2 Corinthians 5:18-21

Intro & Recap

The “theme of reconciliation”

In the year 1994, in the African nation of Rwanda, government led Hutu militias and Hutu neighbors targeted, assaulted and killed the Tutsi population for four months. By the end, over one million Rwandans were killed—almost 70% of them Tutsi. The brutal tragedy is known widely as the Rwandan genocide or the genocide against the Tutsi. The genocide had a profound impact neighboring countries and the rest of the world. While I don’t have time for a history lesson on the deep historical causes of this conflict, one thing did happen 20 years after the massacre — a photographer named Peter Hugh traveled to southern Rwanda to capture images of the people still impacted by the tragedy. A photo essay on the images he captured reads:

In one, a woman rests her hand on the shoulder of the man who killed her father and brothers. In another, a woman poses with a casually reclining man who looted her property and whose father helped murder her husband and children. In many of these photos, there is little evident warmth between the pairs, and yet there they are, together. In each, the perpetrator is a Hutu who was granted pardon by the Tutsi survivor of his crime.”

The name of the article — Images of Reconciliation. It’s not just the fact that two people could be reconciled that made the photo essay so striking. It’s the story of pain and tragedy that led to that reconciliation, that makes the photos so staggering to look at. If you only knew the story of what happened, the pictures says something very different.

But we know that the tragedy in Rwanda is ultimately caused by the first great tragedy—when Adam and Eve fell from a place of innocence and intimacy with God into a place of guilt, hostility and estrangement. One commentator says,

“Adam’s rebellion has been the lot and practice of the entire human race apart from the grace of God. Like Adam’s, our rebellion is not a question of some minor misunderstanding that would easily be taken care of. Our rebellion is radical and incessant.”

Paul tells us in Romans that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness…Our sin is the reason for this alienation from God and that’s the context for our “picture” in God’s Word — we see, by God’s grace, an image of reconciliation. The word is used five times—it is, in my estimation—the text on reconciliation. It’s glorious...

Review

Paul has made his way to this point after assuring the Corinthian church that his motivation for all his ministry is Christ’s love---it’s what controls him or sets him in place (5:14). Because of Christ’s death for all who trust him, Paul is different and he can no longer think about anyone the way that he used to. Not only that, but he can’t think about himself the way he used to either; if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation!

And in case, the Corinthians were thinking that he had something to do with this…he assures them in the first four words of our text tonight, All this is from God (5:18). Not only what Paul just said, but what is going to say in v.18-21—he want’s his readers to know this is from God!

He uses the word reconciliation five times in four sentences, and he starts these verses with All this is from God. Which we should understand to mean…The plan of salvation and all of redemptive history is from the LORD (Rom 11:36), and part of that is our reconciliation to a holy God—the end of our estrangement, alienation and separation from God that results in our friendship, peace and union with Him, through Christ…is ALL from God. Reconciliation is God’s!

The Reconciliation of God

God does all the work of reconciliation without assistance. The Alpha and Omega is the one who works out reconciliation in all of history, in all individuals he saves (including you) by himself! Paul illustrates clearly…Look at verse 19:

2 Corinthians 5:19 - that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

God has done it and is doing it. Saint, be encouraged your reconciliation is not something you’ve accomplished, it’s something that God has accomplished on your behalf.

We don't make peace with God...God has made peace with us! The work has been done! God has made a reckoning for sin...on His Son! (cf. 5:21)

Romans 5:10,11 - For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Not only does Paul lay out God as the one whom reconcilation belongs to, but all his ministry comes from is for this message of reconciliation.

This is significant to Paul and to every believer, past, present and yet to be revealed:

1) Reconciliation is the reason Paul is a minister and it’s the reason that you are carry the treasure of the Gospel in jars of clay.

2 Corinthians 5:18 - All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; (ESV)

2) It's also at the heart of the message he has been entrusted with (and you) -- "the message of reconciliation".

2 Corinthians 5:19 - that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Saints, ultimately, this is the ministry and this is the message — the reconciliation of God, with God that comes from God, in Christ. If you say, “I have a ministry to children.” Your ministry and message to children is ultimately going to be about the reconciliation of God, to God, that comes from God, in Christ Jesus.

If you say, “I have a ministry to those in prison.” If it’s a Gospel ministry, it will be held together, moved forward and overflowing with the message of reconciliation seen in the Gospel.

There was an old commercial for Grey Poupon, a Dijon mustard and I remember the tagline “Anything less would be uncivilized.” Church, anything less than a ministry of reconciliation with a message of reconciliation is not uncivilized, it’s untrue and it’s ultimately no good to anyone. This message is the only message that amounts to ultimate and lasting change in the world and one day, the message of reconciliation will do just that—God will settle all accounts and His Son will separate those who’ve recieved reconciliation not their own from those who tried to make peace with God on their own.

This message is so dear to him that he doesn’t simply say that he’s a messenger. He says,

2 Corinthians 5:20 - “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (ESV)

In the Old Testament the Hebrew word tsir, meaning “one who goes on an errand,” (Prov. 13:17; Obad. 1:1).

In other places it means “an interpreter,” (2 Chr. 32:31; and a “messenger,” (Ezek. 17:15.)

This is the name used by the apostle as designating those who are appointed by God to declare his will (2 Cor. 5:20; Eph. 6:20).

To do injury to an ambassador was to insult the king who sent him (2 Sam. 10:5).

I don't doubt that Paul recounts the day he was knocked off his horse, on his way to persecute Jesus, "Saul, why do you persecute me?" What is Jesus saying other than, "If you persecute my ambassadors, you persecute me."

Paul’s is sent by the King to announce God’s “peace treaty” (cf. Isa. 53:5) with those who will trust in Christ to free them from the penalty and power of sin (2 Cor. 5:14–15; see Isa. 52:6–10; Rom. 10:15). Saint, we all work for the King, he just chooses to pay us through different means that all belong to him anyway. We’re all ambassadors and our plea is the same as Paul’s:

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. And not only to those who’ve yet to be reconciled, but to those who are and need reminded:

Romans 5:11 - … we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Are you rejoicing in your reconciliation saint? You sadness tonight may be due to the fact that you’ve lost sight of the infinitely glorious gift of your reconciliation, in Christ Jesus. Remind yourself. Preach to yourself. I’m reconciled! No more guilt! No more shame!

As pastor and commentator Kent Huges puts it, “The gospel is not “reconcile yourselves.” The gospel is “be reconciled.” Receive reconciliation from God.”

How is this all possible? Because...

The Message of Reconciliation

2 Corinthians 5:21 - For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (ESV)

This verse is one of the most important in all of Scripture for understanding the meaning of the atonement and of our justification. Maybe the sweetest twenty-four words a sinner can hear (15 in the original Greek, I understand). Of this one verse, Scottish theologian James Denney says, “It is the focus in which the reconciling love of God burns with the purest and intensest flame; it is the fountain light of all day, the master light of all seeing, in the Christian revelation.”

He made him to be sin who knew no sin...

Jesus was without sin! He did not know it! This is who and what our reconcilation with God rides on; the fact that we have a Savior who knew no sin.

1 Peter 2:22 - “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth”

Jesus, a person…human being unlike any other…because for thirty three years, he knew no sin. And...

Jesus was made sin! This doesn’t mean that Jesus became a sinner, on the Cross. It means that God the Father made Christ to be regarded and treated as “sin” even though Christ himself never sinned (Heb. 4:15; cf. Gal. 3:13) Jesus became what He was not…In a way, this something that is mysterious, but Paul realizes and we’re to realize that Christ becoming our sin offering was so complete, that the identification of the sinless Christ with the sin of the sinner, including its guilt and its consequences of separation from God, he could say profoundly, “God made him . . . to be sin for us.”

He became what he had no intimate understanding of. Something strange happened to him at the Cross...and it was His end...so that what seems like something strange to us, might be for our good, our sanctification and ultimately our glory in heaven with God, forever.

You understand that they only reason God's promises to work all things for your good, His predestining of you, his promise to sanctify you, to glorify...are all true because at the Cross, Jesus became sin! Your future rests on Jesus! Your presenting sanctification and all of the ways that God is doing that in your life, is because of Jesus....because for your sake, he who knew no sin, became sin...

This is why Jesus is called a man of sorrows and aquainted with grieve…because he took on—wave after wave after wave of our sin at the Cross!

Galatians 3:13 - Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—

All this was for our sake, church! God the Father, regarded and treated all the sin of those who trust and believe in Christ, as if our sin belonged not us...but to Christ who knew no sin! He bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Pet 2:24). He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was crushed for our iniquities. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53 says that he bore the sin of many.

Church, you have a substitute, now and forever!

God imputed not only innocence but also righteousness, not only pardon but also perfection. He not only stood condemned in our place as a punishment bearer; he also stood in our place as our law keeper. Jesus not only died the death that we should have died; he also lived the life that we should have lived. All has been taken care of.

Wow! Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul!

And what does God award us in exchange for all that Christ bore? His righteousness! He that knew no sin, becomes sin so that we who are wicked through and through might be declared righteous, before God. What God says of Christ, now He says of you -- well pleased! You are justified, saint.

Isaiah 53:11

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

Living out the righteousness of God is what Paul was most concerned about.

Our lives, in Christ are ultimately about one thing — by faith, living out the ministry and message of reconciliation and preaching its mystery — “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (5:21).

Pray