Christ came into the world. He died, He rose, He ascended, and now He is making an appeal to the lost through those He has redeemed.
Even before Paul laid out the reality of our calling, he focused his readers on the importance of an eternal perspective by explaining that this life is a tent, an earthly home, and that the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are not seen are eternal. While we are wasting away like clay pots and the earth is wasting with us, both we and the creation are groaning for eternity.
And so Paul makes his focus obvious – the appeal. Not just the appeal he was personally making, but the appeal God is making through the redeemed. The word in the original is parakaleo, which actually means “to call to one’s side; to call for; to summon.” The word being used applies to every type of a call to a person designed to produce a result.
Christ’s appeal is not a halfhearted request. It is not a polite invitation given without a purpose – a “Hey, call me,” or “We should get coffee.” It is a summons, a passionate, striving call. It literally means to beg.
When Christ walked the earth, He experienced this kind of appeal first hand. He experienced passionate, emotional, heart-wrenching calls. These were precisely the appeals-- parakaleo --that were made over and over again when He was approached for a miracle by his hurting, broken , and suffering creation. As Christ walked the earth, people implored Him for the chance to touch the fringe of His garment, they pleaded with Him to heal their servants, they begged Him to be healed from leprosy, and they earnestly called Him to heal their children.
And while they appealed for His healing touch, He in turn appealed to them to be reconciled. And He still does. God, our creator, is in fact pleading for His creation to come to Him. That is why, in the final analysis, God is not asking us to fix His creation. He is not asking us to just help His creation. He is not asking us to simply emulate His actions. He is calling people to Himself through us.
-Humanitarian Jesus: Social Justice and The Cross
