COMPELLED BY JESUS’ LOVE

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on January 17, 2021 under 2021 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday Message; January 17, 2021 from 2 Corinthians 5:12-15

Theme: We are compelled to tell others about Jesus because of His love shown to them at the cross.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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The apostle Paul was excited when he wrote 2 Corinthians. That’s part of what makes it such an edifying New Testament letter to read.

He was excited about receiving news that the Corinthian Christians—who he loved greatly—also loved him. There had been problems between them; but he was very happy to know that those problems were in the past, and that they loved him. He was also excited about the privilege he felt in preaching the gospel. He shared that excitement with the Corinthians over and over in this letter; and talked much in it about the privilege he felt of being called into the ministry of proclaiming it as an apostle.

But in 2 Corinthians 5:12-15, we come to what made him the most excited. And that was the love of Jesus Himself. Paul was not only excited about the fact that Jesus loved him; but also about the fact that Jesus loved sinners that had not yet trusted Him as their Savior. And it thrilled Paul greatly that he got to tell others about that love. He wrote about himself and his co-preachers and said;

For we do not commend ourselves again to you, but give you opportunity to boast on our behalf, that you may have an answer for those who boast in appearance and not in heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; or if we are of sound mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again (2 Corinthians 5:12-15).

And what a thrill it should be to us that we too have experienced that love—and that we also then get to declare it to others!

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Dear brother or sister in Christ; do you ever think back to the time when you first heard—and really understood—that Jesus loved you?

I was only a teenager at the time. I didn’t grow up in a church; and really didn’t hear much from the Bible at all. But I was a terrible sinner in terms of the rebellion in my heart. And I was one, quite a bit, in action and words too. I felt continually dirty inside. And to hear that God loved me—and that He displayed that love by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for me and wash me of my sin—was the greatest news I could have heard. That news first came to me slowly—in bits and pieces, as it were. But there was one night in particular when I encountered those wonderful words from John 3:16;

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).

The Holy Spirit opened my eyes, and it all became clear; and I put my trust in Jesus and believed on Him; and I accepted His love shown to me at the cross.

And the impact of that love changed my life. It still does. Whenever things get a bit muddy for me, and I get so wrapped up in the daily duties of life and work that I lose my true bearings, I go back and remember the love of Jesus shown at the cross. That love is my northern star. It’s what ought to give meaning and motivation to all I do. And I hope it truly does—and that it always will.

The same was true for this man Paul. He was a far more terrible sinner than I was. He was—at one time—one of the worst antagonists against the Christian faith in history. He had the legal authority to go into different cities, bust up the churches, and drag Christians away to their trial and to their execution. But here’s how he tells the story of how he was transformed by the love of Jesus. He was telling King Agrippa about it in Acts 26; and he said,

“While thus occupied, as I journeyed to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me’” (Acts 26:12-18).

That phrase ‘it is hard for you to kick against the goads” is an indication to us that Paul knew who Jesus was—but that he had been resisting him. And on that day along the road, he met Jesus—and he stopped resisting and started believing. The love that Jesus had shown for Paul, as a very hard-hearted sinner, had completely transformed him. By faith, it was as if he himself died with Jesus on the cross and was raised with Jesus from the tomb unto new life. And from them on—just as Jesus called him to do—he began telling everyone about the love of Jesus and about how to be delivered from the clutches of Satan and to have their sins forgiven by faith in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

You get a sense of how he felt about this in Ephesians 3:8; when he wrote,

To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ (Ephesians 3:8).

Can’t you feel the privilege and joy Paul felt in those words? To have personally experienced the saving love of Jesus, and to then be called to preach His love to others as one who is “less than the least of all the saints” … That was what motivated Paul. He never forgot that love. It transformed him. And he wanted others to be transformed by it as well.

And dear brother or sister; that’s what we should want, too. We should not only remember the love that Jesus showed toward us by dying on the cross for us—undeserving as we were. But we should also remember that, through us, He is displaying that same love right now toward all the sinful, broken, needy people around us. We walk on this earth as the ambassadors of that love. We are, if you’d like to think of it this way, the official ‘goodwill ambassadors’ of God’s love through Christ to a fallen and sinful world—declaring that love to others and inviting them to place their trust in Jesus and be reconciled to God. We’re here to tell others, “God loves you; and He has sent His Son Jesus to die for you. Put your trust in Him and be washed clean of your sin, and enter into new life!”

Are you excited about your role? Do you feel passion for it? Do you long to tell others that Jesus loves them? Don’t you yearn that they see His love as you did? You will yearn for that if you remember the way Jesus first showed that love for you; and if you then allow the reality of that love to truly grip your heart so much that you see—in it—how Jesus also loves the lost and needy people all around you.

As Paul’s own example in this passage shows us, we are compelled to tell others about Jesus because of His love shown to them at the cross.

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I think it would help us understand this passage better if we work our way through it in reverse—from the end to the beginning.

The first thing we need to notice is that …

1. WE MUST JUDGE RIGHTLY WHAT JESUS’ CROSS MEANS FOR THIS WORLD.

Look at how Paul expressed this in verses 14-15. He reasoned “that if One [that is, Jesus] died for all [that is, on the cross], then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” This teaches us that the death of Jesus on the cross has an impact upon everyone in the world; and that it is evidence to them that God truly loves them.

Now, we need to take a moment and address something. This passage has caused some questions for some folks. The reason questions arise is because they have been taught that Jesus’ death on the cross was not for everyone. They have been taught that Jesus’ sacrifice was specifically for those—in particular—that God had chosen in advance for salvation.

The reason that some hold to this is a good one: they want to be consistent in their understanding and expression of the Bible’s teaching. They believe—rightly; and as the Bible itself teaches—that God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Ephesians 1:4). But if God only chooses some for salvation, then is it right to say that Jesus died on the cross for all people? This is a very serious question that has troubled thinking Christians for centuries. It has caused some very sincere, Bible-believing, devoted Christians to wonder; “Am I saying the wrong thing when I tell a non-believer that Jesus loves them? How can I know that for sure? I can’t know who the ‘elect’ are. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to tell someone, ‘It might be that Jesus loves you and may have died for you on the cross’? But that doesn’t sound like a very effective way to share the gospel. And besides; Paul says right here that ‘One died for all’.”

Well; just to be clear, I’m among those who believe that—in the sovereign purpose of God—Jesus’ death on the cross was particularly intended for those God has called to Himself for redemption. But I find it helpful to remember that before Jesus’ atoning sacrifice can be effectively ‘applied’ to any one person in particular, it must first be ‘provided’ for all people in potential.

We should remember that Jesus is presented to us in the Bible as ‘the second Adam’ of humanity. The human family—from Adam all the way to the end—is one unified whole. And just as by only one man—Adam—humanity fell into sin and brought the whole of humanity down in fallenness with him, it’s by only one Man—Jesus Christ, the second ‘Adam’—that anyone in humanity is saved. And so, in some sense, Jesus’ sacrifice has a real impact upon the whole of humanity—whether they are ‘chosen for salvation’ or not.

Paul himself taught this in Romans 5. He called Adam “a type of Him who was to come” (that is, of Christ); and he wrote;

(… For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous (Romans 5:15-19).

So; in a very real sense, Jesus not only died for the elect in particular, but in such a way as to have an impact on every member of humanity in general. And this means that when we tell people that Jesus loves them and died for them, we are telling the truth. In our passage in 2 Corinthians this morning, Paul is talking about our great privilege of being ambassadors of Christ—the second Adam—to the lost. As he says near the end of this chapter;

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:18-21).

What this means, dear brothers and sisters in Christ is that we should not hold back at all in sharing the gospel with the lost people around us, and in boldly declaring to them that Jesus genuinely loves them. The cross itself is proof that Jesus Christ truly loves the people of this world and died for them. We should joyfully tell all people the good news, “Jesus loves you and died for you. Come freely! Place your trust in Him and be reconciled to God.”

Look again at how Paul says this. In verse 14, he writes, “… we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died …” That, of course, doesn’t mean that the sins of every human being are now forgiven—without regard to what they believe. This is because each individual human being must first confess that they are a sinner and place their faith in the death that Jesus died for them. But as the Bible teaches us,

All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).

And if Jesus—the second Adam of humanity—died for all, then we must say that all have died. All humanity fell when Adam sinned. The wages of sin is death; and Jesus’ death on the cross puts the official seal to the death certificate for all of us. As the head of humanity, He died for sin. And so, it doesn’t matter whether or not anyone apart from Jesus thinks they are alive. The fact is that they’re not. It doesn’t matter that a non-believer thinks that the cross doesn’t have anything to do with them. The fact is that it does.

And that’s where the love of Jesus really shines through. As Paul went on to write in verse 15, “and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” When we place our faith in His death on the cross for us, we not only become sharers in His death, but also in His resurrection. And when we thus are joined to His death by faith, we also are joined to His resurrection so that we might now rise up and live new lives for Him. Paul made this clear in Galatians 2:20 when he said,

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

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And so; that’s the good news that you and I are privileged to declare to the people of this world. Jesus loves them. He showed that love toward them in the fact that He died for them on the cross. We can really, sincerely, truthfully say that Jesus died for them; because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died. And it’s then, that we invite them to place their trust in that sacrifice on the cross, and believe on Him for their salvation and for the cleansing of their sins, and be reconciled to God through Him, and rise up and live transformed lives for Him.

We—along with Paul—“thus judge” the matter. And as we see at the beginning of verse 14 …

2. IF WE DO, HIS LOVE FOR US COMPELS US TO DECLARE HIM TO OTHERS.

Paul put it this way, “For the love of Christ compels us …” To be “compelled”—or as the old King James Version puts it, to be “constrained”—means that we are held together and bound in by a thing. It’s a bit like being in a narrow hallway in which there are no windows and no other doors. There is just one door at the end; and so you are “compelled” to go through that door only.

Paul felt that way about the love of Jesus for the lost people around him. He felt “compelled” to declare the gospel to them. In 1 Corinthians 9:16, he said,

… necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel! (1 Corinthians 9:16).

But it was not a negative constraint. It was a joyous compulsion. Knowing the love of Jesus for those around him—knowing the greatness of their need—knowing that Jesus died on the cross for them—and having experienced the transforming power of that love himself—how could he not tell them? How could he help but be bold and enthusiastic about it?

I mentioned to you earlier that I became a Christian when I was a teenager. Do you remember back in the days when you were a teenager; and a friend came up to you and—if you’re a girl—pointed to a particular fella; or if you’re a guy—pointed to a particular girl; and said, “Did you know that ‘So-and-so’ likes you? I heard them say so.” It was a thrill to hear that. But it was also a thrill to be the one to tell it.

Well; in a much deeper and more profound way, you and I have the privilege of telling broken, sinful, needy, lost people around us, “Did you know that Jesus loves you? He proved it by dying on the cross for you to pay for your sins; and rising from the dead for you to give you new life. Did you know that He loves you that much? He loves me too. Wouldn’t you like to place your trust in Him like I did?”

And brothers and sisters; if the love of Jesus for us—and for those around us—has truly grabbed hold of our hearts, we will want to tell others too.

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If His love has truly gripped our hearts in that way, it may even be that we seem overly enthusiastic—even a bit fanatical—about it. But as Paul’s words in verses 12-13 show us …

3. IT SHOULD BE NO WONDER IF WE SEEM OVERLY ZEALOUS ABOUT JESUS’ LOVE.

Paul was criticized in that way. What would the unbelieving world think of a man who—at one time—dragged Christians away to prison and then to their deaths; but who now preaches the love of the very Jesus that he at one time blasphemed? Wouldn’t they say that he was ‘beside himself’? In fact; do you remember that I told you about how Paul shared his story with King Agrippa? A Roman governor named Felix was present to hear that testimony; and along the way, he cried out, “Paul, you are beside yourself! Much learning is driving you mad!” (Acts 26:24).

Paul got all kinds of criticisms thrown at him in his ministry. He wasn’t viewed as ‘sophisticated’ or ‘polished’ in his presentation of the gospel. And perhaps there were even times when the thrill that Paul felt over the love of Jesus drove him to extremes. But can you blame him? He was simply treating the amazing love of Jesus in a realistic way—and he was preaching it with all the sincerity of his own transformed heart. He longed for other people to know that Jesus loved them too. And if he was of sound mind, it was so he could tell it.

Look again at 2 Corinthians 5. Paul had just gotten through telling the Corinthians—in verse 11—that he was confident that God knew his heart; and that he was also confident that the Corinthians knew him too. They knew that his zeal was genuine. And so he said, “For we do not commend ourselves again to you, but give you opportunity to boast on our behalf, that you may have an answer for those who boast in appearance and not in heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; or if we are of sound mind, it is for you.”

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May it be that the love of Jesus for us captivate us in that way; dear brothers and sisters. May the fact that He would die on the cross for us, and rise again so that we might live in Him—and may the realization of His love for others—so motivate us, that people can see our earnestness and our longing for them to know Him.

May it be that we too can say, “For the love of Christ compels us …”

EA