The Normal Christian Life
Tom Shrader expounds 2 Corinthians 6:1-10, where Paul describes the life of a minister of reconciliation as marked by affliction, opposition, and voluntary sacrifice rather than comfort. Shrader argues that every believer is an ambassador for Christ whose daily conduct either commends or discredits the gospel before those watching. He urges the church to reject a prosperity-minded view of faith, embrace hardship as God's normal means of growth and transformation, and waste none of the opportunities God has placed before them.
“God's time is always now when we talk about obedience. Satan's time is always tomorrow.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 2 Corinthians
Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: suffering, sacrifice, witnessing, persecution, hardship, gospel, ambassadors, prosperity gospel, doubting your salvation, new believer, feeling comfortable in faith, parent raising children, struggling with complacency, young adult, questioning your faith, everyday christian
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, 2 Corinthians 13:5, 2 Corinthians 4:8, 2 Corinthians 11:24, Isaiah 49:8, James 1:2, 1 Corinthians 9:27, Romans 6:13
Theological Themes: reconciliation, ministry of reconciliation, sanctification, becoming holy, soteriology, true conversion, missiology, bearing witness
Full Transcript
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Turn your Bibles, if you would, to 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 1. Paul has done a magnificent job explaining to us that Christ died on the cross and paid the price for the sin of His people, and now we as believers represent Christ to the world. In verse 18, he gave us a ministry of reconciliation. He gave us the word of reconciliation. He reconciled us to Him, and now we go and we beseech the world.
In verse 20, Paul uses this imagery: "We are an ambassador for Christ, as though God were entreating or begging through us." You are an ambassador for Christ. You have a ministry of reconciliation. And I think it is important that we fully disclose what that means and what it starts to look like.
When I think of an ambassador — a United States ambassador to a foreign land, for instance — I think of limousines, the embassy, state dinners, a lot of pomp and circumstance, and pretty high-falutin stuff. So as an ambassador for Christ, can I expect those same things? Paul is very clear here, as he begins to speak autobiographically, that there is a big demand in this role and that this is tough work.
So here is the question we want to ask: what does this ministry of reconciliation look like when it is lived out before us? What should people see in our lives, and what should we see in the lives of people around us who claim to be Christians?
Receiving the Grace of God
Paul writes this: "And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain" — that is, not to let it be useless. There are probably two thoughts here. Paul is writing a letter to a church, and I think he has two things in mind.
The first are those people who think they are Christians but really are not at all. They may have walked an aisle, or prayed a prayer, or gone to a Billy Graham crusade. They may even carry Bibles, but they have never truly been converted. They have been exposed to the faith and have been around church a long time. Maybe someone here today knows all the lingo and language — when to stand up, when to sit down, all the responses — but is not converted. Their heart has not been changed. They have received the gospel in the sense that they have heard it, but it may be that it is in vain because they have never responded.
Even as we deal with one another, Paul seems to have in mind the idea that we need to test ourselves. At the end of this book, in chapter 13, verse 5, he says, "Test yourself, examine yourself to see if you're in the faith at all." Notice the assumption is that there are some people who think they are Christians when they really are not.
This is very easy to see with a child. God gives you a child, you raise this child, and you get a compliant kid. Oftentimes parents especially believe compliant equals converted — and that is not true at all. It is very easy for someone to come to church, learn the language, start reading the books, and yet not be converted at all. So the very first thing Paul has in mind, and he is not afraid to ask it, is this: are you really converted?
The second thing — and I think it is the primary use — is that you as Christians, working alongside one another, have received the grace of God: grace for salvation and grace for works. Do not waste it. Do not let it become useless. God has given you so much. He saved you from your sin, but not just that. He placed you in a great church, a great body of believers, and He has given you extraordinary opportunities. He has uniquely crafted and placed around you the neighbors you have, the workplace you are in, the school you attend, the places where you exercise, play golf, or hang out. Do not blow it.
You Are a Missionary
You are a missionary. We had a great time Friday night talking about missions, and we talked about worldwide missions. I am not so concerned that we find the place to minister — I am concerned that God raises up people, because once God raises up people, we will figure out where to send them. But I do not want you to think that unless you have a passport, you are not a missionary. If you are a follower of Christ, you are a missionary. You are an ambassador. You have a ministry of reconciliation. You do not have to go out and save the world. You just have to go out and be light and salt in your world. God gives you this — do not mess it up.
I think about this all the time. I was not a Christian until age 30, and I absolutely wasted 30 years of my life. Frankly, I do not want to waste any more of it. This motivates me. I do not want to sit at the end of my life and say, "Oh, if I would have — oh, that I could have." I hear that all the time from people.
I watched something again the other night on Secretariat. When they did the autopsy on Secretariat, they discovered that his heart was twice the size of a normal horse's heart. Secretariat was made to run. There will never be anything like him — a Triple Crown winner in record times. You see a horse that was made for something, and you discover what it was made to do. How about a person? What are you made to do? You are made to be an ambassador for Christ, a missionary in your world. Do not receive the grace of God in vain.
The Urgency of Obedience
God has made you an ambassador and given you a place. Do it — don't waste it. Paul adds a sense of urgency in verse two, quoting from Isaiah 49:8: "At the acceptable time I listened to you, and on the day of salvation I helped you. Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation." There is a sense of urgency here.
When we are talking about obedience, we are not talking about waiting for God's timing to align with certain circumstances. When we talk about obedience, God's time is always now. Satan's time is always tomorrow.
The last thirty days I haven't been eating well, and I haven't been exercising at all. I have explanations — we were moving, there was a lot going on. But it started to get to me, and so I said to myself: since we moved I need to change clubs, I need to register at a new one. That took about three minutes. Then I told myself that because of a conference coming up, I would start working out and eating correctly on March 10th.
Then yesterday I was lying there thinking: why the 10th? Why not today? What am I waiting for? Now, I am a man of my word, so I didn't go to the gym — I had said the 10th. But isn't that foolish? That is exactly what Satan does. We are talking about obedience here. Satan always has you say, wait until tomorrow. Don't deal with the sin in your life right now. You're about to go on a business trip — some of the best sinning times — wait until you get back, and we'll start then. God's timing for obedience is always right now.
Do Not Discredit the Ministry
In verse three, Paul gives an extraordinary warning: "You don't give any cause for offense in anything, in order that the ministry not be discredited." He is saying he does not want to be in a place where it is his fault that the ministry is discredited. You are an ambassador. You have a ministry of reconciliation. This raises some very important questions for you to reflect on as you examine your life.
How about the people around you? How about the people closest to you? Do they see anything in your life that discredits the ministry? Is the evidence there? You say you are a Christian — can we prove it? Are you a stepping stone or a stumbling block?
Paul goes back to verse three and says, listen, I don't want you to have anything in your life that discredits the ministry. It is a natural response: people tie together you as a minister of reconciliation, the gospel, and the Lord. They are all connected. People judge your Heavenly Father by you.
We do the same thing on an earthly level. You have got your kids in the van, you are headed over to someone's house for dinner for the first time, and just around the corner you stop and turn around and say: I don't want a peep out of any of you tonight. At dinner I want you to use your napkin. I want you to say please pass. I want you to say thank you. I want you to do all the things you should be doing at home. And if they say sit, you sit. If they say stand, you stand. Why do you do that? Because you know full well that the people you are visiting are going to evaluate you as a parent based on the behavior of your child.
The same thing is true of your Heavenly Father. When you walk around carrying your Bible and say you are a Christian, a child of the King, people are going to want to know what kind of King He is. And the way they will decide that is based on how you behave. Kierkegaard, at one point in his life, had someone come to him and share Christ with him. His response at the end of the conversation was this: "If you want me to believe in your Redeemer, you must look a little more redeemed." That is the call. You say you are a Christian — you look like it.
The Risk of Being Disqualified
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27, "I buffet my body and make it a slave, lest possibly after I preach to others, I should be disqualified." He is not talking about losing his salvation. He is using an athletic metaphor his audience would have understood — someone who signed up to participate in the games, began their training, but did not follow through. They are not going to let him run. Paul said he did not want to be disqualified.
You are an ambassador. You are in the ministry of reconciliation. Godly behavior is not just for the people at the front — it is for everyone engaged in this enterprise, and that is all Christians in all places.
Watching You
When you carry that Bible, the minute you invite somebody in here — the minute you bring them to a women's conference or a men's conference, reach out to them, and start talking about the things of Christ — they are watching you. They are watching you with a critical eye, and they will hold you to a higher standard for your life than you hold for yourself. That is the way it is.
The Life of an Ambassador
Beginning in verse 4, Paul starts again to talk about what the life of an ambassador is really like. He says, "But in everything, commending ourselves as servants of God." Commending means literally to introduce. In chapter 3, verse 1, Paul said he needed to reintroduce himself, to commend himself to his readers. And here is how they would know he and his companions were servants of God: they were in much endurance.
The word endurance means literally to stay under pressure. It is more than the popular piece of advice to hang in there. It means to hang in there until there is triumph — to hang in there through all the pressure. William Barclay writes this about that word:
> "Paul begins with one triumphant word of the Christian life, endurance. It is a non-translatable word. It does not describe the frame of mind which can sit with folded hands and bowed head and let torrents of trouble sweep over it in passive resignation. It describes the ability to bear things in such a triumphant way that it transfigures them and transmutes them. It is the courageous, triumphant ability to bear things which enables a man to pass the breaking point and not break, and always greet the unseen with a cheer. It transmutes tribulation into strength and into glory."
Paul said that endurance is one of the marks of an ambassador — and he is talking about us, about ministers of reconciliation. The only way anyone will know whether you can truly endure is if tough things are thrown at you.
Nine Areas of Difficulty
Paul now lists nine areas of difficulty. He talks about difficult circumstances, difficult opposition, and difficult decisions. He names affliction, hardship, distress, beatings, imprisonment, turmoil, labor, sleeplessness, and hunger. Let us look at each one of these.
Paul faced tough circumstances, beginning with affliction. The idea there is various troubles. The word various is the same one James uses in James chapter 1 when he says, "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials." It means literally multi-colored. Trials do not come in just one form, one shape, or one size. Hardship means necessities — these are simply the things life throws at you. You did not ask for them, you did not sign up for them; they are just part of the deal. We find tough circumstances in life: financial pressures, emotional pressures, perhaps the great joy and challenge of aging parents who need you desperately, or a spouse, or a child.
Distress means literally narrow places. You are hemmed in on all sides, with things pressing in around you — and yet you do not give up. Paul addressed this directly back in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 8: "We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but don't give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and we keep going. Through sufferings, our bodies are constantly sharing in the death of Jesus, so the life of Jesus is seen in us. We live under constant danger." That is exactly what Paul is talking about here.
Tough Opposition
Paul and his companions also faced tough, aggressive opposition. There were beatings — the word means literally stripes. If you turn from chapter 6 to chapter 11, verse 24, Paul speaks of this directly. He says five times he received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Jewish law prohibited more than forty lashes, so as punishment was administered, they would always give forty minus one — thirty-nine. Five times Paul received thirty-nine lashes; that is one hundred and ninety-five lashes in total.
He also says three times he was beaten with rods. The lashes came from the Jews; the rods came from the Romans. They would take a stick at least an inch thick and beat the victim with no rules or restrictions — they would simply beat until they were tired, bored, or felt the person had received enough. Paul also says that once, at Lystra, he was stoned. This was not people throwing small pebbles as he ran away. They threw him down, stood around him, and dropped large boulders onto his body as a form of capital punishment. They walked away, and Scripture says they thought he was dead.
Paul was also imprisoned. The early church writer Clement of Rome, writing shortly after Paul died, recorded that Paul was imprisoned on seven different occasions. Three of those imprisonments appear in Scripture. For a man always on the move, always driven to go and go and go, this must have been an extraordinarily difficult trial. Yet what Scripture tells us is that even in prison, chained to his guards, Paul was sharing Christ with those very guards.
There were also riots surrounding Paul's presence and teaching. The list of cities where riots broke out includes Damascus, Jerusalem, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Thessalonica, Berea, Corinth, and Ephesus. Riots were breaking out wherever Paul went.
Tough Commitments in the Midst of Opposition
Everywhere Paul goes he faces opposition to what he is saying. And there are not just difficult circumstances and tough opposition — he also has to make some tough choices, some tough commitments. Paul tells us there were labor and sleeplessness and hunger. When he talks about labor, he means literally hard work, working to the point of exhaustion. When he talks about sleeplessness, he is not talking about insomnia. He is talking about suspending sleep out of devotion to the duty, responsibility, and privilege that God has given him. When he talks about hunger, he is not talking about a formal religious fast. He is talking about either forgetting to eat — being so immersed in what he is doing that he forgets to stop — or simply going without because there is not enough money, or because he wants to place that money somewhere else.
Here is what is important to see: these are all voluntary. You cannot control the circumstances — here they come. Paul cannot control the opposition; he cannot do much about the riots, the beatings, and the imprisonment — here they go. But he can control these other things. He can say, "That's enough, I don't think I want to work anymore." He can say, "I'm tired, I need to get home." He can say, "I'm starving, and I just need to eat." This is a call to sacrificial living.
A Practical Call to Sacrifice
This children's ministry situation is huge — absolutely huge. We need 300 people beyond what we normally need. And as we talk to people, I am hearing things like, "With these two services, I may have to stay a half hour more." I am not dismissing that. I know your children get fussy if they do not have the right things, and that you have a great deal to manage. I am not dismissing any of that. But staying a half hour longer is not exactly the same as labor, sleeplessness, and hunger. I do not believe that when we go to www.persecutedchurch.org, we will find workers listed there because they had to stay a half hour longer. I am not minimizing what you do — I am saying, can we get a little perspective? We are some distance from real sacrifice.
And yet, it is a big deal, and it is important. You are going to have to voluntarily do without some things and do things that inconvenience you, because you are involved in something bigger and more important than personal convenience. This is kingdom-building — not your kingdom or my kingdom, but God's kingdom. There are tough circumstances and tough opposition, and in the midst of all of it, there are tough commitments that have to be made.
Characteristics Found in Paul's Life
In the midst of all of this, we see certain characteristics in Paul's life: purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness. Here is the picture — tough circumstances, tough opposition, tough commitments — and yet there is purity, patience, and kindness. How does that happen? Paul has a support he relies on. But first, let us look at these characteristics themselves.
There is purity. It means more than chastity — it carries the idea of integrity. And from my experience being around Christians, it is the little things, not the big things, that reveal this. Most of you do a great job with the big things. But what about the little things? I will give you an example, and you may think it sounds trivial, but I will tell you why it matters — because it bothers me. We announced the Men's Conference six weeks in advance. Fifty percent of those who registered did so in the final week. They knew they were coming for five of those weeks. Do you have any idea what that does to us internally? Is it a big thing? No, not at all. So why not register five weeks early? That is what I am talking about.
Or consider this: when you say you are going to be somewhere, it matters, because we are committed. If we say we are going to do something, we do our best to do it. We know that when you make certain commitments, you are investing, and we want to invest in you and make things as easy as possible for you. That is why, with all of this children's ministry, we are trying to give you every bit of support we can. Here is what happens: we will plan an event — a women's ministry, a men's ministry, an educational event, whatever it is — and we will provide childcare. We ask you to sign up the children you are bringing. When you sign up, we contact Kathy Montgomery, we find the workers, we staff that childcare, and then you do not bring your kids. I know it feels like no big deal to you. It is a big deal to us. That is integrity. If you say you are going to do something, do it. It is not about the big things — anyone can handle a big thing. It is the little things.
The Support Paul Relies On
There is also knowledge — understanding God's Word. There is patience, which is long-suffering with people, especially people who have wronged you. It means avoiding retaliation. In a sense patience is passive, but kindness is active — it is goodness in action. Paul says: here is how I live — with purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness.
How can Paul live this way? He has the Holy Spirit in him. He relies on the Spirit of God — the same Spirit who lives in you. If you are a Christian, you have the same Holy Spirit in you that Paul had in him. There is genuine love, and this is precisely why Scripture always asks: how are you doing with the widows, how are you doing with the orphans, how are you doing with the poorest of the poor? Because those people cannot reciprocate. We are fairly good at reaching out to people, especially when we think we might get something back from them. Love says no — I am reaching out to you because of you, for what is best for you. And Paul has the Word of Truth, God's revealed Word. He can speak the truth because that Word never misleads him. He has the power of God.
Weapons of Righteousness and Public vs. Private Life
We are not going at this alone. We plan, we work, we figure, we calculate. We have people we have prayed for, and we are trying to find the right set of circumstances to introduce them to something from the church, or to introduce the gospel to them. But we must understand this: it is all about them and their response, not about how we present it. And that response is going to be determined by God. His might makes our efforts effective.
Then we have the weapons of righteousness. That could be the imputed righteousness we have in Christ, or it could be the righteousness we demonstrate as we present our bodies as instruments of righteousness — Romans 6:13. It is for the right hand and the left. The right hand is the picture of what you do publicly; the left hand is what you do privately. The idea here is that in all things — left, right, center, above, below — when all things were thoroughly equipped and prepared, you are in an awesome position as a minister of reconciliation, as an ambassador for Christ.
You are going to face tough circumstances and tough opposition. You are going to have tough decisions to make around you, but you make them and you live a life of integrity, patience, and kindness, because you rely on Him and on His Word and on His power.
Paradox and the Nature of Joy
Look at verses 8, 9, and 10. Paul describes these disputing, conflicting, paradoxical views about him and his fellow ministers. To be known by glory means to have a good reputation — and yet they were also known by dishonor. Paul acknowledged there were people on both sides of this. There were those who said you could not trust the man, and yet we are known by the good things we do, while others would claim we do bad things.
Verse 10 gives us the capstone. In all of this, we are sorrowful and yet rejoicing. God is not concerned primarily about your happiness. He is concerned about your joy. Anyone can be happy when everything is going their way — when every deal closes, when every person responds. It is not too hard to be happy when you come home and the steak is cooking and everything is comfortable and pleasant. Anybody can be happy there. But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about joy.
Do you see how it connects? You have tough circumstances, tough opposition, tough commitments — and joy in the midst of all of that. Not joy that removes those things, but joy that sustains you up under them. That is joy. Consider the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience. How do we know if you have peace until we put you in trying circumstances? Trying circumstances may be as everyday as trying to exit onto Elliott Road in about fifteen minutes. If you are a man of peace, you cannot even make it out of the parking lot. Well — there you go. You are an ambassador. You are a minister of reconciliation.
The Normal Christian Life
Here is what this amounts to. In your life, expect affliction, hardship, distress, and difficulties of all sorts. The sacrificial demands on you may include the voluntary denial of the comforts of life. You accept this knowing you have God's power available to you in all circumstances. Be prepared for people to criticize your words and deeds, and even at times to lie about you. Your suffering and your pain may be so intense that it threatens your physical health, even your life itself.
That is the normal Christian life. We can fall into the trap of thinking the Christian life goes from one mountaintop to the next mountaintop to the next, with no problems in between — as though that is normal. Do not try to extract difficulty from the picture. This runs contrary to a great deal of teaching today, but God may want you sick, and He may want you poor. You do not hear that often. Why would He want you that way? Because when you are healthy and wealthy, you can become proud and self-sufficient, and you do not listen, and you do not learn as well in those good times.
If we went through every person here and asked them to tell us a time when they saw God work most clearly in their life and when they grew the most, it is a fair bet that ninety percent would point to a time of hardship, pain, suffering, and real need. Because that is how He works. That is normal. Do not run away from it. It is part of the job description.
Embracing the Ambassador's Call
You are going to have tough circumstances. You are going to have tough opposition. You are going to have to make some tough commitments. There will be times — whether in children's ministry, student ministry, men's ministry, or the marketplace — when someone calls at two in the morning and asks to get together. There will be those things in your life. You do not push them aside. You embrace them. God is doing something.
That is the normal Christian life. That is the life of an ambassador. It is part of the ministry of reconciliation, and God has privileged you by placing you there. Do not push it away. Face those circumstances — you do not need to go out and create them; they will come to you. Face that opposition — you do not need to create it; it will come to you. What will not come to you on its own, and what you must go and seek, are those tough commitments you have to make. And the longer you live and work, the more you find those commitments do not seem so burdensome, and they do not seem so demanding.
This is what it all comes down to: making every minute of every single day count, and not wasting one second.