The Embassy Is Open

I would like to start out today with a little lesson on the history of American diplomacy.

One of the most well-respected modern American diplomats — among both Republicans and Democrats — was George Shultz. He served as Secretary of State to Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1989 and helped usher in the end of the Cold War by convincing Reagan to enter into a dialogue with then-Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In his position as Secretary of State, Shultz had the honor of swearing in new ambassadors who were being sent to represent the U.S. in other nations.

They would arrive in his office, having been vetted by the president, having passed their background checks, and having been confirmed by the Senate. Now, they were ready to be sworn in and sent on their way to Ethiopia or Chile or Thailand or wherever they were going.

And Shultz would say to them, “I have one more test for you before you go.” Then, he would guide them over to a huge globe that sat in his office. He would spin it, and he would tell them, “Now, put your finger on your country.”

Shultz used to tell the story of all the ambassadors who faced that test confidently stopping the spinning globe and pointing to the nation to which they had been appointed as ambassadors.

But one man, Sen. Mike Mansfield, who was being appointed as ambassador to Japan, turned the globe back to the United States and pointed there.

“This. This is my country,” Mansfield said.

He was one of the few who passed the test, although Shultz allowed the others to get by with a short lecture and a lesson that would long stick with them.

Wherever they were going in the world, wherever they were to be posted, their country was the United States. It was the United States they represented and the United States whose interests they should place above all others.

Today, as we continue our series, “The Church — Revealed,” I want you to remember that story, because we’re going to be talking a lot about ambassadors and embassies.

So far in this series, we have talked about the founding of the church, established by Jesus and launched by the power of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem 50 days after He ascended to heaven in his resurrected body.

We’ve defined the church as the new covenant community of the Spirit and noted the four primary marks of the church: It is unified; it is set apart for service to God; it is built upon the teaching of the apostles; and it includes true followers of Christ from all times and from all places.

We have seen that the one purpose of the church is to worship God. And we have understood that worshiping God means more than singing and praying and studying the Bible.

And it’s more than regularly joining the gathered church for corporate expressions of those spiritual practices, even as we confess that all those things are vital for Christians.

We have seen that worshiping God comes down to keeping what Jesus called the Great Commandment, along with the second one that He said was like it: to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind; and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Today, with all of that as background, we’re going to consider the responsibility of the church. Why DID Jesus establish this new covenant community of the Spirit? Just what does He desire for it to accomplish here on earth, while we await His return?

For an answer, let’s turn to 2 Corinthians, chapter 5 and see what Paul had to say about it to the dysfunctional church in Corinth.

We’re going to pick up today in verse 18 of chapter 5, but as usual, I want to give you a bit of context for the passage.

Now, what we know as 2 Corinthians is at least the third and probably the fourth actual letter that Paul wrote to this church.

Scholars believe there were actually four letters, because of the two we have in Scripture, which themselves include references to other letters from Paul to this church.

In 1 Cor 5 9, he says: “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;” which is a clear reference to an earlier letter than what we know as 1 Corinthians. And in 2 Cor 2:3, he says: “This is the very thing I wrote you, so that when I came, I would not have sorrow from those who ought to make me rejoice,” which seems like a reference to a missing letter between what we know as 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians.

So, there were four letters from Paul to this church, along with two separate visits recorded in Scripture and a third the Bible says he was planning.

In other words, Paul expended a significant amount of effort to provide pastoral oversight in this church, probably more than he did for any other of his church plants.

And the reason he spent so much time trying to shepherd them, both in person and from afar, was that they had welcomed so many problems into the church.

The Corinthian church had allowed gross immorality among its members, disorder within its worship, a sacrilegious approach to the Lord’s Supper, and divisions that were based on pride and conceit.

And sometime between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, false teachers had come into the church. They had turned many against the true gospel and against Paul, who had first shared it with them.

And so, at least part of the purpose of 2 Corinthians was for Paul to present to this errant church a vindication of the one true gospel and of his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

In so doing, he would also remind the Corinthians of their responsibilities to their Savior as members of the body of Christ, as parts of the bride of Christ, His Church.

And with verse 11 of chapter 5, he begins describing the glory of Christian ministry, describing what should be its motivation, the mission it has received from Jesus, the message it has for the lost world and some of the diverse ministries of the New Covenant.

And, as they began to recognize his own ministry as being led by the Spirit, Paul hoped the Corinthians would begin to emulate his example.

Let’s pick up in verse 18.

2 Corinthians 5:18–19 NASB95

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

All these things are from God. In other words, the new attitudes of those who are in Christ and, indeed, the fact that they are new creations, points which he had made in verses 16 and 17.

No longer are Christians to see others based on superficial things such as ethnicity; rather, we are to be concerned much more with whether someone is a believer or an unbeliever.

Are they citizens of the kingdom of heaven, having entered that kingdom by virtue of their faith in its King, Jesus Christ? Or are they citizens of the kingdom of this world and therefore subjects of Satan, the ruler of this world?

If they are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, then they are new creatures, new creations, new men and women. They might still have the same physical features, personalities and temptations they had before.

But now they have within them the Holy Spirit, who works within them to make them ever more like Jesus.

And all this — salvation itself and the continuing sanctification of believers — is from God.

This is the God who created us all in His image — to reflect His character — for fellowship with Him.

In our sins, we rebelled against Him and broke fellowship with Him. But from before the foundation of time, He had a plan to reconcile fallen mankind to Himself.

And He made that reconciliation through the sinless life His Son lived as a man, through His sacrificial death on behalf of and in place of us, while we were yet sinners, and through His supernatural resurrection.

And note that this reconciliation was for the WORLD. All of mankind has been reconciled to God. Salvation is available to everyone who turns to Jesus in repentance and faith.

We could not save ourselves. There is no amount of good deeds we can do to wipe out even one sin before a perfectly righteous and holy God. So, He graciously provided a way for us to be saved through His Son.

As Paul puts it in verse 21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

At the cross, the sinless Son of God took upon Himself all the sins of mankind and all of the just punishment we all deserve for those sins. And He did this so that those who put their faith in Him could receive within themselves the righteousness of Christ.

For those who put their faith in Jesus, God no longer looks upon us as sinners, even though we still sin. We have been clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And when God looks at us now, what He sees is His Son’s righteousness, not our sins.

And, for those who follow Jesus in faith that He is God’s Son and that His sacrificial death and resurrection provide our only means of salvation, Paul says here that we have been given a ministry just like his own.

We have the ministry of reconciliation. We have been given the word of reconciliation. It is our responsibility to take that word of reconciliation into the lost world.

God could have chosen to arrange things so that a person is saved by faith in Jesus and then immediately goes to heaven.

He could have set things up so that a person who is saved by faith in Jesus was somehow transported into a Christian-only zone in some remote part of the world, to live there until they die and go to heaven.

But that’s not what He did. What He did was to arrange for those who had followed Jesus in faith to receive the Holy Spirit within them; to become part of the Church, this new covenant community of the Spirit; and to remain right here within the lost world. To become ministers to the lost right where we are.

We are now subjects of the kingdom of God right in the midst of the kingdom of this world. In other words, we are ambassadors for Christ to the world. We see that in verse 20.

2 Corinthians 5:20–21 NASB95

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

We are ambassadors for Christ, and our message to the lost world is this: “We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

And when we speak these words or words to this effect to our lost family members, to our friends, and to others with whom we come into contact, it’s as if God Himself is making an appeal through us.

That’s just what ambassadors do. They bring a message from one nation to another. They represent their own nation to the nation to which they have been sent.

Let me give you a little background on the history of diplomacy.

Prior to the 13th century A.D., when one king had a message for another king, he would send an emissary to that other nation to give the message.

It could be a gesture of peace, like when the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon in Israel, for instance. Or it could be a warning or declaration of war. Or anything in between.

The emissary would pass along the message. Then, he or she would receive some response and return home with that message.

But in the 13th century, the city-states of Northern Italy began setting up embassies in their neighboring kingdoms.

An ambassador would be sent from his home to one of these neighboring city-states, where he would present his credentials to the head of state there, and then he would take up residence there to represent the interests of his home in this foreign place.

This was the beginning of modern diplomacy and the basis of the system that was in place when George Shultz gave his little globe test to new U.S. ambassadors.

And in many ways, the function of ambassadors for Christ is very much like the ambassadors of modern diplomacy.

We are not sent back and forth from God with messages for the world. We are planted in churches, embassies located right within the lost world to represent King Jesus to them and to pass along to them His message of reconciliation, the message of the gospel.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called His church to be salt and light in the world, to be a city set on a hill, a lamp on a lampstand.

Churches that refuse to engage with the culture around them fail to be salt and light in the world and operate more as castles with moats than cities on a hill.

An ambassador can’t hide from the culture to which he or she has been sent. His job is to show that culture the special things that make his home culture so distinct.

That’s why so many American embassies are built with such an attention to architectural detail and why they often display American artwork on loan from various museums.

In their own way, American embassies shine the light of American distinctiveness into the cultures where they stand.

Similarly, the church — this embassy full of ambassadors for Christ — must be a lamp on a lampstand, shining the light of the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus into a lost world that is desperate for light.

On the other hand, churches that assimilate into culture lose the distinctiveness that sets them apart from the lost world; the salt becomes tasteless.

From a secular standpoint, this is what George Shultz warned about with his globe test. In their efforts to win friends in foreign lands, American ambassadors must never forget that the United States is their country.

Similarly, the church, in its effort to win the lost, must never forget that it represents the kingdom of God. We must not trade holiness for safety.

We must not water down the message of repentance in hopes of getting a better reception. When we do so, we forsake Him who set us apart in the first place.

This doesn’t mean the church should attempt to force the culture, through political or other means, to be more “Christian.”

What it means is that we’re to be something so different within the culture that the lost world is attracted to it, even if that means some people will be repulsed by it.

“The church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another. In baptism our citizenship is transferred from one dominion to another, and we become, in whatever culture we find ourselves, resident aliens.” (Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, 11.)

Another way the church is like an embassy in a foreign country is this: An embassy is not the nation it represents. Although it is considered to be the sovereign territory of that nation, it is not the nation itself.

People who want to visit that nation can come to the embassy to get a visa, and they will experience something of that nation’s culture while in the embassy.

They’ll see the architecture and the art. They’ll interact with that nation’s citizens and, hopefully, get a feeling for what makes them different.

But only when they are in that nation will they experience what it’s truly like. And only if they become citizens of that nation will they partake of all the rights and responsibilities of that nation’s subjects.

Similarly, the church is not the kingdom of God, but it is the present FORM of the kingdom of God. And it is the medium through which some of the promises of God regarding His kingdom have been and are being fulfilled.

A non-believer can visit our church and experience the love and compassion we have here. They can join in the singing, listen to the sermons, and even participate in the ministries of the church.

But until that person turns to Jesus in faith, he or she is not a subject of the kingdom of God. Until they turn to Jesus in faith, they cannot claim the promise of eternal life in Christ.

Until they come to Jesus in faith, they are merely visitors to His embassy here on earth.

Another way the church is like an embassy is in the way it serves those who ARE subjects of the kingdom of God.

One of the main purposes of the modern embassy is to provide consular services to expatriates in foreign nations.

If you are an American living in Haiti, for instance, it’s good to know where the U.S. embassy is located. That’s where you can go to get your passport renewed or replaced if it’s lost. That’s where you can go to find help if you have a medical emergency that requires you to leave the country in a hurry.

The embassy would be your first point of contact in the unfortunate event of your arrest.

Similarly, the church exists to provide aid and comfort to Christians. As we’ve said before, the church — not this building, but the gathered people of Christ — is here to build one another up in Christ.

The church exists so we can love one another, so we can bear one another’s burdens, so we can teach one another, so we can help one another become more like Jesus.

The church exists so we can do all those one-anothers that we see in the New Testament. In that regard, the church is like the consulate arm of a modern embassy.

The church exists so that we who have followed Jesus in faith can live out our faith in love. And only by living out our faith in love can the church serve its redemptive role in this culture of lostness that surrounds it.

In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul describes HIMSELF as an ambassador for Christ. But here in this letter to the Corinthians, he makes it clear that all who have become subjects of the kingdom of God by faith in King Jesus are ambassadors for Christ.

It is His kingdom to which we owe our allegiance. It is His kingdom we represent. It is His word of reconciliation we have been entrusted to proclaim to the world.

We are ambassadors called not to sit around the embassy doing paperwork, waiting to be called home one day.

We are ambassadors charged with representing the kingdom of God. We are ambassadors called to proclaim the message given to us by our King — that He died and was raised to life again so that sinners (and that’s all of us) could be forgiven and reconciled to God.

We are ambassadors appointed to tell the world that our King is coming again and to warn them that this time He will come with judgment.

Let us not be found pushing papers when He comes, but rather doing the work He has called us to do.

And if you are simply visiting this embassy today — if you have never repented for your sins and placed your faith in Jesus as the only way you can be saved to spend eternity with Him and with His Father — we have ambassadors who want to talk to you. You can become a citizen of the kingdom of God right here today.

There are no tests involved. In some ways, gaining citizenship in the kingdom of God is easy; Jesus did all the work as He hung on that cross at Calvary.

But in some ways, it is the hardest thing you will ever do. You’ll have to deny yourself. You’ll have to give up the rights you have in this world — the idea that you’re in control of your own destiny, the idea that you are your own master.

You’ll have to admit that you are a sinner and submit to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

But, oh the glorious blessings that citizenship carries! Eternal life in the very presence of and fellowship with the King! Peace for your troubled soul. Joy in the midst of pain and suffering. And the love of a Father for His adopted children.

The embassy is open. Won’t you come and talk to an ambassador?