Whose People?
(2 Corinthians 5: 6-17)
Back when I was in private practice in rural East Texas, I took cases outside of San Jacinto County to expand my practice and make ends meet. I didn’t mind traveling to other counties as it gave me an opportunity to see how other courts and jurisdictions operated. One such county was Liberty County where, I learned, the concept of liberty was subjective. I had been hired by a young black female who lived in my county but made the mistake of delivering one rock of crack cocaine to an undercover officer. The way this particular officer operated was to meet up with a willing black female who might use crack herself and give her twenty dollars to buy two rocks, one for him and one for her trouble. Under the laws of the State of Texas, that delivery of one rock of crack cocaine could get you anywhere from two to twenty years in prison. That’s how they fought the war on drugs, but hey, it looked good on paper. In any event, my client was charged with the second-degree felony delivery offense and was terrified of going to prison. The district attorney offered to let her plead to the lesser included third-degree felony offense of possession of a controlled substance and offered a ten-year sentence which was deferred and probated for ten years. As we didn’t have much of a defense and it would be the officer’s word against hers, she opted to take the deal. So, we appeared before the judge to enter our agreed upon plea. The judge, who should, shall, and will remain nameless, accepted the plea bargain sentencing her to ten years of deferred adjudication probation, but because it was late in the day he told her she would have to come back to meet with her probation officer and set her appearance for June 19th. He then caught himself, looked down at my client, and with a grin said: “Oh, wait, you probably don’t want to come to court on one of your people’s holidays.” Apparently, I stiffened and bristled and was about to say something when my client reached over and grabbed my arm telling me it was okay and that she would come back. You see, it was on June 19, 1865, roughly 135 years before my Liberty County court appearance, when Union Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston Island in Texas, to announce the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation that was signed into law on January 1, 1863, officially ending the practice of slavery and legislatively making all people equal under the laws of the United States of America. Apparently, my Liberty County judge didn’t put much stock in the Emancipation Proclamation. Whose people?
John Wesley, the founder of our Methodist denomination said of our scripture reading for this morning: If anyone be in Christ, there is a new creation. Only the power that makes a world can make a Christian. The new creation Wesley is acknowledging is the new creation we become when, through the grace of God, we become a child of the family of God. A new creation through Jesus Christ where we are all equal in the sight of God the Father and are His people.
We pick up where we left off last week with the Apostle Paul stating: So we are always confident, because we know that while we are living in the body, we are away from our home with the Lord. He reminds us that we live by faith and not by sight, and in spite of our confidence in our eternal home where we will live forever, we must realize that our goal while here on earth is to live a life that is acceptable to the Father as we are his people. Paul says that one day we will all appear before Christ in court so that each of us can be paid back for the things that were done while in the body, whether they were good or bad. What Paul is saying is that God in Christ has transformed the whole human situation; Jesus’ resurrection inaugurated the new creation where, through our profession of faith in him, we have become a new creation. We have become his brothers and sisters. This is more than the transformation of individuals, although it does include that. But it is from this good news, inspired by Christ’s love for all, that the Christian mission, God’s mission, springs and reaches out to all people.
With this in mind, Paul says that it is incumbent upon us to try and persuade people to do the best they can to live as Christ would have them live since we know what it is to fear the Lord. Paul is confident in his relationship with God through Christ, but he fears for those of us who may not get it, or at the very least, don’t take it as seriously as we ought to. This is what motivates him to proclaim the good news and persuade others to be reconciled to God. He wants everyone to understand that they have an appointment to stand before Christ at the final Judgment. On that day all people’s deeds will be fully exposed, and everyone will receive either positive or negative recompense based upon whether their behavior was good or bad. He says: The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: one died for the sake of all; therefore, all died. He died for the sake of all so that those who are alive should live not for themselves but for the one who died for them and was raised. What Paul is saying is that to be “in Christ” is to be in union with him via the Holy Spirit, and through this union the believer is and belongs to the new creation anticipated in the prophetic word. In Christ, old ways associated with sin, unbelief, and anti-God sentiments come to an end.
This is all pretty unsettling stuff, and I’m just as concerned about it as the early Corinthians must have been when they read Paul’s letter. The Corinthians, like us, knew that the eternal life we were promised is a free gift given on the basis of God’s grace, and now we learn that each of us will still be judged in the end by Christ. That’s the kind of thing that can keep you awake at night, especially after a particularly bad day, a day in which you may not have been very Christ-like. However, this fear of the Lord does not mean that we believers are paralyzed with fear, and fear may be the wrong word here. Think of it as more along the lines of showing a healthy respect for what God has graciously done for us. It’s knowing God’s perfection and that he will judge everyone’s actions that should spur committed Christians on to do good deeds, to do what pleases our God, rather than cautiously play it safe and not put ourselves out there. God’s gracious gift of salvation does not free us from the requirement for faithful obedience and Jesus’ command to love our neighbors, all of our neighbors. All Christians must give an accounting for how they have lived. We can take comfort, or at least ease our fears, secure in the knowledge that if God is for us who can be against us as Paul tells us in Romans 8: 31. God is on our side. This knowledge keeps us unafraid of the earthly powers; people who don’t have the well being of others at heart, governments intent upon depriving their people and others of their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the unpredictability of nature. Because God takes care of his own, we have the courage to face all that life throws at us.
As Christians we are brand-new people on the inside. The Holy Spirit has given us new life, and we are not the same anymore. We are not reformed, rehabilitated, or re-educated. We are re-created, a new creation, living in vital union with Christ. At conversion we are not merely turning over a new leaf; we are beginning a new life under a new master. We are his people, not our people, or their people. And not only are believers changed from within, but a whole new order of creative energy has begun with Christ. There is a new covenant, a new perspective, a new body, a new church. All of creation is being renewed. We have been emancipated from our slavery to sin. Christ’s death and resurrection was and is our emancipation proclamation.
So, Paul closes out this portion of his letter by saying: So then, from this point on we won’t recognize people by human standards. Even though we used to know Christ by human standards, that isn’t how we know him now. So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived! We no longer judge others by such things as how they look, how they dress, where they live, how well they speak, their race, their nationality, who they love, or what they’ve done in the past. We know them because of whose they are. They are God’s people, and it is not our place to judge them.
Let us pray.
Gracious and merciful Father, move us by your Spirit to lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, so that it rings with the harmonies of liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Yes, loving God of all, let us sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, singing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. How grateful we are that we are your new creation, brothers and sisters of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has shown us by his sacrifice what it means to be one of your children. We praise you for your mercy, love, compassion, and forgiveness and are forever grateful that we know whose we are. In Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.