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A People on Mission
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Before we dive into Scripture, I want to acknowledge God's grace in a special way today. We've been celebrating new life through baptism, and we also want to celebrate God's faithfulness through marriage. We have a couple in our congregation, Ron and Bonnie Thomas, who are celebrating 60 years of Christian marriage. Let's give them our appreciation for their faithfulness and devotion to the Lord and to one another.
We worship here and we will worship in heaven. We fellowship here and we will fellowship in heaven. We serve God here and we will serve God in heaven. But there's one thing that we must do here that we will not be able to do in heaven: call sinners to be reconciled to God.
Once heaven arrives, there will be no lost people left to evangelize, no rebels to plead with, no prodigal children to call home. The ministry of reconciliation is the temporary assignment God has given us during this age.
The church does many important things, but only one thing explains why God keeps us here after he saved us. There's one reason the Lord has kept us here: to represent Christ as we call sinners to be reconciled to God. That is the point Paul is making in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
Paul communicates a simple but vital message: We are not simply recipients of reconciliation, but messengers of reconciliation.
Because God reconciled us to himself through Christ, we now have a new identity. We are a new creation. But we also have a new purpose in life—to reconcile sinners to God. We were not just saved from something. We are saved for something.
This passage has a clear progression: God has done something in us, and now God is doing something through us. God did a work in us, and now God works through us.
Our mission begins with a new identity. We are a new creation. Paul doesn't say, "Go and be ambassadors." No, he begins in verse 17: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation."
You cannot be an ambassador before you are a new creation. You cannot be an ambassador of the king if you are not a citizen of the kingdom. God changes us before he sends us. Before Paul talks about ministry, he talks about transformation. It is impossible to be on mission with God without being in Christ.
When we are reconciled with God, we're made new. The old things have passed away. This is not something Paul says only to the Corinthians—it's the message he preaches to the Ephesians, the Romans, the Colossians. This is the message of the Bible: God is reconciling sinners with himself.
The holy, infinite God—perfect, blameless, majestic, exalted—is inviting people who have rebelled against him to come to him through the blood of Jesus. This is beautiful. This is powerful. We should never get over that.
As Paul writes in Romans 5:10-11:
For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now we are reconciled. Shall we be saved by his life? More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now been received reconciliation.
We were God's enemies. Now we have been reconciled with God. People don't think of themselves as God's enemies, but we all have rebelled against God. The Bible teaches that each one of us has sinned against God. But God, in his beauty and majesty and sweetness, came to us. We were not looking for him—he came to us. He sent his Son so that we can be reconciled with him through Christ Jesus.
Colossians 1:21-22 paints a powerful picture:
And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.
We were separated from him. We were his enemies, doing evil deeds. And Christ came to rescue us, to reconcile us to God—to present us blameless, holy, perfect, and righteous before God.
Sometimes when we hear "reconciliation," we reduce it to forgiveness. But you can forgive a person without reconciling yourself with that person. Forgiveness removes the offense, but reconciliation restores the relationship.
A judge can forgive a debt and yet remain distant. You can be acquitted in court but that doesn't make you a friend of the judge. But a father reconciles and brings the child home. A father who reconciles with a son doesn't just cancel the debt—he opens the door, sets the table, and says, "You live here now."
That's what God has done. God did not just stop counting your sin. He counted you as his own. The gospel is not just removing our guilt. It is also God bringing us back to himself.
Look at the structure of this passage. Paul says:
Everything. God is doing this. This is his mission. This is his work. We're not joining our mission—we're joining God's mission.
In verse 19, Paul clarifies:
In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
This is legal language. It means God stopped keeping the record. The ledger is closed. But he doesn't stop there:
And entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
This is central. There is no ministry of reconciliation without the message of reconciliation.
We extend kindness to people, but we must proclaim the message. You are not doing gospel work if you're not proclaiming the gospel. Good deeds may open the door, but only the proclamation of the gospel can bring someone through the door.
We are a people with a message. God has left us here for a reason. Our mission in this life as believers is not just to survive, succeed, or be comfortable. It is to make disciples. The Great Commission is our assignment.
Our purpose is to glorify God by participating in this ministry of reconciliation. We are Christ's ambassadors entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation, proclaiming to the world how sinners can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and only through Jesus Christ.
Because we are a new creation, God sends us into the world. Verse 20 follows with clear logic:
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
An ambassador is at once both a messenger and a representative. An ambassador does not speak in his own name. He does not act on his own authority.
When I came as a diplomat to negotiate a free trade agreement, I came with an agenda to make a deal. But I was not creating the ideas for that deal—those were given to me by someone I was representing. What an ambassador communicates is not his own opinions or demands, but simply what has been told or commanded to say. Yet at the same time, he speaks with authority because he's representing another. He's representing a president, a king.
When he or she speaks, the president of that kingdom, so to speak, is speaking. We are ambassadors of Christ, and we come with the authority of Jesus. That's why Jesus said to the disciples in Matthew 28, "All authority has been given to me. Go." He's sending us with his authority and in his name to go and make disciples.
Look at the remarkable language in verse 20: "God is making his appeal through us."
Think about this. God is not using angels to make his appeal. God is using human beings who have been reconciled with God. The God of the universe—infinite in wisdom—decided that he will use you and me to make his appeal. He's trusting us more than we trust ourselves.
Paul does not say we inform you on Christ's behalf. No, he says we implore you. The word carries the sense of pleading, urgently urging, persuading. This tells us something about evangelism: Christian witness is not called information transfer. It is loving persuasion.
There should be tears in our theology. We should be passionate about this. If we really know that God in his grace and love saved us—I will tell you, I deserve to be in hell. But God had mercy on me. He changed me. He gave me new life. And now he's using us to represent him.
This tells us that he is not ashamed of us. He's using us even with our weaknesses, with our past, everything we have been through. God says, "You are representing me." That is a big deal.
My friend Mike Styles, a pastor in Dubai and then in Iraq, defines evangelism very simply: "Evangelism is teaching the gospel with the aim to persuade." It's the good news with the aim to persuade. That's the spirit here. We make his appeal. We plead. We implore. We want to persuade people. We should never become indifferent about God or about people's eternal destiny.
When we open the word of God on Sunday morning, the eternal God speaks. Angels look down from heaven in awe. When the church speaks faithfully, Christ speaks through his church.
How gracious is God? He doesn't need to do any of this. He is just to condemn all people. But he is appealing to people who have rebelled against him, inviting them to be reconciled with him.
The church is not an embassy hiding from the world. It is an embassy sent into the world announcing that through Christ, rebels can come home.
An ambassador lives in one kingdom while representing another. He does not speak his own message. He's not pursuing his own agenda. He doesn't advocate the interests of the host nation. He represents the king who sent him.
God has not called us to be editors of the message but messengers of the message. Think about the spokesperson for the president. When that person goes to the podium, their job is to say what the president wants them to say. If they change the message and communicate something different from what they received from the president, they will be fired. Our job is not to edit the message or improve it. Our job is to communicate the message that we received.
But sometimes an ambassador can forget who they represent. An ambassador who becomes more passionate about the policies of the host nation than the interests of his own kingdom has abandoned his role. Likewise, Christians are citizens of heaven living in this host nation, in this host world.
The danger is not necessarily abandoning Christ altogether. The danger is becoming so absorbed in the affairs of this present kingdom that we lose sight of the kingdom we represent.
We can become more animated by political victories than gospel victories. Are you more excited about political victories than gospel victories? We can become more devoted to cultural battles than to gospel proclamation. Are you more devoted to cultural battles than to God's proclamation? What excites you the most—reading the news, winning an argument, or bringing the gospel to someone?
We can become more concerned with preserving the earthly kingdom than expanding the kingdom of Christ. Perhaps more interested in winning arguments than winning people. Sometimes we can win an argument and lose a person. And at that point, we are not being good ambassadors of Jesus. What he gave us is to win people, not to win arguments.
The devil does not always need believers to stop serving Christ. Sometimes he simply distracts them from the mission that Christ gave them. Satan and the fallen angels would be thrilled with us being moralistic citizens as long as we don't proclaim the message of the gospel.
Imagine an ambassador sent to a foreign nation during a time of war. His homeland gives him one mission, one purpose, one priority: secure the release and rescue of citizens held captive there. But after arriving, he becomes consumed with local politics, local entertainment, social causes, public debates, social media. None of those things are necessarily evil. But they're not the reason he was sent.
One day the king will ask, "How many captives have you rescued?" The ambassador replies, "I became an expert on every issue in that nation except the assignment that you gave me."
That is the danger of our church. That is the danger that we face. We can become more consumed and more passionate about the affairs of this world than doing the job that Christ entrusted to us—this ministry of reconciliation.
Let me tell you a story. About 55 years ago this weekend, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under President Nixon, was in Pakistan. After a conversation with Nixon, who wanted to reestablish relations with China, Kissinger feigned illness. He left a meeting, went back to his hotel, took an unmarked airplane, and flew from Pakistan to China to meet with Chairman Mao. For 40 hours, he met with Chinese leaders. Two days later, Nixon announced that he was going to China—55 years ago this weekend. This move changed the relationship between the US and the entire geopolitical landscape of the Cold War.
But here's the point: Kissinger had an assignment from his president to go meet with enemies and bring a message of reconciliation. Similarly, God sent you and me into enemy territory with one message: "I'm reconciling you with myself through the blood of my Son, the Lord Jesus Christ." We need to be faithful to that message. We cannot be distracted from that message. We cannot be distracted from that assignment.
How do we stay faithful as ambassadors instead of becoming distracted ones? We keep going back to the message that made us ambassadors in the first place. How can we keep our attention on this ministry? By keeping our attention on the gospel.
You and I as believers need the gospel daily. The gospel is not just for unbelievers. The gospel is also for believers. The moment we stop preaching the gospel to ourselves, we stop growing. The moment we stop reminding ourselves of the good news, we drift.
Let me conclude with verse 21, where Paul summarizes the whole gospel:
For our sake he, God, made him, Jesus, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God.
"He knew no sin"—this does not mean he had less sin than us. No, he had no sin. It's not like he kept most of the law. He was perfect, blameless, holy. The only one ever qualified for that title: Jesus.
But God made him to be sin. Not made him to be a sinner, but made him sin. Meaning every rebellion of yours, every self-justifying argument of your mind, every treason committed against the king, every sin—God gathered it up and laid it on Christ as though Christ himself had done it.
God on that cross treated Jesus the way we deserved to be treated, so that in Christ, he can treat us the way Jesus deserved to be treated. That's the exchange.
"So that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Not so that we might become slightly better. Not so that we might try harder to represent him. No—that we might become the righteousness of God himself. Credited, imputed, given to us.
God made us holy and righteous. We receive the righteousness of Jesus. As Jesus was holy, we become holy in Christ. Righteous.
Do you want to know how much God loves you? God loves you the same way he loves Jesus. Do you know how God sees you in Christ? He sees you the same way he sees Christ—blameless, pure, righteous.
Here is the appeal one more time, as if from Christ himself:
Be reconciled to God.
If you have never trusted in Jesus, if you have never come home to the Father, come today. Not to a distant judge who could forgive you—come to a Father who is already running down the road to meet you.
God in his great love is inviting you to be reconciled to himself today. If you have never put your faith in Jesus, understand this: the Bible teaches that you are separated from God. You're God's enemy. You are under his judgment because he is just. God would not leave the guilty unpunished. But in his great mercy, he put the punishment that your sin deserves on Christ Jesus so that you can receive the righteousness of Jesus—so that you can become righteous, perfect, holy on the account of Christ by trusting in Jesus.
We implore you: trust in Jesus. Stop deceiving yourself and put your faith in Christ today. Today is the day of salvation. Come to him.
To you brothers and sisters who are already his: You are not just forgiven. You are righteous in Christ. You are perfect in Christ. You are holy in Christ. And Christ—God the Father—sent you as his voice into this world to bring this message of reconciliation. Do not get entangled. Do not get distracted with the affairs of this kingdom.
Let us not be distracted as a church about every opinion out there. Let us keep our attention on the reason the Lord kept us here—to proclaim the gospel. We are a people with a message. Let us be faithful to the Lord and let us proclaim this message for the glory of God and the good of all people.
