Ambassadors For Christ

II Corinthians 5:14-21

Occasionally in life two people in a family or a friendship have some type of disagreement and become estranged.  They are no longer on good terms with each other. When this happens, sometimes it takes a third party to come between the two estranged parties and try to bring a reconciliation.  In our Scripture passage today Paul writes to the Corinthians about the reconciling of God and mankind through His Son, Jesus.

There are two significant points Paul makes in this passage written to the Corinthian believers.  The first is that when we come to Jesus for salvation, we become a new creation (vs 17). When we are saved our sins are forgiven, our guilt is removed, and we receive the Holy Spirit.  We are born into His life with a new spirit and a new nature. When we were saved we didn’t just decide to change our ways. We began a new life with a new Master. Our desires and our goals should be conformed to His.

Paul said that “old things have passed away” when we become believers.  Our old nature, its systems, priorities, beliefs, loves, and plans should leave and no longer control us.  We are now living for eternity, not for temporal desires. A true believer cannot excuse their bad behavior and sinful attitudes by saying “that’s just the way I am”.  That is the way you were.  That person died with Christ.  You are now a new creation. We should not let some bad behavior keep someone from coming to Christ.  We no longer have to be defined by who we were before salvation.

The second significant point in our passage today is that because all are sinners, we are separated from God, but through the sacrificial death of Jesus, we can be reconciled with Him.  God wants sinful people to be reconciled to Him. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, He brings us back to Himself, reconciling us to Himself, and blotting out our sins. We are no longer God’s enemies when we trust Christ (vs 18-19).

Now that we have been reconciled to God, we have the privilege, the job, of encouraging others to do the same.  We have the ministry of reconciliation. God has entrusted us with the job of telling the world the message of the Gospel of salvation.  Jesus’s death on our behalf is the only thing that will reconcile the world to the Father, and He has given us the task to tell that to the world.

Not only has God given us the task of bringing the word of reconciliation, He has called us to be His ambassadors (vs 20).  An ambassador is a diplomat sent by one country to represent them to another country. We are Christ’s ambassadors to the world.  A country takes special care to make sure that their ambassador will properly represent them, and not bring them shame. Similarly, we should not take this responsibility lightly.

As Paul closes this passage he give us another verse to describe what happened when Jesus died on the cross on our behalf (vs 21).  On the cross, Jesus, He who had never once sinned, took on the sins of the world. This was so that we would not have to bear the penalty of our sins, which is eternal separation from God in hell.  We exchange our sin for Jesus’s righteousness. Our sin was put on Him at His crucifixion. Jesus’s righteousness is poured into us at our conversion. Usually people will exchange things of equal value, but not here. God gave us something of immeasurable worth - Jesus’s righteousness, for something completely worthless - our sin.

We represent the family of God.  the world judges God based on our behavior. Our deeds reflect an image of God, good or bad.  We are to represent Jesus wherever we go. Who in your circle of influence needs to be reconciled to God? Who needs to find a friend in Jesus? He is making His appeal to the world through us.