2 Corinthians 5:14-15: Whose Love Compels Us

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (NIV)

Whose Love Compels Us

There is a kid on the next block who walks up the street with a shovel over his shoulder every time it snows, and he clears the driveway at the corner before he touches his own. Nobody assigns it to him. Two winters ago the woman who lives there sat in an emergency room with his mother until four in the morning, and that is the whole of the explanation.

Paul repeats the charge himself, that some call him out of his mind, and then he says what actually moves him. “For Christ’s love compels us.” Something is pushing him from outside his own willpower, and he says whose it is before anybody can guess wrong.

That kid walks up the street because of one particular woman and one night he was not even awake for. The love Paul names has the same shape and a larger night behind it. One died for all. If one died for all, then all died, and the old life is over already.

Those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. It reads as a direction rather than a rule. Paul says that from now on they regard no one from a worldly point of view, so the change shows up in how people are seen.

I’ve spent whole weeks working for one person’s approval and called it hard work. Who are you working for this week? For a lot of us it is one particular person we are still hoping to please.

Last week the woman came out to the top of the driveway while he was working and told him she knew whose boy he was. He heard her, and then he finished the last ten feet anyway.