Because of what Christ has done for everyone, we are careful not to assume that people are nothing more than what our eyes and ears tell us about them. In the past we made that mistake with Christ, but we now know a lot more of him than our eyes or ears alone could detect. Whenever anyone unites themselves to Christ, something new is created. What that person was becomes a thing of the past; they get a whole new start in life! This is all God’s doing! God wants to be at peace with us, and so sent Christ to bring about reconciliation. Now God is sending us to continue this same work of reconciliation. To put it another way, what God was doing in and through Christ, was rebuilding the trust and love that are supposed to flow in both directions between the world and God. To achieve that, God agreed not to hold against us anything we had done in the past. This, then, is the extraordinary message of reconciliation which we are now given the job of sharing. We are a bit like a negotiation team who is authorised to issue the appeal on God’s behalf. We represent Christ in the world, and so on his behalf we beg you to hear this message and accept the generous peace deal that God is offering. The way of reconciliation is on the table before you: you’d be mad to turn your backs on it! Even though Christ had never been sucked into sin like us, God lumped him in with us, so as to make it possible to lump us in with him. United with him, we can become examples of all that God considers to be right and true.
These verses are one of those places in the New Testament that articulate what Christian faith is about with particular clarity. It reminds us that faith in Christ teaches us to see things in a new way. That faith opens a hidden depth in life for us. It is creative, and the thing faith creates is us. It is about reconciliation and peacemaking, about love and trust. Faith connects the dots between the One Who Is Beyond, the Spirit That Is Present, and us. It inspires us to share those connections with our neighbors. Amen.
