2 Corinthians 5:18–20

This is a work of God in which man can have no share. There is no human material to enter into it. All of that had already gone in death before this work was done… It is a work absolutely and entirely of God. It is a new creation, and its character is that "all things are of God." The great thought in the passage is that everything of man has disappeared from view, and only what is of God is now seen.

In the old creation, all things were "of God," it is true; but they were of God who created them. But in the new, all things are "of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ." All these will bear witness to redemption. There we will trace the blood of the Lamb of God, and not simply the power of the hand of God.

The testimony of Scripture is as clear as possible. It never speaks of God being reconciled to us. "If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom. 5:10). It does not say that God was reconciled to us. The death of Christ was essential to the reconciliation. But man was the enemy of God, and man needed to be reconciled.

God never needed to be reconciled. It was we ourselves, in whom there was enmity, who needed to be reconciled… The very God we had sinned against took the first step on His own side. He put all our offences away. He has now placed us before His face, justified and reconciled through our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Reconciler. We are the reconciled.

The simplest thought in reconciliation is this: where there was distance there is now nearness. Here is the wonderful effect in the soul. A person was once very aware of moral distance from God. Now he can come to God knowing that the distance is gone, and be at home in His presence.

Only death could reconcile to God those whom sin had made His enemies. Their condition is mortal because of sin. So the work of reconciliation was complete at the cross. There the suffering Redeemer bowed His sacred head and said, "It is finished," in the act of death. The ministry of reconciliation began when the Lord's first apostles, in the power of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, preached forgiveness and acceptance in His Name — first at Jerusalem, and to the very men who had murdered Christ.

It is not the apostle alone who could say this, nor only some class among Christians: "He has given us the ministry of reconciliation." He has brought us to Himself and made Himself known to us. By that very fact He has also given us power to make known to others what fills our own souls, and to bring others to Him. We have received the reconciliation. What we received is not for ourselves alone. We received it to minister with it.

It was God who first reconciled him to Himself by Jesus Christ, and then gave him the ministry of reconciliation. It was the ministry of reconciliation. The one who carried it was not to clothe himself with the repulsiveness of God in judgment. He was to clothe himself with the attractiveness of God in grace.

In Christ "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." Here I see God come into the world — God's side of things towards us — all the fullness of God, love and light, in bodily form. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses." He never said "Come to Me" until He had come to them. He did not wait in heaven and say, You get right and then come up here; but He came in sovereign grace where and when they were wrong.

God was seeking in His Son to bring men back into right relations with Himself. The Lord Jesus did not charge people's trespasses to them. To the poor sinner of Luke 7 He said, "Your sins are forgiven." To the woman caught in sin, in John 8, He said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more." Peter bound the sin of Ananias and Sapphira on them. Paul charged the sin of Elymas the sorcerer to him, and handed others over to Satan. But the Lord Jesus, while He was here, did not charge the trespasses of sinners to them, even though He rebuked the proud Pharisees and scribes. Grace marked His mission.

Adam was responsible for the guilt that has estranged man from God. We may say then that man was responsible to remedy this. But he could not: sin's enmity is too much for him. But God was in no way responsible to do so. In pure love and grace He laid the perfect foundation of reconciliation for all the world, by the gift of His own Son. The only way our trespasses could be "not imputed" to us was by the blessed sacrifice of Calvary, where they were imputed to Christ instead.

The blessed Saviour was "reconciling," acting toward this gracious end, during His life. He was rejected. If men had received Christ, the result would have proved that evil could be repaired. Now we know the truth is the opposite. But God first put the matter to man's responsibility, and then showed that repair was morally impossible.

The world murdered Him. But His coming announced a great amnesty on God's part, and that amnesty is still in force. It is still the time, the day of salvation, and God's ambassadors are still here proclaiming the fact.

Notice, first, there is no statement here of the world having been reconciled. The apostle is speaking about the attitude God took in Christ, when Christ came into the world. What Christ was doing when here, he says, we are doing as His representatives, "in His stead," now that He is no longer here. But that attitude is one of begging men to be reconciled — not telling them they are.

"Reconciling," "not imputing," and "committing to us the word of reconciliation." Without this last, the work of grace would have stayed incomplete in its application. For this same Jesus, who in His coming here below was reconciling and "not imputing," needed to be "made sin" for us, to die and go away. Once the work was finished, it still hung waiting to be applied. God crowned this glorious work of His grace by committing to man "the word of reconciliation."

No one under heaven can put himself outside the range of this most precious ministry. Before the reader can shut himself out from the application of all this grace to himself, he must prove that he does not belong to the world. This he cannot do, and so he must see that God is begging him to be reconciled.

While He is away, the grace of God sends His servants as ambassadors for Christ. In Christ's place they beg the poor world to be reconciled to God. Notice that the "you," twice repeated in italics, and the "ye" should be left out. Putting these pronouns in limits the truth to believers, whereas the appeal is to the world.

The apostle here gives the gospel message in his short formula — a sample "word of reconciliation." … Reconciliation nowhere has an aspect toward saints. It is really the word of reconciliation in the gospel message: we are told how to address the world of sinners. Reconciliation, like justification, is an absolute work. It has no degrees.

There is no such thought in Scripture as that of reconciling God: it always speaks of reconciliation to God. … So the reconciling of the world still goes on, with Christ absent and others acting in His place. But it is not atonement. And just because the reconciliation is going on, it is not finished.

The apostles were in a special way "ambassadors for Christ." They carried a message of such love. Through them God Himself entreated mankind to be reconciled to Him. You would expect man to be the one begging God for mercy. But God instead urges man to accept now the mercy He has so graciously offered to all. So we see His love not only in the wonderful sacrifice of His own Son to bear our sins. We see it also in His patient grace and pleading with men to receive His love.

The dignity is indeed great. They do not represent Levites, or priests, or even the high priest. They represent Christ dead and risen, and they do so in the aspect of divine grace — God as it were (it was not fitting to speak in absolute terms) beseeching through us. We entreat on behalf of Christ, or in His place: be reconciled to God. … The grace of God and of Christ is stamped on every word.

They make no claim of their own on the world's respect. Their dignity lies only in the message they carry.

When the Apostle wrote, "We are ambassadors for Christ," he was probably thinking of himself, his fellow workers and the other apostles. They were in a special sense entrusted with the Gospel. Yet his words apply to every believer. The church of God is like a divine embassy in a hostile world. Each of us has to remember that we are part of that embassy. Our attitude toward people must match the word of reconciliation we carry.

If he is an ambassador, he is an ambassador to somebody. Only the apostles could go as absolute ambassadors. There are not ambassadors now in quite the same way, but in some degree.

Two or three hundred years ago in Europe, countries had a custom. When one went to war with another, it called its ambassador home before landing a single cannon on foreign shores. … As long as the Parisians saw the English ambassador walking their streets, they knew there was still another chance for peace. Relations had not ended, and war was not yet decided. But as soon as he began to pack and asked the French government for his passport to leave, they knew war was decided.