We are ambassadors therefore for Christ, God as [it were] beseeching by us, we entreat for Christ, Be reconciled to God.
Just before this, Paul says God reconciled people to Himself through Christ. Then He put the message in the hands of His servants. Verse 20 turns that message into a plea. Two questions shape it: who is the plea for, and who is making it?
Older English versions add the pronouns "you" and "ye" here, printed in italics. Commentators note that they are not in the Greek at all.
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.
Some read the verse as a daily call to Christians. William Kelly rejects that:
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.
The call is not for God to change His attitude. The movement runs one way only.
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 natural expectation would be the reverse — the guilty party begging the offended one. Here it is turned around.
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.
An ambassador speaks for someone who is not there. Christ is absent, so others stand in His place.
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.
The ambassador has no weight of his own to trade on.
They make no claim of their own on the world's respect. Their dignity lies only in the message they carry.
Commentators differ over how far the title stretches. Some see it reaching to every believer:
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.
Others are more cautious:
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.
An embassy is also a signal. Its presence says that peace is still on the table.
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.
- Sent. Christ has gone, so God sends His servants — men speak, but God Himself entreats.
- To the world. The added "you" and "ye" narrow the verse. The plea goes to those not yet reconciled, since believers already are.
- One direction. Scripture never speaks of reconciling God; the change asked for is on man's side, not God's.
- Beseeching, not demanding. The ambassador brings no claim of his own, only grace — God urging people to accept the mercy He has already offered.
- For now. While the ambassadors are still there, the offer of peace stands. Their recall would mean it has closed.
Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that *we* might become God's righteousness in him.
The verses just before this one call believers ambassadors, begging people to be reconciled to God; this verse is the reason they can. Two staggering statements sit side by side: what God did with His sinless Son, and what God has made of guilty people in Him.
The verse does not stand alone. It gives the reason God can now plead with people instead of judging them.
"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." What a message! God is now begging you to be reconciled to Himself, because on the cross He once settled the question of sin with Christ.
Whenever Scripture speaks of Christ suffering in the sinner's place, it guards His sinlessness in the same breath. Writers notice the pattern.
2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that God made Him to be sin for us. But it adds that He "knew no sin." 1 Peter 2:24 tells us that "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree." But it assures us that "He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth." 1 John 3:5 tells us that "He appeared to take away sins," and adds, "in Him there is no sin." Nothing could be clearer. Only a sinless sacrifice could meet the claims of God's holiness against sin. If Jesus had not been sinless, He could not have stood in the sinner's place. He would not have survived the judgment, and we would have had no Saviour.
Some have taught that Christ carried sin all through His life on earth. One writer found that the order of words in this verse settled the question.
One verse made this question clear to me: was Christ a sin-bearer all His life? The verse is, "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." He must first be shown to know no sin all His life. Only then can He be made sin. If He bore sins during His life, that would mean atonement without blood. But "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."
Commentators differ over how far the wording can be pushed. Some tie it to the Old Testament offering for sin:
Some commentators would translate sin for us as sin-offering. In the original language there is only one word for both sin and sin-offering. That is how closely the holy offering is identified with the sinful person who brings it.
"Made sin" is not just another way of saying He carried our sins. One writer keeps the two apart.
Sin had to be put away completely out of God's sight. So God had to be perfectly glorified about it, in the very place where sin was before Him. Christ was made sin, and He appeared in order to remove it from God's sight, "to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." Besides this, our sins (guilt) were in question, and Christ bore them in His own body on the tree. The sins are borne, and Christ has them no more. They are gone as guilt before God for ever.
The verse uses the same verb on both sides, and that repetition carries the argument.
There is much force and value in the word "made." It shows how completely righteousness was foreign to the nature of man, just as sin was foreign to the nature of Christ. Man had no righteousness of his own — in other words, he knew no righteousness — and so he had to be "made" righteousness. Christ "knew no sin," and so He had to be "made sin," in order that we might be made righteousness — "the righteousness of God in Him." And this passage teaches more. That the Lord Jesus was "made sin for us" is no more real, no more true, no more solid, than that the believer is "made righteousness in Him."
If God refuses to charge our sins to us, the question becomes what He does put to our account instead.
If God will not charge my trespasses to me, then what will He charge? Righteousness — even the righteousness of God… Sin is finished with, as far as the believer is concerned. Christ lives as our continuing righteousness before God, and we live in Him. There is not so much as one single entry against us in the book of divine justice; but there is a risen and glorified Christ to our credit.
Yet the verse still outruns explanation:
The Old Testament sacrifices give us a picture of Christ's sacrifice. So God making Christ a sacrifice for sin can be explained. But that God should make Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us — that baffles all explanation… Sin marked everything we were. And all that we were, He was made when He died on the cross. Righteousness wholly characterizes God, and what He is we are made in Christ.
- Sinless — He "knew no sin," and only such a One could stand in the sinner's place and survive the judgment.
- Substituted — He was made sin at the cross, not during His life. The verse proves it by its order: He is shown sinless first.
- Exchanged — the one word "made" runs both ways: righteousness was as foreign to us as sin was to Him.
- Secured — God does not charge our trespasses to us. He charges righteousness instead: no entry against us, and a glorified Christ to our credit.
- Sent — because this exchange is done, God does not judge now. He begs through His ambassadors: be reconciled to God.