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II Corinthians 5:13-15
Excerpted from: Loving Christ and Revelation 2:1-7I want you to listen to this passage by the apostle Paul in II Corinthians 5:13-15. Paul is defending himself here because he's been accused of things of which he is not guilty. Mostly it's a matter of these people feeling he has taken too much on himself.
Paul is saying that he cannot live life for himself. The all-important and compelling reason he does what he does is because (verse 14) of Christ's love for him. So powerful is the influence of Christ's love for him, Paul says that he has no recourse but to live his life in service to others—the Church. ("I am of sound mind for you.")
The word "constrains" in verse 14 means "compulsive." It's translated in some modern Bibles as "controls." Paul is saying, "The love of Christ controls me." It doesn't mean though that it takes over and works his mind. He meant that the love of Christ is so great in him that it just drives him to set his will and go in the direction that Christ wanted him to go. Another way of putting this is, "Christ's love urges me to go in this direction." Remember Paul said in the book of Ephesians, "Don't resist the influences of the Spirit."
I mentioned that I would briefly explain the phrase, "then all died." Paul means all Christians. Remember, he is writing to a Christian church, and he means, "All who are Christians have died to sin in Christ." "The wages of sin is death." How is death pictured? In your baptism you are buried, and so you are dead to sin. You are covered, first of all, by the blood of Christ, and then in order to impress it on your mind (and on mine), you are then buried in a watery grave. But you don't stay in that grave, do you? You come up out of the water in a resurrection that is a type of Christ's resurrection to spiritual life.
This is a death that all must go through before they can truly live, and so you will find a phrase like this: "Apart from Christ, we are dead in sin." The key here is "dead in sin." The reason for that is because we are living a life of sin, but "in Christ, we are dead to sin." In other words, those dead to sin stop living the self-centered life that brings on the death penalty. They no longer live unto themselves. The love of Christ impels them to respond to His love in love to Him and to others. "If you love Me, keep My commandments." It all goes together.
Why then was a life of self-pleasing impossible for Paul? It was because of the supreme example of the life and the death of Christ. He was driven by his sense of obligation, by his sense of appreciation and thankfulness to emulate, to be at one, and to strive with all of his being to live the kind of life that Christ lived—in giving himself in service to the church.
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