2 Corinthians 5:11-15 (HCSB)
Therefore, because we know the fear of the Lord, we seek to persuade people. We are completely open before God, and I hope we are completely open to your consciences as well. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to be proud of us, so that you may have a reply for those who take pride in the outward appearance rather than in the heart. For if we are out of our mind, it is for God; if we have a sound mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, since we have reached this conclusion: If One died for all, then all died. And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised.
The start of this paragraph ties directly into the end of the previous one. Since Paul fears the Lord, knowing that he will ultimately stand before the judgment seat of Christ and that he will be accountable for all his actions, because of that, he tries to persuade people of their need for Jesus.
Paul is not trying to build himself up in the eyes of the Corinthians. Instead, he simply is prompting them to confirm about himself what he is affirming to them. He didn’t take pay from the Corinthians when he lived among them for eighteen months, winning people to the Lord and helping them to find their place in the church. So, his motive wasn’t money. It must have been something larger, more altruistic.
Some had indeed claimed that Paul was out of his mind, with his single-minded devotion to the cause of Christ. But it was the love of Christ that worked so powerfully in and through him that lay behind his every thought, word, and action. It was that love that caused him to face pain, suffering, tragedy, and loss, and to rise again after he had been beaten, whipped, and even stoned.
The core of Paul’s message was simple: that Jesus had died for all so that everyone could be saved and could live in God’s Kingdom as a here and now reality. And the only reasonable response to that reality, in his eyes, was to accept the gift of salvation completely, and to live out the rest of their lives living for Jesus, and serving him just as completely as Paul did.
Father, so often we complicate the gospel, and cloud what it means to be a Christian. But Paul wasn’t trying to explain this from a theological perspective, but from a purely practical one. To be saved simply meant to receive the gift of eternal life from the hand of the one who had made that life possible: Jesus. And to live as a Christian was primarily to live one’s whole life as a servant of the one who had died for them and was raised: Jesus. It’s what Paul did, the way he lived and worked, and it was precisely what he was encouraging the Corinthians to do as well. Lord, help us to keep our gospel and our living out that gospel simple like Paul did, so that we can be as powerful and effective in living it out through our ministries as he was. Amen.