No audio is available for this sermon.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a British pastor during the mid to late 20th century said “that it is through preaching that God conveys the Truth to people, brings them to the realization of their need and thus reveals to them the only satisfaction of their need…By this men and women are brought to a knowledge of the truth.” This is my goal and my prayer for our time together. That God would use my meager words along with His perfect Word and bring us to the knowledge of the truth.
“Who do you think you are?” This is a question that can be asked in two different tones. It can be asked in an inquisitive tone: who do you think you are? Or, it can be asked in an accusative tone: who do you think you are. As I’ve read through and prayed through the passage before us, I’ve become convinced that this question can (and should) be asked in both senses when we consider our identity as ambassadors for Christ.
Think about it. Don’t we need the reminder, in the form of a question, asking “do you realize you are an ambassador for Christ?” And don’t we need, in a way, the confrontational question, “how can you possibly think of yourself as an ambassador for Christ?” Considering both of these angles on this one question I believe will help us to capture both the power and the privilege for us to be called an ambassador for Christ.
In order to approach the answers to this question, I want to look at the verses that immediately precede Paul’s declaration that we are ambassadors for Christ in 2 Cor 5. I want us to see three overarching things.
• First, Paul lays out in very clear logic that our status as ambassadors is not something that is optional or questionable. It is not something we can lose or tarnish or destroy.
• Additionally, Paul shows us that as Christ’s ambassadors, we have been given both a ministry and a message. This is not an optional extra, but part of who we are in Christ.
• And, Paul also makes it transparently clear that there is both a responsibility and privilege in our calling as ambassadors for Christ.
Reality 1: We are Christ’s ambassadors.
We really need to start with the fact that whatever identity we claim as believers in Christ, it is explicitly tied to who Jesus is and what He accomplished on our behalf. I start here, not because that’s the theologically correct thing to do. I start here because the biblical writers, front to back start here. Only a strong, robust appreciation of Jesus can undergird and support who we are in Christ.
Look at verses 14 and 15. The love of Christ controls us. Or as the NIV says it: The love of Christ compels us. Why? This is the love that sent Jesus to the cross. This is the love that set aside the riches of heaven and compelled Jesus to humble himself and give his life as a ransom for many. This is the love that looked at our sin and rebellion and indifference and idolatry and vanity and rescued us anyway. This is the love that has claimed us as ambassadors.
One thing I admire about Paul is that he never assumes the main points of his arguments. In the second half of verse 14 and on into 15, he continues to stress that our identity is bound up with Jesus’ death and resurrection. If Christ died for us, we are owned by him, but because He lives we now live. And we are freed to live for Him. So whether we see ourselves as dead to sin or if we see ourselves alive for Him, we are belong to Christ. We live as Christ’s ambassadors.
As Paul moves on, he reminds us that Christ’s death and resurrection accomplished the tremendous achievement of reconciling us to God. This is his point in verses 17, 18 and 19. But I think we zip by this truth almost too quickly. How often do we ponder what it means to be reconciled to the infinitely Holy God? How big of a sacrifice was required to cover every one of my sins, the white lies, the lustful thoughts, the harsh words, the divisive conversation, the greedy motives, the anger, the jealously. (And that was just yesterday.) And that doesn’t even consider my broken heart that really wants the universe to revolve around me.
We really don’t see God for how great and glorious He is. Does Rev 4 really say that no one in heaven or earth could approach His throne? And we really don’t see the sinfulness of sin. We don’t see (or want to admit) that even our smallest rebellion and idolatry deserve an eternity in Hell. And what makes our self-illusion complete is that we actually enjoy our little, petty, private sins.
I stress this point because if we see God as He is (read Isa 40 or Ps 33 or Job 26 or Rev 4) and we see ourselves as we are (read Rom 1:18 – 3:20 or Isa 64 or Jer 7 or Mt 23) we will see more clearly the incredible value of the reconciliation that Jesus bought with his own blood. And when we begin to grasp the magnitude of this reconciliation we will begin to understand why the love that drives and sustains this reconciliation is the same love that must compel and control us. We are ambassadors of the living, loving, reconciling Savior.
Paul lays down one final truth regarding our identity in Christ in verse 21. Read it carefully with me. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is what many call the Great Exchange. But, I plead with you; don’t lose the power of this verse in its familiarity. Christ became sin for us. The righteous replacing the unrighteous. Jesus is taking on our identity. Can we grasp that? Not just the penalty of our sin. Not just the just wrath of God. He became sin. He became what we were.
But wait! There’s more! Not only did Jesus take on our identity, but we received His identity. We the sinful, unrighteous, traitors are now holy and righteous and absolutely forgiven. Nothing can stand between us and God because we in are in fact righteous in Christ. So, in a very real sense, we are ambassadors of Christ. We are redeemed by Christ. We are compelled by Christ. We are reconciled by Christ. We are righteous in Christ. Everything we are is from Christ, to Christ and in Christ.
Reality 2: We are ambassadors for Christ.
As I mentioned at the outset, there are three aspects to the reality that we are ambassadors. There is the reality that we are ambassadors because Jesus has rescued and redeemed us. But in addition to that, there is also the reality that we are ambassadors on His behalf. Paul has been making this argument alongside his statements of our identity in Christ.
He started by laying the ground work in verse 14. Christ’s love compels us because we are identified with Him. But Christ’s love compels us to what? We are initially left hanging, but consider verse 15. “he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Christ’s love, demonstrated in His death and resurrection, compels us to live not for ourselves but for Christ.
This, of course, only pushes the question down one layer. What does Paul mean when he says we will live our lives for the one who died and rose for our sake? Does he mean we should be cleaning up our lives? Living morally upright, crossing every T and dotting every I? Does he mean we should all be great students of theology, preaching sermons, witnessing on street corners and praying all night? Does he mean we should sell our houses and cars and move to Africa or Asia? It could mean any or all of these things, but it could also mean none of them. You see, when Paul speaks of living for Christ, he is not envisioning some set of external criteria, but rather the whole of a life that is more and more emulating Christ. And, it will be different for each of us.
Such a thought brings us full circle, since the essence of who Christ is tied up in what He accomplished for us on the Cross. He put the desires of his Father first and He gladly submitted himself to the Father’s will to redeem a people for Himself. And while we cannot save anyone, we can certainly expend our lives on behalf of Christ to serve others, both spiritually and physically.
But Paul goes on. He wants to hammer into us this one reality: Being in Christ fundamentally changes who we are. We may look the same on the outside, but on the inside we have been remade. We may still see each other by our physical appearance or how we act or by any number of external characteristics. But the call on us as believers here in verses 16 and 17 is to not see based on the external, but based on the internal. And, in Christ we are a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come.
All of this stressed for a dual purpose. One is, as I’ve already mentioned, to undergird our identity in Christ. It is to remind us (again) that we are in fact absolutely and unequivocally new in Christ. But the other purpose is to show us the ministry we have been given. Paul states this bluntly in verse 18. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation.
As soon as I’ve said this I sense some of you, or maybe all of you, are objecting in your minds. You are saying, my ministry is teaching, my ministry is administration, my ministry is service, my ministry is hospitality. I could go on and list a hundred different things that we would rightly consider ministries. And yet Paul’s point, really the Holy Spirit’s point, is that whatever the presenting ministry, the real, root level ministry must be about reconciliation, the reconciliation between man and God. And that, my friends, is the essence of being an ambassador for Christ.
I think it is important at this point to take note of what an ambassador’s role was back in Paul’s day. Much like today, ambassadors were the connecting point between kingdoms and nations. But the main role of an ambassador was as an emissary of peace. Whether two nations negotiated their peace or one nation conquered the other, the ambassador would be the one who would proclaim peace and he spoke with the authority of the king.
And so it is with us. Notice how Paul states it is verse 19. Christ is at work, reconciling this fallen world to a holy and just God. And we have been given a message. This message, this good news is the message of reconciliation. It is as if we are God’s emissaries. We are the proclaimers of God’s “peace treaty” with a fallen, sinful rebellious world.
Reality 3: As ambassadors, God is making his plea through us.
At this point, I need to ask a question that I hope you ask often as you read and study God’s Word. The question is this: “What’s the point?” Why has God preserved these words, these thoughts, these ideas for us to consider and ponder? Is it simply to give us deeper insight into our identity in Christ, which, by the way, is incredibly important? Or does he have something more for us? Is He trying to push us beyond where we are to where He wants us to be?
Consider this: we have a ministry of reconciliation v 18. Consider this: we have the message of reconciliation v19. Given these two realities, what is Paul’s point in verse 20? What is he driving us to? “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
His point is simply and profoundly this: As believers, as God’s redeemed, as disciples of the risen Christ, we have been given a mission and a message. The message of God’s grace. The message of Christ’s love. The message of the Spirit’s power. God has entrusted this message to us. God’s plea from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation is this: Be reconciled to me.
You may be asking, what does this look like? How might this play out in your life and your ministry? The short answer is, I don’t have a clue. God can do a thousand different things a thousand different ways. But, I think He gives us snapshots of possibilities within His Word. For example, in Acts 16 Paul and Silas come to Philippi and have three very different encounters. One is aligns with what we would consider ministry within the church. Another is very confrontational ministry against the culture and its effects on people’s lives. And the third is essentially life style ministry with Paul and Silas ready to give an answer for the hope that they have in Christ.
So, brothers and sisters, I ask you, as I ask myself, how are we doing? Do we see this as our ministry, our calling from God? Are we pleading, appealing on behalf of Christ? Is the love of Christ compelling us not just to worship (as great as that is), not just to live a good life (as important as that is), but to be an ambassador for the One who gave his life so that we might both the reconciled and the proclaimers of the reconciliation that Christ purchased with the shedding of His own blood? Do we consider each ministry opportunity, however obscure, as a chance to allow God to make His appeal through us?
As I close, we need to remember this one thing. If we claim Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we are His ambassadors. But we are not alone in this task. The message of reconciliation which He has entrusted to us and the pleading that we are called to set forth to a lost and dying world, does not start or end with us. Think of the Great Commission in Mt 28, “All authority has been given to me, therefore go”. Yes we need to be pleading and proclaiming, but we are doing so in the authority of Christ and the power of the Spirit.
And the message of reconciliation, spelled out on the pages of God’s Word has a power and authority of its own. We need only look to 1 Pt 1:23 “you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” or Heb 4:12 “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” or Isa 55:11 “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it”
In the end my friends, we are ambassadors because of 3 things.
• We are ambassadors because Jesus has claimed us as His own.
• We are ambassadors because God has given us the ministry and message of reconciliation, the unbridgeable gap between God and man has been bridged in Christ.
• We are ambassadors because Christ’s love compels us to plead with our friends and neighbors and all who the Spirit brings into our lives: Be reconciled to God.
I think it is fitting to close with the words from Isaiah. Despite the cultural decay and spiritual apathy around him, he continued to plead for reconciliation on God’s behalf:
Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
To God Alone be the Glory
No comments:
Post a Comment