Be Reconciled

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 5:20-21

In 2 Corinthians disciples of Jesus are described as "ambassadors for Christ." Here we have clearly one of our great reasons to always be growing in "gospel fluency." If we are ambassadors in this life for Christ and God is making "his appeal through us" to the world, what an incredible privilege and honor we have! (Is 52:7)

And so to be effective as ambassadors we want to know the news we have to share from the nation and King we represent.

Let's quickly look at the gospel summarized here in these two verses.

Need to Be Reconciled

People need to be reconciled to God. And the gospel contains everything necessary for that to happen. Without it we would all be unreconciled to God. How amazing that is; to have the news that can reconcile us to God! And so we implore others on behalf of Christ to hear and enter into this wonderful thing.

For Us, By God

The gospel is news of what God has done for us. It isn't good advice, it's good news. "For our sake he," begins verse 21. The gospel is about God's action, his grace, for our sake.

What has God done? What is this news that can reconcile us to God?

Made Jesus to Be

God made Jesus, who never sinned, "to be sin" on our behalf. The NLT says God made Jesus "to be the offering for our sin." In 1 Peter 2:24 it says Jesus "bore our sins in his body on the tree." God put Jesus in our place.

Why did he do this?

So We Could Become

God did this so that in Jesus–as his people, in his family, with our trust in him– we could "become the righteousness of God."

The Message says here: "God put on him the wrong who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God."

To be reconciled to God we need to be right with God; we need to be righteous. But once we had become unrighteous what could we do? There was nothing we could do. There's no going back from that.

Instead, God made a way for us to go forward. He made Jesus to be our representative; to go forward and through the repercussions of our unrighteousness for us. Jesus came to bear our sins, be the offering for them and die for them.

"Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God"
1 Peter 3:18

Jesus has become our champion, our master, our head now. He is in our place. And that applies not only in his death, but in his life as well. He died so we could die to our unrighteousness. And now since he was raised back to life, we are considered righteous because he is righteous.

"we are judged of in connection with Christ's righteousness, which we have put on by faith, that it might become ours."

– John Calvin

"the purpose of God in the death of Christ was not only or chiefly that men might escape punishment, but that they might become righteous."

– Ellicott's Commentary

Because we belong to Jesus and share in all that is his, and because he is the righteousness of God, we have also become the righteousness of God. And so, purely through God's work for us, we can be fully reconciled to him.

This is life-changing, earth-shaking good news that we've been given to share. And as Jesus was our representative on the cross, we have now been made his representative in the world by giving us the Spirit. We've been reconciled to God through Jesus and now he's given us "the ministry of reconciliation" (2Cor 5:18).

So let's implore everyone to be reconciled to God always through and in Christ Jesus.

Let's know this good news backwards and forewords. Let's read it, memorize it, and saturate in it.

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 5:20-21