Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Hope you’ve had a blessed Lord’s Day and a sense of just all the greatness of God and all the great things he does in your life. If you’ll turn with me in your Bibles this morning to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, And I’m going to read 511 down through the end of the chapter. We’ll primarily be in 511 through 15.
And if you’ll stand with me for the reading of the word of God. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. And if we are in our right mind, it is for you.
For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh. We regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
You may be seated. Let’s pray. Father, thank you so much for your goodness. Thank you that you are merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Lord, thank you for the reality of the gospel, that Christ died for us, for our sins. Lord, that we are righteous, declared righteous through him.
Lord, in the next few moments, help us to concentrate. Lord, open up the eyes of our heart that we may see Christ. We may glimpse your glory. Lord, we may know you. and the power of your resurrection. Lord, help us to understand, help us to be honest with ourselves, to see our motives, to see our heart, see our desires. And Lord, strengthen us to repent where necessary. Lord, increase our joy. May we be a people that abound in joy. Work now, I pray, in your name. Amen.
A couple of years ago, almost two years ago now, I read an article and it was rather fascinating about a jersey worn by Babe Ruth. Most of you, if you know anything about Babe Ruth, you might know that he was considered maybe the greatest baseball player of all time back in the 1920s and the 1930s for The Yankees. Now, and if you really know anything about Babe Ruth, you know the Red Sox sold him to the Yankees to cover the cost of a play, I think, was the motive. But what Ruth, beyond being an excellent baseball player, what Ruth is probably most famous for is he once supposedly called his shot in a World Series. In other words, he once got up to the plate and he pointed, this happened in Wrigley Field in 1932 in Game 3 of the World Series, and though it’s disputed whether he actually did it, The myth lives on, that he called his shot, pointed to center field, and then he hit a home run. So, in 2024, the jersey he wore that day was auctioned. And that jersey sold for $24 million for the jersey. Now, how did they know it was the right jersey?
Well, it turns out, and if you’ve, I don’t follow memorabilia at all, I just see articles like this every now and again, but lately I guess sports memorabilia, the prices are going up, it’s selling for more and more and more, and there’s, around us has grown up this whole business of authentication, of like, of proving that something is authentic.
Making sure that that item is really that item. And in the article I read, it was fascinating because with the Ruth jersey, it was proved authentic through photographs. But it’s not just like someone goes in a room and like looks it up and looks at the jersey and says, yeah, that looks like it. This is using the latest technology, using AI. They go down to looking at every individual little letter. even looking at threads, blowing the pictures up to magnify them. They can see stains, like sweat stains.
They go back and they research where the jersey was made. They can tell the actual fabric on the jersey that is being sold and say, yes, that would be consistent with the fabric for the uniforms that the Yankees wore at the time. And this process to prove that it was genuine, and prove that it was authentic is really rigorous and thorough, which I think if you were gonna drop 24 million on anything, especially a jersey, you’d want to make sure that the province is correct, right?
When we come to the text this morning, Paul is having to prove to the Corinthians that he’s authentic, that he’s genuine. that he is real, that he is who he says he is, and that his motives are good and clean and pure. Now, I think from our standpoint, that seems almost crazy, right? And yet, it’s something that occurs a lot in the New Testament, where the apostles or their representatives had to prove, or you can see in the letters of the New Testament, that they’re having to argue for their authenticity. And this morning, when we come to 5.11, this is something of a summation of the argument, but in true Pauline style, this is an argument that starts in around 2.16, and we’ll go pretty much through the end of the book. And Paul is going to cite this.
In 2.11, he says, therefore, knowing the fear of God, or fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to our conscience. builds this argument throughout the book of 2nd Corinthians, he uses this idea of known to God, or in the sight of God, multiple times. In other words, when he talks about his ministry, when he talks about his motives, he says, we are known to God, and we do this in the sight of God. And then the argument will have different aspects to it, and we’re going to go over a few of them this afternoon, about how he ministers in the sight of God and what that means, and how that differs from the false apostles, the ones he kind of derisively calls super apostles, mockingly, later in the epistle. And so this morning, or this afternoon, I’m gonna say that 15 times, so try to get that right, but I want us to look at four things from this 2 Corinthians passage, and really the passages going into it and coming out of it, but what does it mean to minister in the sight of God?
And obviously this is relevant for two reasons. First of all, there are many wolves, right? There are many people that get taken, even in this day, by false teachers in the name of Christ. And it behooves us to be discerning as to who teaches Christ and who’s using Christ for gain. And then second of all, the biggest criticism, and I think I’ve said this down here before, is that we don’t live what we believe. It’s a constant accusation against modern American Christianity.
We say one thing and we do another. And so when we think about what it means to minister in the sight of God, these are things that we need to resemble. This is how our ministry, whether it’s as an elder, whether it’s as a husband or a father or a wife, or a classical Christian school teacher, or whatever. This is how we should behave to demonstrate authenticity. So first of all, the first thing what ministry in the sight of God means is that we have a complete sense of insufficiency for what we’ve been called to. Turn over with me, if you will, to chapter two, verse 16. Actually, yeah, verse 16. Actually, I’m going to back up to verse 14. And Paul writes this. This is 2.14. And this is where he really starts to launch into this argument.
But he says, thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ through God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak Christ. And then he starts this in verse three, he says, are we beginning to commend ourselves again or do we need as some do letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendations, written on our hearts to be known and read by all.
And the argument here that Paul is making is we spread the aroma of Christ but has nothing to do with us. We aren’t able to do this by ourselves. And when he starts talking about letters of recommendation or commendation, he’s talking about the super apostles, the false apostles, because in this time they would show up with letters basically extolling their greatness as apostles. And as much as we can tell from the context, Paul doesn’t bring letters. He just impacts lives by the grace of God.
We’re gonna find out as these references continue on that these super apostles go on the same things that make you sufficient to the world. They’re great speakers, in fact, Paul records for us later in the epistle, in 1010, he says, for they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account. In other words, and then he goes on to say, not that we dare classify ourselves or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding. But what we understand from that is these super apostles look at Paul and they say, well, he writes a good letter, but in your presence, he’s weak.
Most likely he can’t speak very well. Probably boring. Not in line with the dynamics and expectations they would have for a good speaker at that time. With the worldly expectations. Obviously, because to the gospel’s foolishness, to the Greeks, the crucifixion is the same to the Jews.
The super apostle comes and says, I can do this. I’m good. I’m gifted. Check out my letter. Look at my references. completely sufficient to this task. Those that minister in the sight of God, who know the glory of the gospel, who have grasped the weight of what we’ve been called to be ambassadors for, who’ve tasted of Christ, who’ve been humbled, repented, you know you’re not able to do this. You know that you can’t make this happen. You’re insufficient. Paul says this in 3.4, such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God who has made us sufficient to be ministers of the new covenant. Not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. This goes against everything our culture teaches, right? It goes against everything.
I mean, you have a resume, right? You have a resume. Some of you, many of you probably have experienced having a resume. It’s like, look at me. Look at how good I am. I am absolutely the best choice for that job you have open. Right? I read resumes all the time, and then sometimes I go in and interview the people, and they can’t speak to a single thing on their resume. But they’ve been told, oh, you got to exalt yourself. When it comes to ministering in the sight of God, we’re not sufficient for this. We’re 100% dependent. We can’t do anything right apart from him. And it gets at what do we value?
What do you think is virtuous in the church? Church leadership, church ministry, Christianity. Humility? Weakness? Simplicity? We run towards the other things, right? We’re Americans. Strength, independence, sufficiency. We carve out frontiers. We tame the land. We go coast to coast.
Gospel ministry, we can’t do it. Ministry in the sight of God, we’re always in the sight of God. And in some sense, we always have God in sight. And when you have God in sight, you say, woe is me. For I’m a sinful man. I can’t do anything. I can’t be anyone. So we see ministry in the sight of God comes with a sense of complete insufficiency.
Second of all, it means that we minister and we live with complete openness about what we believe. If you look back in 2.17, Paul starts with this and he says, for we are not like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. Then if you’ll slide over to 4.1, having explained how the gospel is so glorious that the glory of Moses coming down bailed from the mountain pales in comparison And he says, therefore having this ministry, we’ve been given this by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, but we’ve renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with God’s word.
But by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. There’s the in the sight of God again. And if our gospel is veiled, it’s veiled to those who are perishing. I’ll look down a few more verses. In verse 5, he says, for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who has said, let light shine out of the darkness, has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. in the face of Jesus Christ. Think about some of those words there that Paul uses. We don’t peddle the word of God. There’s no underhandedness to it. There’s no craftiness, no cunning. There’s no trickery. You can’t trick somebody into being a Christian, right?
Years and years ago, I was young and less wise than I am now. I don’t know, maybe, hopefully. And I went to buy a car. And I went to a place you should never go buy a car from, but I was also broke, right? And you, some of you may be able to relate to this. But, and so I go to the place and the guy, and I had owned a Jeep before and I wanted a Jeep.
And so the guy had a Jeep and it was not great. And the guy was 100% car salesman. Like, he could have been the prototype for what people don’t like about car salesman. Like, this is the, now, if you’re a car salesman here, no offense, I’m sure you’re not that way. But, like, he could have been a TV show, right? The car salesman character from the TV show.
And I remember at one point in this sales thing, and even though I was young, like, even I wasn’t that dumb. We popped open the hood, and there was smoke coming from the engine block. Which, if you’re selling a car, you don’t want smoke coming from the engine block, okay?
It’s just not, but he was treating me like, oh, that’s normal. No problem with that, right? And I just got kind of madder and madder, right? Because this guy’s trying to take advantage of me. He’s trying to pull one over on me. Treating me like I was stupid. He was being crafty. Peddling, cunning, distorting.
Paul says we don’t proclaim that way. It’s an open statement of the truth. We don’t distort it. Back in verse 5 when he says this, and again this is something of a summary of these things that he’s already said when he restates this in verse 11 and he says, Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God, and I hope is known also to your conscience.” He’s mentioned that a couple of times. An open statement of the truth to people’s conscience. We state the truth, and by the grace of God, it hits the conscience.
Now, what happens there is in the hands of God. But ministry in the sight of God states it openly, clearly, without tactic. Not without kindness, not without speaking the truth in love. But it doesn’t hide anything. And it speaks it to the conscience. And then it’s in God’s hands.
Some of you maybe have had this experience in culture. Maybe you’ve found yourself in a place where people are drinking a lot of alcohol for whatever reason. Could be at a wedding, you could be at a work function, you could be in. And if you’re someone that doesn’t drink a lot of alcohol or any alcohol, one of the things you’ve probably had happen is that the party animals want you to drink as much alcohol as they do. In other words, for whatever reason, it becomes like a challenge to them. to get you to drink like they do. And the drunker they get, they often won’t leave you alone, right? And the reason is there’s something about you being in that party setting or celebration setting where you’re not drinking alcohol, and they’re most likely overindulging, that pricks their conscience, right? There’s something about your behavior that’s ticking in their mind. and they want you to join them so that that goes away.
We need to preach and teach and live in a way that we prick the conscience, not underhanded, not with distortion. You know, there’s a lot of things that we believe that the world is going to find repulsive, but that doesn’t mean we don’t say them. There’s things we believe that the world is going to find ridiculous. The sermon this morning at our church was on Jonah 1. That’s not going to make you cool at work, right? But the thing is, most of them have been around lately, and actually Harmony’s coming home, and so they’ll all be together. They always have inane conversations, but I love listening to it.
One of the ones that happens with some degree is what you put ketchup on and what you don’t put ketchup on. And now, when you get to be my age, your relationship with ketchup is pretty much over on almost every food. But for a lot of children, you put ketchup on things so they’ll eat it, right? And kids like ketchup on things that ketchup doesn’t belong on, all sorts of things.
And I’d throw hot dogs in there, too, not to start a fight. That’s an open statement of truth. But we can’t put ketchup on things, right? To try to make it palatable. Some people are going to hate us. But ministry in the sight of God, we’re declaring the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some will think it’s foolish. Some will think it’s ridiculous.
But we don’t trick it up, we’re not deceitful, we just proclaim it. Third, in the sight of God we have no concern for reputation. If you look back in chapter five, Paul makes this statement in verse 13, he says, or actually started in verse 12, he says, we are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. And if we are in our right mind, it is for you.
And that speaks most likely that for we are beside ourselves is a little bit debated, but the idea is just that Some type of statement that Paul is out of control or a lunatic or crazy or he’s just gone around the bend. The sense there is just like he’s not normal, bizarre. And people link it to different things, potential. But essentially it’s just the setting is in comparison to those that would try to commend to you how great they are. on a worldly standard and by worldly virtue. And Paul’s saying, people think we’re crazy or I’m crazy.
It’s for God. My ministry is for you. And reputation matters not at all. In the sense that we think about reputation from a worldly standard. Because for the super apostles, reputation is everything. whether they’re liked. They want personal followers, not people to follow Jesus.
And that’s a danger, to want to be liked. And sometimes that grows into something horrible. One of the problems with the internet these days is you learn about every single Christian leader that falls. Somewhere, it switches from proclaiming Jesus to proclaiming the person, and all the evils that come with that and the many, many ways they manifest, whether in pride or abusive behavior or secret sin or whatever.
And for some ministries, they protect people like that. Because reputation rises above the gospel. And they believe that the reputation and the man or the person is essential to the ministry. There’s only one who’s essential to the ministry, and it’s not us. The false teachers had a fleshly value system.
When Paul talks about, He says, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though he once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. And that’s really, I think, what that statement has to do with there. We don’t care what you are in the flesh. There was a time where I, Paul, looked at Jesus through a worldly lens, but no longer. I’m certainly not going to look at any man. for his worldly value or any minister for his worldly value. I’ll look to Jesus.
Finally, the last one is we minister in the sight of God constrained by the love of Christ. And again, this is interwoven with what Paul’s been arguing. Paul’s arguments are always necessitates some untangling He’ll go down one road and come back to it. But it’s a good summary. For the love of Christ controls us, in verse 14. That word control can mean to press upon, to constrain, weighty in a sense.
Because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. He died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves. but for him who for their sake died and was raised. The love of Christ drives us in ministry before God, in the sight of God, motivates us. And I think the way this works in line with what Paul’s been arguing is when he says, and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves.
He says, we’ve concluded this, that all have died, and I’m not thinking here that this is like a long, Paul’s idea here is to settle debates about limited atonement. I think he’s talking in the context of the Corinthian church here. He says, therefore all have died. The point he wants you to get is you were dead. In sin. And then Jesus. And Jesus died for all. That those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Love of Christ that he died for you.
And that that motivates you to forget about you. That you as a dead sinner don’t have much to offer. Maybe that’s a shocking statement in 2026 modern therapeutic America. But that’s really it. When Paul’s saying, all were dead, there’s nothing there. You were dead. And yet Christ came. And now you live because he lives. And the only logical conclusion to such love He said, we can’t live for ourselves anymore. We live for him who died and was raised. And that constrains Paul. Weighs on him, pulls on him, pushes him. Controls. Why can’t Paul make himself a super apostle? Because the love of Christ constrains him. He was dead. And now he lives, not by anything he did, but because of Jesus.
If we’re gonna minister in the sight of God, we celebrate our insufficiency, we proclaim the gospel openly, the whole counsel of God. We’re not concerned about our reputation, and we’re constrained by the love of Christ. Let’s pray. Lord, who is sufficient for these things? Lord, we come this afternoon just grateful. Grateful for the Lord Jesus, grateful for the death and resurrection. Grateful, Lord, that we live in you.
Lord, help us to forget about ourselves, to repent of sin, to seek your kingdom with our whole heart, soul, and mind. Lord, for many of us, I think we struggle with the love of God. Lord, some have twisted it so it’s unrecognizable almost. Lord, help us to be driven by it. Lord, we ask all these things in Jesus’ name, amen.