Renewed (part 4 of 4)

Union with Christ allows the believer to share in the power of an indestructible, eternal life.  That power, of course, is the same power, by the same Spirit, that raised Christ from the dead, again echoing the eighth chapter of Romans, offering the reminder that God “will also make your mortal bodies alive through His Spirit Who lives in you” (8:11b).  Yes, the activity of the Holy Spirit, prompting faith in Jesus as Lord, by which God brings individuals into His covenant, is what serves as a reminder that God has a complete work to do for all of those that then come to be referred to as His anointed ones.  The Creator God will accomplish for His people what He accomplished for Jesus---a physical Resurrection into a world that is drastically changed by the presence of His power.  In this time and in this world, that power operates as a down payment, but believers trust in the full payment to come.

The Apostle Paul firmly believes that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away---look, what is new has come” (5:17).  Though there is a knowledge that physical bodies are still subject to corruption, to disease, to decay, and yes, to death, Paul makes this declaration.  Seemingly, this is at least part of what it means to “live by faith, not by sight” (5:7).  This incorporate a looking forward to the blessed hope.  Paul stands firm on his insistence that the new creation, because of Christ, is something more than merely spiritual.  Because of the Resurrection, Paul believes that the Creator God did not make a deal with death that would allow the grave to keep the bodies of His people, while God gets the souls.  It is conceivable to believe that Paul would see that as Christ’s work being incomplete. 

In light of that, Paul insists that the new creation will be physical, and that both God’s people and God’s creation groans for it.  In the midst of any and all evidence to the contrary, as death was a daily experience for those that were putting their faith in Jesus as Lord, Paul allows his mind to flee to the refuge of that great hope, with a reminder that “we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen.  For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (4:18). 

Because this was his firmly entrenched belief, rooted in a faith that he believed to have been gifted by God, through His Spirit, because of Jesus’ Resurrection, Paul was constrained to preach this message of the Gospel.  Because he apparently actually believed that there was a power of God at work, and because he actually believed that the Holy Spirit could work in hearts and minds and lives in order to convince people of the fact of the Resurrection and so shape men and women into the image that God desired them to bear, he writes, “Therefore, because we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people” (5:11a).  Paul knew that the message of the Gospel was to be spread through preaching.  More than that, he knew that the persuasiveness was to be found in the message itself.  Why?  Well, because Paul did not give lip service to God’s power and the work of the Holy Spirit, but as has been said, he firmly believed that the Gospel itself was the power of God. 

The Apostle Paul seems to have stood in reverential awe (fear) at what God had done, was doing, and would do through Christ, His Resurrection, and through the preaching of the Gospel message (Jesus is Lord).  “Therefore,” Paul goes on to write, “we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His plea through us” (5:20a).  Paul knew that God was not limiting the making His plea through the voices of those that carried the message, but that the message of power made its own plea, presumably through both the words and deeds of those that claimed allegiance to that message.  Paul, knowing that he himself had undergone such a radical transformation, had a keen understanding of the power of the testimony of Jesus as Lord.  He knew himself to be a new creation in which the old had passed away.  He believed in a God that was faithful to His covenant promises, so the fifth chapter closes with Paul writing about Jesus, saying that “in Him we would become the righteousness of God” (5:21b).  He knew that in union with Christ, carrying His Gospel message into the world, believers themselves become the manifestation of God’s covenant faithfulness, and the source of God’s blessing of restoration and renewal for the world.