Naeane Church 2026.09.06.Sunday Message — The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday Message — The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
The Holy Spirit Changes the Way We See Our Family
Text: 2 Corinthians 5:16–21
Today I want to preach on this: the Holy Spirit changes the way we see our family. This is the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost. By your prayers and your help, our church has now stayed with the Holy Spirit as our subject, week after week, from the first Sunday after Pentecost all the way to the fifteenth.
Now, strictly speaking I ought to preach text by text, but because I take the text as a backdrop and look at it from the angle of how the Holy Spirit works, I wander off the text quite a lot. Still, since we need to understand the Spirit as a whole, this is how I've been doing it.
As I prepared this message, having spoken about the Spirit for fifteen weeks straight, I came to see the whole of it like this. Everything Jesus did while He was here in the body — in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — is exactly what He does in us as the Spirit. That has been dawning on me more and more.
So rather than saying, in some blind, vague way, that the Spirit is there somewhere, it's this: in here He speaks, He leads, He makes us breathe, He brings things to mind, He works power and brings things to pass. The very fellowship Jesus kept up with His disciples in the body — the Spirit within does exactly the same. It's only that, since we have to go all the way to twenty-seven weeks, I'm explaining it one piece at a time. That's what I've come to see.
So today too, with that introduction as the backdrop, I'll move through five questions. And among all the things the Spirit does, the one to lay hold of today is this: the Spirit changes the way we see the people closest to us — our family.
One. How Did I Fight the Spiritual Battle This Week?
Let's confess it together. Jesus is the Christ. I am a child of God. Every problem is finished. Satan, go. Filled with the Spirit. World evangelization.
I keep doing this. Sometimes out loud, and sometimes, when it's hard, just inside. When some problem comes up, I do it inside again.
This week, too, my spiritual battle came down to the matter of how I see people. This week I went to Gunsan. A friend of mine, a pastor, had lost his father, so I went on short notice. I used to belong to the Holiness denomination, and there I met many pastors I hadn't seen in ten years. There was a senior from my military-chaplain days, and there was a senior I'd shared a rented room with for two years back when I was at Seoul Theological University. He said to me, "It feels like forty years." He'd met me again after all that time, and he said that all along he'd wondered in his heart how Pastor Choi was getting on. And there we ran into each other. Suddenly it was as if I'd gone back forty years. And since that classmate of mine is from Gunsan, several of the Gunsan pastors gathered and we all met together.
Now in the old days I'd have stopped right there. But this time, as I kept praying, a thought came: I lived in Gunsan, and yet I don't really know the spiritual condition of this place. So I looked back over the past, and talked with the people around me, and worked very hard to read the spiritual state of the region.
Then the next day, when I looked into it, I found that the Gunsan Mission History Museum had been newly built the year before. The city put up money, the nation put up money, and Christian organizations in Gunsan put up money, and it was built beautifully. So my wife and I made time to go.
In the old days I'd have had little interest in such a thing, but as I kept calling Jesus is the Christ, this kind of question opened up in me: what is the spiritual state of this region? How did Christianity first come into this land? That's how the door of my heart opened outward, and off I went.
And when I got there, I found that when Christianity came into the Honam region, the very first place it entered was Gunsan. And when I looked into it — I lived in Gunsan as a boy, so I'm just a Gunsan man — I found that even by today's measure, the place with the highest proportion of Christians in the whole country is, again, Gunsan. I thought, how remarkable — so Gunsan was that kind of city.
At the mission history museum I learned that in 1895 a missionary named Junkin came here, joined with missionaries of the American Southern Presbyterian church. Seven of them came, it's said. And from then on, laboring and laboring, the church they raised up was Guam Church, and they also planted Gaebokdong Church in Gunsan. And they built a hospital too. Of course that one missionary didn't do it all — he preached, and among those who came with him were doctors who took up the medical work, and many hands joined together.
They built schools too. So the schools remain even now. There was a girls' school called Melbourne, now Yeonggwang Girls' Middle and High School. And First High School was founded then as well. So it was all built up, and from Honam, from Gunsan, the gospel ran on and connected outward.
When I went, I found that Guam Church, the very first one planted, is still there. The old building is there, and a new one has been built too. As a boy I'd heard the name Guam Church, but I never thought of it as truly important — and seeing it, I realized how important it was.
And there, laid out in a row, were the Bible, the telescope, the eyeglasses, the bag that Junkin the missionary had used. Some senior volunteers came and explained the whole story. When I only looked, I couldn't tell what it meant, but once they explained the background, I understood.
So I came to see that when Christianity entered Korea, it accomplished an enormous history, and in terms of the culture of the mind a great deal of reform took place — and that it came about through the devotion of these people. I came to see afresh how important missionaries are. And though they're in heaven now, I thought — if they were to come again, and see how much further Christianity has developed since their day, and how the culture of the mind has advanced, and how, through Christianity, politics and economy and society and culture were all shaped, so that this nation is now moving toward being perhaps the most influential in the whole world — they would feel deeply gratified. And I found myself asking again, as a pastor, how I might enjoy this Christ more.
And on another note — the weather suddenly turned this week, didn't it. And in here, now that I've reached my age, something comes rolling in on me. Every autumn, without fail, when the cold wind comes, something rolls in. Hey, you're lonely, aren't you. You've got nothing. And then, hey, this is how fleeting life is, it sweeps in like that, rising up on that cold wind. So again I kept on: Jesus is the Christ. Keeping my heart from drifting that way, I keep calling the name. That is my spiritual condition.
Two. How Did I Come to Understand Genesis 3:15 More Deeply This Week?
The most important verse in Scripture is Genesis 3:15. There, God gave a name — at the moment the human being was utterly ruined, could no longer meet God, had become a child of the satan, with the problems of past, present, future, and soul all unresolved. At that very moment, God gave a name.
Follow me and confess it. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ.
We say we know Jesus the Christ, but unless we know why the Christ was given, that background, how can we take hold of Him?
This week I saw this again. Strangely, after eating the forbidden fruit, Adam's eyes changed. The moment God appeared, he said it was because of that woman. In Genesis 2 he'd said, "bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh" — his eyes had opened and my wife is the best — and suddenly, in Genesis 3, it's that woman's fault. And Eve — what does she say? It's the serpent's fault.
This became an instinct. It became our very nature. And that means it became a way of seeing that cannot look at people rightly, but blames someone else — this became human nature. Put it in today's terms: a person does wrong — myself included — and when we do wrong, it's because of that person, because of that circumstance, because of that politician, because of that man. We're all rigged to pass it off onto someone else. It's set up that way, because we're trying not to take the hit ourselves. And as that happens, this is what our eyes become. That is human nature.
So from Genesis 4 on, Cain kills his brother. And when God appears — he ought to say, "I have sinned" — but he doesn't. Look at the history of Scripture: the human being will never admit his own fault.
And yet — there are some remarkable people. Through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, Scripture speaks of an entirely different kind of human being. Why? In Genesis 12, Abraham could have taken the good land, but he gives his nephew the first choice. You choose first. And that's not because Abraham simply liked and loved his nephew. What lies underneath it? Genesis 3:15 is the foundation underneath.
So for our nature to be changed — so that whatever happens, instead of shifting the blame onto someone else, we recognize I did wrong, I am the problem — there's something we have to change first.
Here's the first word. Jesus is the Christ. This very nature can be changed, and having become a new creation, instead of moving the problem out onto some other person, we first recognize that I am the problem, and then move to how we'll respond. That's the changed state.
Three. Explaining Today's Text on the Foundation of Genesis 3:15
I said I always read Scripture on the foundation of Genesis 3:15. There, the offspring of the woman coming is always the theme. And why the offspring of the woman has to come — the ground for that is always Genesis 3:1–5. Why must He come? Because the satan is at work in here, on me — that's the problem.
So the LORD God promised the offspring of the woman, and the Old Testament is therefore this long coming, coming, coming, coming. And in the Old Testament it's a long way from Genesis 3:15 until He actually comes. Why so long? Along the way come kings, prophets, priests, famous men. In First and Second Kings the kings come one after another. And later the people of Israel are carried off as captives, the nation falls. There's the temple, the tabernacle, countless sacrifices, countless festivals.
Why does it all unfold at such length? To show us, in living color, that even with all of it given — kings, prophets, priests, temple, sacrifices — it still doesn't work. And after that, in Matthew, at last He comes. Who is He? He is Jesus. Jesus the Christ came, died, rose, ascended, and settled every problem of yours and mine.
And after that, in Acts 1, the Spirit at last came in here. And the Spirit's coming means that the very One who was with the disciples as the Christ has come, the same way, inside you and me. So Acts 1 through 28 lays out the process: after the Spirit works among the disciples, it spreads out to the whole world.
But today it's 2 Corinthians 5. Who sent this? A man named Paul, writing a letter to the church at Corinth. Why did he write?
Paul founded the Corinthian church. When? Somewhere around AD 50 to 52. He founded it and taught there for a year and a half. So compared with other churches, it's utterly different — sitting down and teaching for a year and a half, Paul taught them everything he had in his faith, so how deeply they must have understood. And AD 50 to 52 means he taught them on the second missionary journey — not even the first. The first journey began around AD 46, so the second was about AD 50, and over those four years Paul had gathered much experience. So he taught the Corinthian church for a year and a half, and then left.
Then, as the Corinthian church went on, about four years later a problem arose — a problem no one but Paul could interpret or resolve. So the letters he wrote were 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. Today it's 2 Corinthians, written around AD 55 to 56.
We looked at chapter 5 today. Following the flow of 2 Corinthians, it contains Paul defending himself against the attacks aimed at him — that is, the very fact that you're taking shots at me means something has gone wrong. That's the backdrop of today's text.
Four. The Part I Want to Explain in Detail
First, when we read Scripture, we have to think of it this way. Widen the lens: Acts is the process of the church being built up — built up broadly. Then come Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, one after another. What are they? Once a church is planted, they show how that church is faring, what problems arise as it goes, and how those are addressed. Each church's situation is laid out in those letters.
So today, again, it's a letter written to the Corinthian church. And the Corinthian church was four years on from its founding. So these are not people just beginning the life of faith. Four years had passed, and because Paul taught them for a year and a half, their level of faith is probably higher than yours or mine. So they too had already reached settled conclusions in their hearts.
Let's confess it together. Jesus is the Christ. I am a child of God. Every problem is finished. Satan, go. Filled with the Spirit. World evangelization.
These are people with all of that laid down as their foundation. So when Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, they were people who'd reached firmer conclusions than we have. It was a place taught by Paul, the greatest of his day.
And they knew about the Spirit too. We're now in our fifteenth week on the Spirit, aren't we. They too, through Paul, already knew: the Spirit was sent by Christ; He dwells within you; He speaks; He testifies that you are a child of God; once He's come in here He never leaves; His being here means God has sent Him to you and me; and this is the seal that you are God's child, and the guarantee for the future, since He goes with us all the way to heaven. And that this One not only speaks in here but leads, and cuts the chain of our thoughts. They already knew all of that, at a basic level.
But look at today's text — why did he write it? A problem had arisen. Why? The Corinthian believers were Corinthians, all of them people living out in the world. Those people came into the church. You too, when you come — you live out in the world, and then you all come into the church. This is a cycle, isn't it. And the Corinthian believers likewise lived out in the world, and came in.
But after Paul left, a problem arose. Corinth was a commercial region, a seaport. In those days people from all over the world traded there heavily — not a farming town but a thoroughly important port. And there, as I said, stood a great temple. I've been to Corinth. There's culture there, and high on the mountain an enormous temple.
So what did people do? In those days, those with money, those who wanted their business to go more global, would come there to offer sacrifice or to ask the god for help. And how did they go up? All the way up to that high temple. And that temple was famous for something. What set it apart from other temples was that inside it, people had sexual relations with the priestesses. And doing so was believed to bring the god they served inside them. With that power, they thought, they could do business all the better.
So how alluring that must have looked. Whatever they were to receive, they'd probably buy an offering down below and carry it up on their backs. And so people from all over the world come — those with money, those with position, all of them. And in that state, they come into the church.
But inside those people who'd come into the church, the very whisper that we at our church always talk about comes in. Hey, Paul's gone. Look outside. All those people with money, famous people, people with position, people reaching for greater power — they're all impressive, aren't they. Look, that's how it is. But this church — who founded it? Paul. And Paul, well — put him next to them. Short, eyes that can't even see properly, never married, a slight little frame, no gift for speaking. What's he got? That's the kind of thought that comes.
And how does it expand in the end? So Paul's no big deal. This church Paul founded — what even is it? And the thought keeps climbing off in another direction. Then, inside the church, sides start splitting. Between those who hold onto the Jesus is the Christ that Paul preached and live by it, and those who go the way of what does Paul matter, we should follow someone else and end up dismissing Paul — a fight keeps breaking out. This is people becoming enemies inside the church, isn't it. It got so serious that the letter Paul wrote is 2 Corinthians.
So what's the context of today's text? Today's is 2 Corinthians 5:17, which you've probably heard at least once: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. You've heard it, haven't you. What a fine-sounding line. When I was at seminary, there was always a Bible verse posted in front — we had to memorize them — so I'd see it right there. Wow, that's a good one, I thought.
But Paul's actual content today runs from verse 16 to 21. And the thrust of this context is this. Paul is saying, in effect: Look, I am a man made new in Christ, by the Spirit. So my old self is all behind me. I don't look at my own past either. Because Paul himself was a man who led the charge in killing. To any ordinary Christian, Paul was a murderer. So when he thinks of his own past, he can't say a word. How could he come out so boldly?
So this is what Paul is saying: I too am a man changed in the Spirit. I don't look at my own past. And more than that — I don't look at your past either. Right now, everything in the past is forgotten by me. Why? Because I am enjoying that Jesus is the Christ. So you too, be changed as I have been. And in that changed state, be reconciled to one another. That's the context.
Then, fourth — when it says new creation. When Paul says new, he doesn't mean changed a little; he means completely changed. Around my neighborhood there's the cast-off shell of a cicada, the skin it molts, stuck right there on the tree. Down below, the larva climbs up, grows, and at some moment sheds it clean off. From then on it can fly. Before the molt and after the molt are entirely different. When Paul says you are a new creation in Christ, he isn't saying our thinking shifted a little, our heart shifted a little — he's using that word on the assumption that God made the whole thing new. He's saying that you and I are people God has newly changed. And because we're people made new like that, we can now look at people — and especially at our family — with new eyes.
Five. How Will We Apply This Word?
First, let's consider our position. Follow me again. Jesus is the Christ. I am a child of God. Every problem is finished. Satan, go. Filled with the Spirit. World evangelization.
Forget everything else, but you have to know where you are right now. Right now, through Jesus is the Christ, I have become a child of God, and with every problem finished, I stand in this place with the standing of a child. We are people who now hold the full right to have every prayer answered.
So how do we apply today's word? Paul, as we said, forgot his own past, doesn't even think about his own past, and said he'd been made new. And it's in that state that he looks at people. So when he looks at people, he doesn't evaluate, doesn't criticize, doesn't compare — and he says, you do the same, because I've become like this.
So let's apply it. For you and me too, underneath everything there's one thing we always have to do. Jesus is the Christ. For us to be newly changed, changed into a new creation, the most basic thing is to be in Christ. And being in Christ means calling out Jesus is the Christ.
Let me apply today's word to the home. Let's take this as the basic case: married, with one or two children. Then the husband, the wife, the children aren't home all day. Each lives their own life. The children go from school to the academy and then come home; the husband goes to work and comes home; the spouse goes to their job and comes home.
Now, when we're living out in the world, we can't express everything, can we. We keep a good deal hidden, and try somehow to look good. Otherwise the stress piles up, so we press it all down. We can't say what we want to say, and we hold it in. Basically it's all pressed down.
Then we come home. And the lid comes right off, doesn't it. The moment the door opens, the armor comes off. Everything we tensely held down out there loosens all at once. The child loosens, the husband loosens, the wife loosens, and in they come, all unbuttoned. And when they look at each other in that loosened state, nothing fits. And the reason it can't fit is that these are the same people, but with the tension released, even the good doesn't look good.
So what does the home become? Something like a dumping ground for venting emotion. Because the feelings come loose, no good words come out. Out in the world, in tense relationships with people, we try to speak nicely somehow — I'm the same. Come home, and everything loosens, and out comes nothing but blunt talk, and orders. It's a structure where it can't be otherwise. So the child is at war in their own way, the husband in his, the wife in hers — everyone at war.
Think about it — we get married. I got married too. I dated for four years, and all I could see was that woman. And we married. But a little while in, it's not that you only see your spouse — it can become a process of turning into an enemy. Later there's the gray divorce, and sometimes people divorce within a year or two. And why does a child run away from home? In adolescence they change completely and a fight breaks out. Why? Because all that pressed-down emotion comes bursting out.
So in applying this, there's something basic I have to do. In the home, there's something you have to do first of all.
Follow me. Jesus is the Christ. We have to change our basic assumption. Change it how? The home is not a place where my emotions come out and I speak my mind bluntly — we have to change this basic assumption. Each of us holds our own assumptions, don't we. This is where I do as I please; if I want to sleep I sleep; when I speak to my child they all have to listen — all these assumptions lie underneath.
Mine are probably worse. My generation and yours are different, and your generation and your children's are different again. For us, we had to watch our parents — especially our father. What is my father doing, what is he saying — all our attention went there, so one word from him and our feelings went up and down. I hated that so much that I made countless efforts to change it. But what you feel is different again.
So what do we do? We have to change the assumption to this: the home is not a place to pour out my emotions. And how? Not I ought to do a little something, but I first call Jesus is the Christ and guard myself.
And then what? What our child, our spouse did yesterday, the day before, a moment ago — we have to forget it, as in 2 Corinthians 5:17. But it's not ah, I must forget this, while storing it in your chest. Not storing it in your chest — truly forgetting it.
But this wretched mind won't do it, will it. The child does something wrong, and ah, they did it yesterday too, and the day before, and the day before that — the past data all floods in. Why are they like this? — and off it flows. And this becomes, later, a lifelong grievance — mothers do it with their husbands, don't they.
What is this? At our church we see it this way: this thought has a chain. You have to cut the chain. Only when the chain is cut does it get forgotten, more and more. And what does the forgetting? I have to call Jesus is the Christ. As today's theme has it, the Spirit gives me the power to forget, the power to see anew. Seeing anew is only possible if there's forgetting. When I call Jesus is the Christ, the Spirit within me keeps me looking only at the present, cuts it off so the thought doesn't expand, and severs the spirit that would otherwise keep expanding the thought. The most basic thing is to do that.
Again. Jesus is the Christ. So where does the tension run highest? The home. So as you keep, in the home, calling Jesus is the Christ, the chain of thought is cut, and what they did yesterday doesn't come to mind. And even if what they did yesterday does come to mind, the thought doesn't expand into oh, they're just that kind of kid — it stays as mere data: ah, what did they do yesterday. Only then — as Paul said — is the relationship restored.
What the Spirit has given you and me today is this: only when I first cut the chain of thought is the relationship restored. Then I won't say those enemy words, will I. As you keep calling Jesus is the Christ, it gets forgotten, and as the chain of thought is cut, you speak normally. Then the relationship holds, or at least doesn't get any worse.
So the Spirit doesn't merely change my heart a little. The more the Spirit keeps changing things within me, the more my relationships with people are restored. So we have to restore relationships. This week too, keep calling that name. My child is not the enemy — the thought inside me is the enemy. My spouse is not what's wrong — the thought inside me that sees my spouse that way is what's wrong. It's not the other person's problem; it's mine. When that thought twists and starts to expand, I have to call Jesus is the Christ. It's not some vague thing.
Let me draw the conclusion. At our church the conclusion is clean. The way we resolve things is clean too — and it's easy. That knot, you just untie it. I'm a witness of sorts, aren't I. This week, when my own thought is first cut off, other people look different too, and I act differently. When there's nothing festering inside me, then when I look at another person, of course it will go well. Cut off quickly what came before. Keep calling Jesus is the Christ.
So where is the spiritual training hardest? The home, I tell you. And who is the one who trains you most, who makes you do the most spiritual training? Your child. Your adolescent child. As we knock at Christ's door, I pray that the home would truly be made harmonious, that the relationships with those around me would be further restored, restored in Christ.
Closing Prayer
Let me pray.
Father, thank You. As Paul confessed that in Christ we are a new creation — Paul himself first changed, and told the Corinthian church so — and through that we see relationships restored.
Lord, I want this word to be applied to my life. Let me first be reconciled with myself, and let my bygone past and every remembered thing be restored in Christ, healed, forgotten, remaining as mere data. And as much as I myself am changed, let the relationships of my spouse, my home, my workplace, my work be wholly restored. Work it, Lord.
In the name of Jesus, who is the Christ, we pray. Amen.
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