Being Reconciled to God (2)

Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. II Cor. 5:20

In the last issue of the Newsletter we began discussing the verse quoted above. We began our discussion of it by noticing the context, particularly vss. 18, 19. Our readers are urged to look up this back issue and refresh their minds.

We talked about what reconciliation means, and we discussed what the text means when it speaks of the fact that the world is reconciled.

There is one other truth which vs. 19 mentions, and that is a repetition of the statement made already in vs. 18, that the ministry of reconciliation has been committed to the apostles. This is extremely important for it leads immediately to the important statement in vs. 20: "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us."

To have the ministry of reconciliation committed to one means that one is an ambassador of God. This is an extremely important office that a minister holds. A president or prime minister takes the utmost care in the appointment of an ambassador, especially if such an appointment is not a political plum, but is the assigning of a man to a sensitive and extremely important diplomatic post.

This care is exercised because the ambassador must speak only what the president or prime minister who sends him speaks: no more, no less. Whatever the ambassador says, the prime minister will back up. The ambassador speaks for the prime minister. The word of the ambassador is official.

This is what Paul says is true of a minister. When he speaks, God speaks. What he says, God says. What is the content of his message is what God wants to be heard. So when the ministry of reconciliation is committed to ambassadors, they say what God wants them to say.

This does not mean that any minister, even ordained as such, is a true ambassador by virtue of his ordination. Both the minister and those who hear him must finally determine whether what the minister says is the Word of God by the Sacred Scriptures.

There are many who fake being an ambassador of God and come with their own message. There are even many who taunt faithful ambassadors in an effort to discredit faithful ambassadors in the eyes of the people. But when a minister speaks the Word of God contained in Scripture, he speaks with the authority of God Himself.

And, the apostle adds, to be an ambassador of God is the same as being an ambassador of Christ. This is literally stated in the text where the apostle says: "We beseech you in Christ's stead . . . ." Christ is God's true and only ambassador; but Christ is in heaven, and Christ, in the name of God and in His stead, sends ambassadors to bring that great and grand and glorious gospel of reconciliation to the church.

The gospel is only a gospel because it announces loudly and clearly, beyond any possibility of misinterpretation, that the work of reconciliation is completed by God Himself. If it were anything less, it would not be a gospel --glad tidings, good news.

What an awful thing it would be if all that a minister could say was: "God has done all He can in this work of reconciliation; but true reconciliation will not be accomplished until you reconcile yourself to God."

This is the way it is between humans. But God is not a human. He is the one true and living God Who does all His good pleasure.

The gospel is that God has reconciled His church, His unfaithful bride, His sinful and undeserving bride to Himself; and that He has done this great work of reconciliation also to the creation that He may give the new heavens and the new earth to His bride as His everlasting wedding gift.

Thus this word in vs. 20 is a word of God to His elect bride. Specifically, it was written to the church in Corinth and Achaia which is called in vs. 1, the church of God and saints; and which is called in I Cor. 1:2, the church of God, sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.

There is a sense, of course, in which every man who hears the gospel is brought before the command to be reconciled to God. This is simply due to the fact that all men hear the gospel, are commanded to obey it, and never can escape the obligation to be obedient to the living God. Their total inability does not change that obligation one mite.

But let it be clearly understood that Paul is talking here to the church of Corinth and telling them that they are reconciled to God by Christ's great work. That is the gospel. And now that reconciled church, the bride of Christ, must live as being reconciled to God as well. "Be ye," the apostle says, "what God has made you -- His reconciled bride."

That we need this admonition goes without saying, for we are still, even as the bride of Christ, weak and sinful. We pant after the world to engage in spiritually adulterous relations with the ungodly. We refuse to live a life of spotless holiness which characterizes the bride of God. The admonition comes in all its penetrating and upsetting power to us who are Christ's bride.

And so when we fail, we run to the cross where that reconciliation has been perfectly accomplished, and we seek that perfect reconciliation which God will work in heaven when we shall be fully saved.