Scripture Daily

Context No. 368 of 4322 · 2 Corinthians

Context · Reflection

2 Corinthians 5:11-15: in context

11Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are revealed to God, and I hope that we are revealed also in your consciences. 12For we are not commending ourselves to you again, but speak as giving you occasion of boasting on our behalf, that you may have something to answer those who boast in appearance and not in heart. 13For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. Or if we are of sober mind, it is for you. 14For the love of Christ compels us; because we judge thus: that one died for all, therefore all died. 15He died for all, that those who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who for their sakes died and rose again.

Paul is being questioned about his motives, and in defending himself he lets slip what actually drives his entire life. It is not what you might guess. It is not fear of failure, or ambition, or even duty. For the love of Christ compels us, he says, and the word he uses means something like presses in on us, controls us, hems us in. His whole restless life, the journeys and beatings and shipwrecks, runs on a single engine: he has been gripped by the love of Christ, and it will not let him go.

Then he explains the logic of that love and where it leads. We are convinced, he says, that one died for all, and therefore all died; and he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Look closely at the purpose in that sentence. The point of Christ dying for us is not merely to secure our forgiveness and leave us as we were. It is to end our living for ourselves. The love that grips Paul is aimed precisely at the self-centered axis every life naturally spins on, and it exists to pull us off it, to reorient us from living for me to living for the one who died and rose. Notice, too, that the force doing the reorienting is a love received, not a rule imposed. Paul is not white-knuckling his way into unselfishness. He has been so moved by a love shown to him in a death for his sake that self-centered living has simply lost its grip.

The honest question the passage puts is about the actual engine of my life. If I am truthful, what compels me, what presses in and controls how I spend myself? Is it fear, or ambition, or the endless project of my own comfort, or has the love of Christ become real enough to me that it does what Paul says it does, quietly ending my living for myself and turning me toward the one who died for me?

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