“Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who
gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.” 2 Corinthians 5:5 [NASB]
As I read 2 Corinthians 5 today, God made me aware of a few
things I had heard in sermons over the years but had not put together into one train
of thought. In this chapter, Paul wrote about living as a Christian, a believer
in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. He told the Christians in Corinth about the mental
tug-of-war believers live with continually from the day Jesus cleanses them
from their sins and makes them a child of God. All believers experience this
tug-of-war. They live in a sinful world and long to be with Christ in heaven,
long to be clothed fully with the righteousness of Christ and live in a
righteous world, His kingdom. Paul stated that he and other Christians’ desires
to be righteous and in God’s presence forever is so deep that it causes them to
groan and feel the burden of wanting the life Jesus offers to swallow up and take
over their mortal life (2 Corinthians 5:4).
Have you ever felt this desire, this burden? If you’ve ever
known a senior-aged adult Christian or a Christian who had a terminal illness,
you will recall their spoken desire to be in heaven with God and their loved
ones and not on earth. Their desire and burden are so great that it seems they
speak of this every time you visit them and even mention it several times
during a visit. If you’ve not spent time with someone who had this deep desire,
then consider of a time when you wanted something very much. Maybe you’ve not
been able to become pregnant and have children. Possibly you’ve wanted to go to
university to study for a degree, but the funds were not available. Perhaps you
have a family member who has cutoff communication with you, and you have prayed
for them to have a change of heart so you can talk with them. Each of these are
great desires. They are mortal desires. The desire to be in God’s kingdom and in
His presence is an eternal desire. It originates with the Holy Spirit living
within a person’s being. The Christian recognizes this world is not his/her own
and wants to go to the place of peace, joy, and rest in the presence of God.
Paul experienced this desire. He said he preferred to be
away from the body (his mortal life that fights against sin and decays) and at
home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:7-8). Yet, Paul knew only God knows the
time of a person’s death. Because of his love for Jesus, he sought to please
Him even while he lived in his mortal body on earth, and not just because he
would stand before God’s judgment seat one day (vs 9-10). Paul said while he
lived in his mortal body, he desired to please the Lord and that means loving Him.
“Christ’s love compelled him and his co-laborers” to tell other people about
Jesus and the salvation He gives to anyone who believes in Him (vs 11, 14-15).
Because of their love for God and their desire to obey Him, they regarded other
people the way Jesus does. Jesus desires each person be saved (2 Corinthians
5:15, John 3:16, 1 John 2:2, John 11:25, Romans 6:10). Prejudice should no
longer have place in a believer’s heart. Instead, the love of Jesus for each
person must be paramount.
Paul said each person who is a believer once regarded Jesus
Christ with prejudice. We, mentally, said, “He could not be that powerful.” Or,
we’ve said, “He cannot take away my sins. I am too stained and dirty from the
evil I have done.” We might have said, “There is no God and so there is no
Jesus. This life on earth is all I have, so why bother a God who was never
there for me.” Each of these is a prejudice against Jesus and the Trinity. We
judge Him as not powerful, not telling the truth, not caring and loving, not
merciful and forgiving, and/or non-existent. Yet, the words in the Bible are
testimonies from several millennia. The testimonies of believers, since Bible
writers penned what God told them to tell people, proclaim God is real, alive,
almighty, omniscient, loving, merciful, and Life-giving. Paul taught about God
and the sufficient sacrifice provided for the sins of the world through the
sinless life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. This is what
Paul proclaimed. He said, “Though we once regarded Christ in this way (with
prejudice), we do so no longer” (2 Cor, 5:16). Because Paul and his colleagues
had no prejudice against Christ, they proclaimed Him through their lives and
their testimony of what He did for them, who He is, what He called them to do,
and to whom and how they were to proclaim Him. He proclaimed in verses seventeen
and eighteen,
“Therefore, from now on we recognize no one according to the
flesh [that is, with prejudice]; even though we have known Christ according to
the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore, if anyone is
in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things
have come.”
Paul said in these verses, he and the other men with him had
no prejudice. Why? Because when they believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God,
their Savior, He put into them His Spirit and made them a new creation. This
new creation occurred at their belief in Him. When they trusted in Jesus, His
Spirit came upon them and began changing them from their old, mortal,
prejudiced self into His own image. Because Jesus was unprejudiced and came to
earth to save each person, each believer is supposed to live a similar
non-prejudicial way by the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit changes a
believer from the old nature (“clothing.” as Paul said) to the new nature. Christians
understand and desire what Jesus desires, that each person would hear the
Gospel and believe in Jesus as the Son of God for his or her salvation. Because
of this, Paul said, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making
an appeal through us” (vs 20). God’s desire for all people to receive salvation
becomes the believer’s desire. This desire is part of the same groanings and
longings Paul expressed in verse four. This desire comes because the Spirit makes
Christians more and more into the image of Christ; Christ’s desires become their
desires. Jesus’ desire is not just to be with His Father in heaven, but that
each person receives salvation and change into His image (nature), change from
their old, mortal, sinful nature.
Christians desire and long to be clothed by Jesus’ Spirit with
the new nature He gives and to be with Jesus in His kingdom. While they live on
earth in their mortal bodies, the Holy Spirit lives in them and changes them continually
into the image of Christ. His indwelling is the guarantee, the pledge from God,
of their future eternal change into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 5:5). The Spirit
of Christ in a person is like earnest money put down for a house or car. It is
a guarantee of the future fulfillment of the contract or understanding. Knowing
the Spirit is within the believer, that person has hope that one day, the
Spirit will one day completely cloth him or her in the new nature. When difficulties
in life occur–temptation, trials, and persecutions–the assurance, guidance, and
protection by the Holy Spirit remind the Christian of God’s assurance, His
guarantee, that he or she will be in God’s kingdom and will experience peace
and joy eternally with Him.
This chapter of 2 Corinthians tells us about some purposes
of the indwelling Holy Spirit of Jesus. He lives in each Christian to assure
the believer of his or her salvation. The Spirit in the Christian’s life
reminds him or her of God’s eternal purpose for him or her with Him in His
kingdom. The Spirit is the guarantee of being totally made in Jesus’ image. He
gives the believer the deep longings to be with God and the desire to be on
earth. This desire to be alive on earth comes with it the desire to love Christ
by being obedient to His commands to tell each person on earth about Him. The
Spirit puts into each Christian’s heart the love of Christ for each person so he
or she wants to tell others about Him. Christians realize they are ambassadors
for Christ. The Spirit living in a believer encourages, teachers, guides,
protects, and remakes each person into a closer resemblance of Jesus Christ, changing
them to have His love and non-prejudicial attitude, desires, and righteousness.
Today, we should each stop and consider what keeps us from
believing in Jesus. Is it because it seems God is not real or does not care
since you assume He is not listening to your prayers? Next, we should examine
ourselves to determine where prejudice lives in our heart and ask Jesus to
forgive us and make us like Himself. Then we need to ask Him to show us where we
refused for Him to continue making us into His image and confess the sins He shows
to us. We should examine ourselves to determine when and why we stopped
believing in God and ask Him to remind you of the guarantee by His Spirit of
your eternity with Him in His kingdom. Ask for forgiveness for judging Him and
His purposes and ask that He put His desires in you, the desire to love Christ
and love each person you meet because He loves them. Ask God to help you keep
your eyes always on Him. Pray to Him for the will to love and obey Him, even
when it makes little sense. Thank God for loving you and saving you. Praise Him
for who He is, the eternal, almighty, omniscient, and omnipresent God. Praise
Him for what He has done in your life and throughout the expanse of time from
creation. Thank God for choosing you to be in a righteous relationship with
Him.
The Holy Spirit in a believer’s life now is the earnest
money of God’s love and plan for you, a plan not to harm you but to give you a
hope and a future (Jeremy 29:11). His living in a Christian grows the person to
be loving and unprejudiced like Jesus.
The Holy Spirit
living in you now on earth is a taste of what you will be fully when you live
with God in His kingdom for eternity.
Each Christian can decide to let the Spirit to change him or
her. That permission changes a person from being prejudiced into becoming like
Jesus. As a result, the Spirit, God’s
pledge to Christians, reminds them of their future full transformation and transition
to living in God’s kingdom. God will make each believer like Jesus and He will
give them their inheritance, eternal life in His kingdom.
Will you live as one who received God’s pledge, or
will you stay prejudiced?
