he went into the ministry, I’ve always regretted that a bit because he always kept books of all the money he spent and, you know, expected me to do the same. I don’t have the same interest in writing up my monies in books. But being an accountant, what does the word reconcile mean? It means that you make two things match and add up together. It means that you somehow bring some consistency to the two accounts.

[00:12:10] You reconcile them by bringing them into an equality of all the figures adding up. In political circles, reconcile might be to restore finally relations that have been broken, to reconcile one nation from another. To reconcile, you could be used in other ways that you somehow get things all lined up and understand it properly. There’s an intellectual understanding of reconcile when you suddenly realize all your thoughts and get them to fit in together, you reconcile one intake with another. But there’s God and us. And he’s kicked our ancestors out of the garden. He’s declared that all are lost.

[00:13:01] And he wants to love us, he wants to save us. And Jesus comes and bears our sins and pays the debt to reconcile us to Father God. Have you been reconciled to Father God? Have you truly come into that newness of the creation that God has made? He’s not going to bother with the old creation. He’s made a new one and it’s in Jesus and every person that comes to Jesus is a part of the new creation. if any man be in Christ, here’s a new creation our passage says. That’s a moment when everything’s different

[00:13:40] and it changes how you are, you don’t have to keep on being in fear of the past catching you up because it’s been done with in Christ. You don’t have to be always trying to be something in your own strength because you’ve been made to be a part of the new creation. The book of Ephesians says we’ve been made to sit with Jesus in heavenly places, we’re sitting with Jesus, that’s the beginning of being a Christian, of having your place of acceptance

[00:14:06] as a part of the new creation and you understand that what you were once has got no bearing any longer, you’re not worried about the defeats of the past. You’re not gonna try and do something by churchworks or good service needs in the community. Do you know if in the community love you go and help other people needy? Not a bad thing, I’m not criticizing there but they think that’s what being a Christian is. It isn’t, it’s being a part of what Jesus made

[00:14:32] new creation and rejoicing in it? Are you in it? Have you been a part of the new creation? Are you certain you belong to that which is new and is not just a part of the old silly car that’s got a mucked up motor and is going to not go too long they warn me? Wow. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself. It all matches together. He gave us then the ministry of reconciliation. That is, Christ was reconciling the world to himself as a cosmic salvation. The whole of the world that got off kilter because of human sin. God is in the business of reconciling it back to himself. Not counting their trespasses against them but entrusting us the message of reconciliation. Let’s turn to the last little bit. I don’t want to take too long in this. We’ve had a good morning already. It says here, on behalf of Christ we make appeal to people. Be you reconciled to God.

[00:15:54] For our sake he made him. Look at this. This is sort of a summary. For our sake he made him to be sin. Jesus on the cross didn’t only bear our sins. Jesus on the cross didn’t only get the pain of the whips and the crown of thorns, the people shouting. He didn’t just suffer a sort of human suffering. He became sin. Now don’t miss this. On the cross when all the sin of the world, of all the old man’s failure was placed on him, he became that sin as it were. He who knew no sin, no wonder he shrank from the very thought of it in the garden of Gethsemane. Not just the whippings and the dying but he became sin, this holy one who’d never been anything other than holy. He became sin. He who knew no sin. Now there’s a swap being arranged by God in the reconciliation of us to him. The swap is to the in him. Don’t miss that little phrase. In him, belonging to Christ, being part of the new creation in Christ.

[00:17:16] In him we might become the righteousness of God and you don’t have to worry about the stupidness of your foolish sinful past. You don’t have to worry about the sinful nature that once was yours because you’ve got a holy Jesus nature. You’ve got a righteousness that Jesus gives to you. You’ve become, just as he became the sin, we become the righteousness of God in him. That’s the gospel. When it finally sinks in and you rest in what God has done, you find that Christian life is all that it’s promised to be. Rest in the righteousness of God that you be made in him. That’s when that reconciliation becomes apparent to you. You don’t have any worries about the judgment because you’ve got the righteousness of God that came from Jesus. When you live with that and rest in it, the Christian life is the most beautiful and wonderful adventure that you could have. Let’s have a prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this fantastic passage. I thank you,

[00:18:49] Father, for the new man that you began and the person of Jesus. Then you had him suffer our sin to invite us to come and know his righteousness. Lord, if there’s someone here who’s yet to really realise that in their life, would you have them do business with you and find what it is to know for certain that they are in Christ and they’ve been made the righteousness of God in him. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.