Reconciled Ambassadors (3-27-2022) 2 Cor 5.16-21

Paul is an interesting figure. He begins as a Pharisee who was a persecutor of the Church. In this respect he is one who believes that he is purifying the Jewish religion from this new sect that has cropped up and is making noise about a “risen” Messiah, something that cannot be true. The Messiah is to come in glory, not be one who dies and then is raised from the dead. But he then sees the light and becomes one of the leading lights of the Church helping to spread it from its base in Jerusalem to the very heart of the empire and beyond.

Along the way he founds churches that are with us today in the letters that he wrote to them. In these letters we find instruction and admonition. We find encouragement and exposition. But most of all we find the love for the churches and the love for God and Jesus. This love propels Paul to write to these churches with fiery admonitions, encouragement and with loving care. And though there are several churches to whom he writes, the one that gets the most attention is the church in Corinth.

It is helpful for us to refresh our memories of what the city of Corinth was like. Corinth was a city that would be much like New York to us today. It was cosmopolitan, a trade city and diverse beyond all knowing. People from all over the known world would come to Corinth as it was a port city and well known for its pottery and trade goods. It was also the capital of the province in which it was located. And in this city with all its diversity, Paul started a church, a group of followers of Jesus Christ. With all this diversity there were bound to be some…issues that would spring up within the church among its members. And Paul has addressed these issues in the letters of 1 and 2 Corinthians. One of these issues was the fact that the people were looking down upon those who were not of the same class or race or having the same gifts as they did. And Paul is calling them out on this.

Today we find another time that Paul has called out the Corinthians. In the section before this passage, we find that Paul is telling them that Christ died for all and that the Corinthians are to no longer live for themselves but for the one who died and was raised for them. They are to no longer think only of themselves but to think of the one who saved them.

But Paul continues in today’s text that they are no longer to think of others from a human point of view, or literally according to the flesh. They are not to think of them in class, race or other terms. They are to think of them in other terms. J. Paul Sampley has this to say about how they are to view others: “The consider anyone simply from the flesh is to view that person as if the fundamentally transformative resurrection of Christ had not taken place-and as if the norms or standards of judgement has dot therein been radically altered. Believers are not simply offered a new perspective they may or may not adopt as and when they see fit; rather, something so fundamental has changed in such a profound fashion that the old ways of looking, perceiving, understanding, and, more profoundly, evaluating, have to be let go and replaced with a new way of understanding.”[1] What this means is that people have value because Christ died for them, regardless of their response to the death of Christ. Christ died for all that therefore their worth has already been established. We like to assign value based on how people think, what they do, how much people are worth, how they act, how they vote and their stance on the issues that we care about. We do not need to inquire whether someone is a follower of Christ to know their worth because again Christ died for them. This resonates with me because for years I based the worth of someone on whether they were a Christian or not, not that they were worthy because of Christ’s death for all people. Something to think about and ponder on.

We are to remember that if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. All that was old has passed away and everything is being made new. How is that to be? What causes this making things new?

It is the of us to God. There are many definitions of reconciliation. One is in a financial sense. Each week Jackie pulls out her computer and the receipts for the week and reconciles that they all match up. This way we know that we have the money in the bank to be able to live our life.

Another definition that reconcile means, and the one for which we are studying today, is to restore friendship or harmony in a relationship. It is like the story of the Loving father who welcomes back the son who went off to the far country. The relationship between father and son was restored by the father to bring the son back into the relationship that had existed before. And this is the definition that we are discussing here. The text says this: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;* that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.*[2]

I hope you caught the subject of reconciliation. It is not us who reconcile ourselves to God, but rather God who reconciles us to Godself. God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ reconciled us to God. But there is another aspect of the reconciliation. God was reconciling the entire world, the creation. God was, and is, taking the bad and making all things new. The whole of creation is being reconciled. This is good news indeed. This is the whole of the Gospel, that Jesus through his life, death and resurrection brought us back to God and that it was nothing, nothing that we did or can do.

With this reconciliation comes a call to all who realize that God has reconciled them to Godself. We are called to be ambassadors for God. An ambassador is one who acts on behalf of a government in a foreign country. What the ambassador says is what the government has said and does. The ambassador can do nothing without the consent of the power that tells them to be an ambassador. They are to tell the good news of God’s reconciliation and to call people to be reconciled to God as they have been.

But there is catch to this as well. Paul tells the Corinthians to be reconciled to God. This is the only time that the persons addressed are told to be active in the reconciliation. All the other times they have been the passive recipients. Here though they are told to be active in reconciliation. What is being said here is that Paul is calling them to be reconciled to one another. They are to restore the harmony of the relationship with one another in the church. No longer are they to be divided by class, race, wealth or any status that might divide them. They are to be united in God through Christ.

This is an easy text to apply to our lives. We are to remember that we have been reconciled to God. And in this reconciliation we are to remember that we have nothing that makes us better than anyone else. As stated earlier, people have value because Christ died for them, regardless of their response to the death of Christ. Christ died for all that therefore their worth has already been established. We like to assign value based on how people think, what they do, how much people are worth, how they act, how they vote and their stance on the issues that we care about. We do not need to inquire whether someone is a follower of Christ to know their worth because again Christ died for them. All we need to know is that Christ died for all and that through Him we are all reconciled.

But what does this reconciliation call us to do? Are we to sit on our laurels and be quiet about what God has done for us? No. We are called to be ambassadors for God and Christ. We are to tell others about what has been done for us and for them. Ralph Wood tells the story of a man who did not “surrender” to ministry but rather chased down God, grabbed God by the shoulder, and said he wanted to be a part of spreading the message that God had reconciled the world to Godself. In doing so he became ambassador for God and told what God had told him, that he was reconciled and that God was doing the same in all the world. Calling those back to God to believe in the reconciliation.

It seems so simple. But to realize the reconciliation we have to give up ourselves. We have to realize that we can do nothing to reconcile us to God but that it is God who does the work. When we realize this then we can become ambassadors to God, telling the Good news of the Gospel that comes through Jesus Christ. If there is not hope in this message I don’t know where it would be. Thanks be to God that we have been reconciled through Christ by the power and love of God. Amen.

[1]Sampley, J. Paul. New Interpreter’s Bible: 2 Corinthians. Abingdon Press. Nashville. Pg 940. [2]USA, National Council of Churches. New Revised Standard Version Updated Bible : With Deuterocanonical and Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament (p. 4404). Friendship Press Inc. Kindle Edition.