5 daily readings · James Drake

Who is Your One? - 2 Corinthians 5:17

2 Corinthians 5:17

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Monday · Monday, November 3, 2025

The Love of Christ Controls Us

"For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;"

2 Corinthians 5:14 · ESV

Drake was walking the church through its core values. Jesus is our message. People are our priority — a place where you can belong before you believe, with a seat at the family table for anyone who wants to know more about this man who claimed to be God. This week: mission must be our mindset. And he was blunt about the stakes. If a church forgets that it is meant to live on mission, our faith becomes a hobby. That is a hard sentence, and it explains a lot. A hobby is something you enjoy, invest in, get better at, and organize around your own preferences. You can be extremely serious about a hobby and it still costs nobody anything. Paul gives the alternative motive: "the love of Christ controls us." Not guilt. Not obligation. Not a program. The love of Christ — a force with its hands on the wheel. Mission that runs on guilt burns out by February. Mission that runs on being loved does not.

Reflect

Is your faith functioning as a hobby or a mission? What would an honest outside observer say?

Pray

Lord, I have made following you into something I enjoy rather than something that sends me. Let your love take the wheel and move me toward people. Amen.

Tuesday · Tuesday, November 4, 2025

A New Creation

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

2 Corinthians 5:17 · ESV

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." New *creation* — the same language as Genesis. Not a renovated version of the old you with better habits. Something made. This is the verse that makes everything else in the passage possible. Before Paul says anything about ambassadors or reconciliation or mission, he establishes what happened to you. You were not recruited. You were remade. And it is worth pressing on "the old has passed away," because most of us do not live like it has. We carry the old thing around — the file of everything we were, the reasons we assume God could not really use us, the identity we still half-believe is the true one underneath the Christian veneer. Paul says that person is gone. Not improving. Not on probation. Passed away. Whatever you are today, you are not the sum of what you were, and God does not consult that record when he assigns you something.

Reflect

What part of your old identity are you still carrying around as though it were the real you?

Pray

Father, you did not improve me, you made me new. Help me stop dragging around a person who has passed away. Let me live today as the new creation you actually made. Amen.

Wednesday · Wednesday, November 5, 2025

The Ministry of Reconciliation

"All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;"

2 Corinthians 5:18 · ESV

"All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation." Two movements, and the order never changes. Reconciled, then given a ministry. Received, then handed on. Drake listed what happens when a church loses this. It stops being a Christian outreach and becomes a Christian club. Preferences replace God's purpose. Consumerism moves into the Lord's house where discipleship should be. And Christianity slowly turns into a self-help project — more focused on ourselves and what we believe and picking up better habits for our lives and families, instead of understanding that God has something far bigger for us. Every one of those is what happens when you keep the first half and drop the second. Reconciled, and then... comfortable. But notice the dignity in this verse. God did not merely forgive you and file you away. He *gave you a ministry*. He entrusted the message that saved you to the person it saved. That is not a burden he laid on you. It is a trust he placed in you.

Reflect

Have you received reconciliation without taking up the ministry of it? What would taking it up look like in your actual life?

Pray

Father, you reconciled me and then trusted me with the same message. Forgive me for keeping the gift and skipping the assignment. Make me useful with what you gave me. Amen.

Thursday · Thursday, November 6, 2025

Who Is Your One?

"Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God."

2 Corinthians 5:20 · ESV

"Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us." An ambassador does not invent the message and does not represent themselves. They live somewhere that is not home, and they speak for a king who is not present in the room. That is the job. And read the middle of that verse slowly: *God making his appeal through us*. God has chosen to make his appeal to your neighbour through a person. The person is you. Which brings the sermon's question. Who is your one? Not the world, not the lost in general — one person. A name. Someone God put in proximity to you: a colleague, a cousin, a neighbour, the person you see every week and have never once mentioned Jesus to. Drake said the church wants to help you reach your world for Christ, and that a burden for the lost is simply the heart of our heavenly Father showing up in us. So: who is your one? If a name came to mind, that is probably not an accident.

Reflect

Name your one. What is one specific thing you could do for them this month — not a conversion, just a step?

Pray

Father, a name came to mind. You put them near me on purpose. Give me love for them that is not a project, patience that outlasts my nerve, and an open door I could not have arranged. Amen.

Friday · Friday, November 7, 2025

The Great Exchange

"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

2 Corinthians 5:21 · ESV

Drake called it the greatest gospel verse in the Bible, and then broke it open. "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." God made Jesus sin. What does it mean that he made Jesus sin? In one sentence: he treated him as though he had committed every sin ever committed by every person who would ever come to him. And the exchange runs the other way at the same time. In him, we become the righteousness of God — treated as though we had lived the life he lived. That is the message the ambassador carries. Not advice. Not an improvement plan. A completed transaction that somebody has to be told about. And it is the answer to the whole week. Why does mission have to be our mindset? Because *this* is the message. If it were merely good guidance, keeping it to yourself would be rude. Since it is this, keeping it to yourself is unthinkable. He knew no sin, and was made sin, for you. Now go tell your one.

Reflect

When did you last actually say out loud, to another person, what Jesus did for you? What is stopping you this week?

Pray

Lord Jesus, you were treated as I deserved so that I could be treated as you deserved. I will never get to the bottom of it. Loosen my tongue and let me tell somebody. Amen.

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