2 Cor

2 Cor. 5:14-15

6/15/2008

“He Died for All”

“He died for all, that those who live might not live for themselves but for Him, who for their sake died and was raised” (v. 15). Here Paul tells us why Jesus died for us--that we might not live for ourselves but for Him.

Of course, the ultimate purpose of everything Jesus did, does and will do is to glorify God and to glorify Himself. In His High Priestly prayer Jesus prayed, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:4-5). The ultimate goal of God’s existence is to glorify Himself and to enjoy Himself forever (John Piper; cf. WSC 1). For God is the ultimate Good and God, being absolutely good, is morally obligated to pursue the ultimate Good, which is Himself. So when God the Father decreed our salvation, it was ultimately for His glory. And this is nothing for us to complain about! Do you realize that this is the good news, the best news possible--that God glorifies Himself by saving His people? Our salvation is bound up with God’s glory! And as God will never fail to glorify Himself, He will never fail to save His people, to the very last one of them! If we can have any security and certainty about our salvation, it must be grounded solely in God’s concern for His glory, God’s undying and infallible passion for His own glory! Our salvation is grounded in God’s passion for His own glory!

You can see how Paul’s words relate to the supremacy of God’s glory. Our salvation brings glory to God because it causes us to live for Him, not for ourselves. Instead of worshipping ourselves--our pride and our reputation and our comfort and our convenience--instead of living in pursuit of our own petty ambitions and desires, we through our salvation are enabled to live for the noblest and worthiest cause of all--the glory of God!

Many may find this whole arrangement difficult to swallow. In fact, they may even lose all the respect that they might have had for Jesus. According to their understanding of true love, it is the kind of love that is given without any strings attached. And we can understand that. We don’t appreciate someone’s good deed for others, if it is done to further one’s own reputation. We may even disdain it and rightfully so. Also, a good deed done in the spirit of “give and take” loses much of its glow. And that is what they see when they hear that Christ died for us so that we might live for Him. That kind of reasoning may be true of everything else but it does not apply to God. In fact, God’s love would not be love at all if the goal of God’s love is not to enable us to live for Him (and thus bind us to Himself)! Why? Because, as we said earlier, God is the ultimate Good. There is nothing better, there is nothing more glorious, there is nothing more worthwhile, there is nothing nobler, to live for than for God and His glory. If God’s love has no strings attached--the strings that attach us and bind us to God Himself--then His love would not be love at all. For God would be withholding from us what is truly best! As Alister E. McGrath quotes C.S. Lewis,

“God’s love… ‘is not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels himself responsible for the comfort of his guest, but the consuming fire itself, the love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes” (Intellectuals Don’t Need God; pp. 103-104).

McGrath goes on to say, “The love of God, then, is… a divine love that proceeds from God and leads back to God…” (p. 104). That is why God’s love is a true love, because it leads us back to God.

But how is the love of God realized in our context, in the context of our fallen nature and fallen world? How does the love of God make us, sinful creatures who rebelled against Him, live no longer for ourselves but for Him? We have much to learn from what Paul says in our passage. Let us take a close look and see how Paul presents the supreme value of the One, for whom we are called to live.

“He died for all, therefore all have died.” With these words, Paul speaks of a relationship that exists between Christ and all those, for whom He died. Paul is not saying that this relationship came into existence because (and after) Jesus died for all. Normally, one would not die for another, if no relationship existed between the two. And we are also told that, because Jesus died for all, therefore all have died. Isn’t that fascinating? If one dies for another, isn’t it logical to think that the other is spared from death? Isn’t that why one sacrifices his life for another, to spare him from dying? All this seems to suggest that a relationship was already there before Jesus died for all. In fact, this relationship, we know, was established before the foundation of the world, in the timeless past of divine eternity: “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him” (Eph. 1:4). You see, Jesus did not just happen to die because He happened to be there when we needed Him, a stranger dying for a stranger. Jesus died for us because there was already a relationship between Him and us, a covenant which was established before the foundation of the world. And when Jesus died, we all died because there was a relationship between Him and us already. Because this pre-existing relationship had certain terms already established, when Jesus died, we all died with Him. What kind of relationship is this?

First of all, this relationship is characterized by Christ’s love for all those, for whom He laid down His life. This is an incredibly intense love--isn’t it?--the kind of love that lays down His own life for others. We know how difficult it is to give of ourselves for others even in small ways. Consider sharing toys for the children. Don’t they cry as though their arms were cut off when they are told to share their toys? What about gift-giving? It is so easy for us to give gifts out of the motive to save our face rather than out of genuinely sharing in the joyous occasion. And we really don’t like to be interrupted, do we? Changing our schedule and giving up our convenience is so hard to do. And what about giving up our pride and setting aside our opinions and really listening to the other party? How about giving up your bone marrow or kidney? And how about giving up your life for someone else?

From time to time, we do hear about some heroic sacrifices. Moms and dads throwing themselves in harms way to save their children. Good Samaritans at the scene of accident, risking their lives to rescue the victims. The many firemen, who entered the Twin Towers on 9/11. And all our armed forces personnel, who are risking their lives in service of our country. But we know that Christ’s self-sacrificial, life-giving love transcends them all.

When Paul says that Christ died for all, He is not just talking about the event of His death. Some heroic deaths are a result of a split-second decision, such as a dad throwing himself into the line of fire to save his son. But Jesus’ death for us was not a one-time act of heroism and love, performed at the exigencies of the moment. His death was the culmination of a life entirely dedicated to loving us and saving us: His whole life was spent in seeking and saving the lost (Luke 19:10)! He abandoned His heavenly throne and glory and came into this world in the frailty of human flesh so that He might seek and save the lost. He was born in a manger, in the humblest of circumstances, so that even the humblest and the lowliest of us might not be hindered from coming to Him. He was born under the law so that He might bear in our place the curse of the law. Though He deserved praise and honor, He was despised and rejected by men so that all those, who are despised and rejected, might find acceptance to God through Him. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows so that all those, who are struck with griefs and sorrows might find comfort and encouragement in Him. He was stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted so that those, who deserve to be stricken and smitten and afflicted by God might be restored and reconciled to God in Him. He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities and chastised for our sins so that with His stripes we might be healed and through His pain we might be made whole. And finally He gave His life for us--to the very last drop of water and blood!--so that we might live in Him! And even on His way to the cross, He was constantly interrupted and inconvenienced by all those, who were clamoring for His attention and healing. Yet He did not reject them. Though His eyes were firmly set on Jerusalem and His impending death there, He did not ignore those that needed Him along the way. He lived a life of radical self-sacrifice, a life of complete self-giving! His death was the culmination of that life wholly dedicated to seek and save the lost.

But the ultimate reason that Christ’s self-giving love transcends all the heroic acts of men lies in who He is. So many people sacrificed themselves and suffered for others in some incredible ways--what makes His sacrifice special? So many people died on the cross--how is it that His crucifixion alone brings us salvation? It is because Jesus is who He is! He is no mere man but the Son of God made man. As He was sinless, His suffering was not on account of His own sins and failures and mistakes; it was on account of our sins. As we read in the following passage, “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21). And as He is the eternal Son of God, His suffering and death had an infinite value to pay for all our sins and to redeem us from hell’s eternal suffering.

We see, then, that His love for us was not just a self-giving love. Paul declares that He died for all! What does that mean except that all those, for whom He died, were under the condemnation of death? So you see? Christ’s love for us is also a gracious love! You know what that means? When Jesus gave Himself and died for all, He did it for those, who did not at all deserve it! In fact, He died for those, who deserved the very opposite of His love: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:7-8)! What if one of your family members needs a kidney? As difficult as it might be, you would do it, wouldn’t you? But what if the one, who needs a kidney, is a terrorist, or a sex offender? Would you even think it, even for a second? Excuse me for a crude and absurd example. But do we realize that Christ dying for us is far more absurd, infinitely more absurd, than giving your kidney for a terrorist or a most hideous criminal? Surely, we are far worse to the holy God than a terrorist or a criminal is to us! Yet that is precisely what Christ did--the eternal Son of God dying for sinners like us--and that is what grace is! Christ’s love for us is a gracious love. He did not sacrifice Himself for worthy men and women. He sacrificed Himself for most unworthy, wretched sinners.

The love of Christ is not only a self-giving and gracious but it is also an electing love. That means it is special, very, very special. It is not a love for all people but reserved only for the elect. How can we say that when Paul clearly says that Christ died for all and says that twice, in v. 14 and in v. 15? But upon a closer examination, it is clear that Paul does not mean “all” in the sense of everyone in the world. “He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him….” It is obvious that not everyone lives for Christ. And there have been plenty of people, who did not live for Christ but lived their whole lives in rebellion against Christ and died the same way. So “those” could not mean “all” generally but “all” specifically--“all the elect”. Then why did he say “all” when he meant “some”? Keep in mind that Paul was writing these words before the Calvinist-Arminian controversy. Whether Christ died for all or only for the elect was not an issue when Paul wrote these words. Of course Christ died only for the elect! So then, when Paul said that Christ died for all, it was quite possibly to emphasize the fact that all, for whom Christ died, without any exception, should live for Christ and not for themselves! No one, who lives by the death of Christ, has the option of not living for Him!

But here is the fascinating thing about our relationship with Christ. Going back to v. 14 we read, “He died for all, therefore all died.” How is it that Christ should die for us and we also die? Did He not die so that we might not die? Wasn’t that the whole idea? Why should Christ die so that we too would die?

Here we must recognize that Christ fulfilled two roles in His death. On the one hand, He died as our Substitute: He died in our place to pay for our sin. In this sense, Jesus died so that we wouldn’t have to die for the penalty of our sin. On the other hand, Jesus died as our Representative as well. In this sense, when Christ died, we also died as well. Because Jesus is our Representative, Paul is able to say, “He died for all, therefore all died.” Because Christ is our Representative (and we are united to Him as His people), it could never be that He should die and we not die! When our Olympian wins the gold medal, we as a whole nation win. When Daddy and mommy sell the house and move, the children must also move as well!

When Christ died, we all died with Him: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live…” (Gal. 2:20). What does that mean to die with Christ? There could be many answers. For instance, we read in Rom. 6:10-11, “For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” To die with Christ means to be dead to sin--sin no longer controls us; sin no longer has dominion over us to oblige us; sin no longer attracts us or excites us; sin no longer delights us as it used to. It also means that we are no longer subject to the guilt and punishment of sin.

In our passage, Paul presents another meaning of what it means to die with Christ: “He died for all, that those who live might not live for themselves but for Him….” You see, Christ died not just so that we all would die with Him. Christ died so that, having died with Him, we might also live! We were made to die precisely for this reason--so that we might live! Not to continue to live the life we used to live, which was under the condemnation of death, but to live a new life! This new life is described in the Bible as “eternal life” (as opposed to a temporary, perishable life destined for the grave), “abundant life” (as opposed to selfish, stingy, and fear-driven life), etc. This new life is no mere improvement upon our old life. This new life is given to us through a new birth from above by the Holy Spirit. It is nothing less than a new creation (v. 17)! The life force of this new life is none other than the very life, which Christ lived as our Representative and which raised Him from the grave.

We were made to die so that we might live for Christ. That means we were made to die to ourselves so that we might live for Christ. Do you see the radical life envisioned in this logic? To live for Christ, we must die to ourselves completely. We cannot live to ourselves and live for Christ at the same time. Can we truly and wholly live for someone else unless we die to ourselves first? Can we listen, really listen, to someone unless we die first to our opinions and prejudices and agendas and the urge to speak as soon as he is done speaking? Can we truly serve someone unless we die first to the last bit of our attachment to our own comfort and convenience and schedule and pride? We no longer have the option or the right to live as we used to before we met Christ. We ourselves can no longer be the reason and purpose of our living. The reason and purpose of our living is now Christ. We cannot live for Christ on a part-time basis. We cannot live for Christ and treat Him as one of our many clients. We cannot truly live for Christ unless we die to ourselves completely because we are to live for Christ completely.

You see, Christ died not just to forgive our sins! Christ died so that we might live, that we might live for Him! What does it mean to live for Him? To do everything that is involved in living for Him! What is involved in living? Living involves eating and sleeping; it involves resting and working, studying and playing, being born and growing up, giving birth and raising children, buying and selling, saving and spending, building and tearing down, learning and feeling, desiring and doing, loving and hating, being happy and being sad, saying hello and saying goodbye, talking and being silent, etc. Think about all the things you do because you live! We used to do all these things to make us look good and feel good, to make us more comfortable and to make our life more convenient. But now we are to do all these things for Christ, to live for Christ! We are to eat as well as sleep for Christ. We are to work hard as well as rest for Christ. We are to study as well as play for Christ. We are to grow up and mature for Christ as well as bear children and raise them up for Christ. Even when we buy and sell, save and spend, we are to do it for Christ. We are to build and tear down for Christ. We are to exercise our intellect as well as feel for Christ. We are to desire what we desire and do what we do for Christ. We are to love what Christ loves and hate what Christ hates for Christ. We are to rejoice and shed tears for Christ. We are to say hello even to strangers and we are to say goodbye even to our beloved ones for Christ. We are to talk and be silent for Christ. Our Christian life cannot be compartmentalized. It cannot be just one of the things we do among many, many things that we must do. Christ must be the foundation of all that we do--the very reason and purpose and motivation and attitude--our all in all. And after all this living--vigorous, fruitful, diligent and fulfilling living--we are to die for Christ.

We have tried to show how dying living (and dying) for Christ is the worthiest and most glorious life of all. Christ is God and as such He is the absolute and ultimate Good. There is nothing better and worthier and nobler to live for than for God. But to think of Christ that way can seem more abstract than real. So we have also shown how Christ demonstrated His love for us in a tangible way by (living and) dying for us. He loved us with a self-giving love, which engulfed all of His life and death. He loved us with a gracious love. He loved us with a peculiar, electing love.

As we conclude, let us consider one more aspect of the supreme value of living for Christ. At the end of v. 15 Paul says, “who for their sake died and was raised”. Christ did not just die for us; He was also raised from the dead for us. If He is indeed raised, if He has indeed conquered death once and for all, everything has changed, has it not? We can no longer look at this world and ourselves in the same way. The way we view our happiness and sorrow in this world has to be changed. The way we view success and failure has to be changed. The way we view the meaning and purpose of our life has to be changed. The value and validity of everything has to be determined in the light of that resurrection life to come in Jesus Christ!

You see, we do not just serve someone, however good and however charismatic, who is here and is gone tomorrow. We do not serve a cause that is relevant today and a long-forgotten passé in the next season. No, you and I have the privilege to live for the One, who not only died but was raised from the dead--not just spiritually and metaphorically but physically and historically unto eternal life. He is indeed seated in the heavenly places at the right hand of God as the resurrected Lord and victorious King, to whom all authority in heaven and earth has been given. So when we live for Him and die for Him, we do not live and die in vain. All that you do for Him has eternal value!

So, in view of all these things, let our conclusion and conviction be: we cannot live for ourselves; we must live for Christ; in fact, it is a greatest privilege to live for the risen Christ; there is no greater blessing and joy than to live for Him, who died and was raised for us! That is why Paul goes on to speak in the next several verses about his work of evangelism and missions. Even apart from Christ’s commission, Paul considered it unconscionable to keep this great news to himself. And he knew that Christ died for all--people from every tribe, tongue, people and nation, who are chosen before the foundation of the world to live for Christ! He knew how radically his life had been transformed. He could not wait to see another life so radically transformed as he was. So he implored all on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God!

How different is Jesus from all the kings of Israel? (I focus on Jesus’ kingship because Paul a few verses later speaks of his mission as an ambassador of Christ, referring to Christ’s kingship.) David was the best king Israel ever had. He did many great things for the kingdom of God. But what happened when he sinned? He robbed his faithful servant of his wife and killed him. Though he was forgiven, his son’s life was taken. When he sinned again at the end of his life by taking a census, his people had to pay the penalty--70,000 men killed by a pestilence sent by God. Compare David, the best king Israel ever had, with Jesus Christ and His kingship that is in view here. It was not the people, who were sacrificed for the sin of the King; it was the glorious and righteous King, who died for His sinful people. What a different kind of King we have in Jesus Christ. Isn’t this all the more reason that we should live for Him with confidence and zeal? We serve a King, who died for us. We do not have to fear that somehow He will use us and abuse us. What hinders you from doing a radical work of good deed? Isn’t it because you are afraid that the other person might use you and abuse you? No such fear in serving Christ, who died and was raised for us.

What glory and joy are ours when we serve Christ! Think about all the time you spend in amusements and entertainments, watching TV or playing video games. Whatever pleasure you derive from it--is it the kind of joy that will count on your deathbed? Many of us remember when our missionary Lloyd Kim came and spoke to us before he left for missions? He told us that many told him that it was a waste of his Ph.D. in theology to go to the Philippines (and now to Cambodia) as a missionary and how he tearfully responded, “I have already died with Christ. Why should I consider my life as anything, how could I consider my Ph.D. and credentials as too good to sacrifice for the Philippines and Cambodia?”

Brothers and sisters, isn’t it true that our Christian life is difficult because we still have not said goodbye to ourselves and buried ourselves at the cross? Have you not experienced that tremendous freedom and joy, when you were able to say, “Enough! I have been crucified with Christ and I will not for myself but for Him!” and say “NO!” to the sins and temptations that assailed you? Brothers and sisters, “let us not flirt with the kingdom of God any more; let us not toy with the gospel of Jesus Christ anymore!” Let us be decisive. Let us not waiver between Christ and us. If Christ did not die for you and was raised for you, live for yourself and for the world! If Christ did indeed die for you, then you have died. If Christ was raised for you, then you must now live for Him! You are to live for Christ, the worthiest and noblest of all!