Christ’s Love Compels Us (Part 3): We are Called to be Reconcilers

This is the third in a series of posts on 2 Corinthians 5:14-21.  In the first post, I focused on the first major topic of the passage, “Christ’s love compels us”. That phrase affirms for us the immeasurable value of God’s love for us, and how that love, when fully grasped, turns our world upside down and changes our hearts and steers our lives in new directions.  In the second post in the series, we talked about two realities of the life in Christ: the exchanged life (Christ and us) and newness of life in Christ.

Now in the third post, we examine what Christ’s love ought to compel us to do, empowered by the new and exchanged life.  As we grasp this, we gain both purpose and mission, for the Church and for each one of us.  This is laid out for us in the second part of verse 18 through verse 20.

“[God] gave us the ministry of reconciliation: [19] that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. [20] We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (NIV1984).

This tells us that God gave us the ministry of reconciliation.  But what is that? Reconciliation means bringing two parties back together that have something between them that keeps them separated, living like enemies or at least like strangers rather than like family.  And while all kinds of reconciliation are valuable (Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers” in Matthew 5:9), the Apostle Paul specifically is referring to reconciliation between a person and God.  If there is any doubt about that, look at verse 20, where it specifically says, “be reconciled to God”.

Think back to the first post where I laid out a Biblical understanding of a person’s spiritual state apart from Jesus (separated from God and perishing) and presented God’s heart about the situation (loving people greatly and not wanting anyone to perish).  I also presented God’s solution there: Jesus died on the cross so that anyone who believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life.  So the ministry of reconciliation involves reconciling people to God by helping them find a strong and lasting faith in Jesus, embracing God’s love for them and responding in love.

With the ministry of reconciliation must come a message of reconciliation.  But what is that?  Do you have a message of reconciliation to share? Many “Gospel messages” are out there, some I find helpful, and others seem even hurtful.  It seems to me that a message of reconciliation consists of the following:

• First and foremost in telling people that God is incredibly in love with them.
• Second, to tell people that God wants to have a deep friendship with them.
• Third, to tell them that Jesus, God’s only Son, came to earth and willingly died for them to open the way of reconciliation through faith in him.
• Fourth, that the way to begin the relationship is to talk to Jesus and promise to love and follow him forever.

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Then, to complete the ministry of reconciliation, help people who have received the message of reconciliation to learn to grow through reading the Bible, hearing the voice of God, and connecting with others who will love them and help them grow.  These are the means by which we learn to follow through on the promise to love and follow him forever.

A lot of gospel messages I hear try to convince people that they are sinners, and then they get told that God is angry with them.  The latter is definitely not a message of reconciliation.  My response to someone being angry with me is to be angry in return!  The former could be part of a message of reconiliation — people may logically want to understand how they were not in good standing with God to begin with; that is, why did they need reconciliation?

In practical terms, in these days I find that the word “sin” has taken on all sorts of connotations that were probably never intended in the first place.  Lately, I have started using the term “selfishness” instead of sin when talking with people.  The issue to be resolved is that people were made to live in relationship with God, and live for God, and that instead people have been living for themselves, selfishly.  That has created the need of reconciliation, and that’s where Jesus’ sacrifice of his life on the cross, and our faith in Jesus, has provided the means of reconciliation.

In verse 20, Paul challenges us to think of ourselves as official representatives for the King of the Kingdom of God, to the kingdom of this world. Ambassadors have a lot of power in speaking on behalf of their nations, and their job is to do an accurate portrayal of the interests of the leaders of their nations. Therefore, we are called to represent Christ to the people we come in contact with.  It is a big responsibility, because we are often tempted to represent ourselves instead.

The phrase “AS THOUGH” in “as though God were making His appeal through us” implies that at least in some ways, God is not making his appeal through us.  And that is true, in that we know from John 6 that no one comes to Jesus unless the Father draws Him.  So God is active as well in making an appeal to people.  However, it is also true that God is at least in part making His appeal through us.  This is very much in line with 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (ESV).

To sum up the entire passage, the Apostle Paul is saying that because Jesus’ love for him is so over and above anything else he could ever hope for, there is no way for him to do anything but do what God wants him to do, which is to proclaim to the whole world that each person can be reconciled with God through faith in Jesus, who gave up his life to make a way of reconciliation.

We can embrace this as our own understanding and our own call, confirmed by what was presented in the first two posts from verses 14-15 “We are convinced that one died for all… that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them”

Questions for Discussion:

1) What is your message of reconciliation? Would you add, subtract, or otherwise change the one suggested here?

2) How do you feel about embracing the call to be a minister of reconciliation and an ambassador of the Kingdom of God?

Link to FIRST POST in series, “Captured by Christ’s Love”.

Link to SECOND POST in series, “Newness and the Exchanged Life”.