“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us: we pray in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin: that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”―2 Cor. 5:18-2118And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; 19To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 20Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. 21For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:18‑21).
IN these verses the word reconcile occurs four times, and I wish to point out in them four things as to Reconciliation, ―viz., its source; its basis; its objects; and its features or characteristics.
The very word Reconciliation implies that two have been at variance. If you and I need to be reconciled, it is perfectly plain that we must have fallen out, or reconciliation could not be thought of. Sometimes people talk of God being reconciled, and even say that the Son of God came into the world to reconcile the Father to us. Ah! no; far be the thought! It is not God who needs reconciliation, but man. God has never altered. He was at the beginning what He is today, ―love, perfect love. It is man who has altered; it is man who, having sinned, needs reconciliation. Man needs to be brought back to God, and therefore it is important to see, and blessed to see it too, that reconciliation comes from God’s side; and that makes all the more beautiful what the apostle says, “God hath committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation.” I do not know anything more wonderful. In chapter third of this epistle Paul has spoken of “the ministration of death” and “the ministration of condemnation.” The ministration connected with Moses was the law; that was death and condemnation. Now the apostle turns round here, to glory in the brilliancy, not of the manner, but the matter of his ministry. The preacher or writer may make a poor hand of it, but the great point is, not the way he preaches, but what he has to preach.
How, then, is your heart to be put right with God? For I have to learn that I am all wrong. It is a wonderful thing to find myself, an enemy, reconciled. “God commends his love to us, that, in while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” That brings out man’s true state. It is always well to know the worst of myself-to know the truth. It is far better, in matters mundane, and in matters eternal, to know the whole truth. Man is brought out in a fourfold character in Romans 5― “Without strength;” “ungodly;” “sinners;” “enemies.” Not only am I by nature without strength, and an ungodly sinner, I have been worse than that, you have been worse than that. The devil may have cast a veil so before your eyes, that you may never have thought of it, for “when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” It was His love that did it.
What turns the heart of man toward God? The knowledge that God’s heart is towards him. If you reason from your own heart, you say, “Do I love God? Not as I ought to.” Another question, “Does the Lord love you?” You say, “I am not sure of it.” Why? Because, you argue from yourself, that since you do not love God, He does not love you. That is thoroughly wrong. If you are an enemy of God, I have a message from my God to you. Forgiveness! I am an ambassador for Christ: I glory in my mission. Soon every ambassador will be called back. The Lord is coming. You will never hear the gospel then. You may hear the Scriptures; you may hear the trumpet-note of judgment. I have now a message from the offended One. I would be very glad you had it in your heart to desire “conditions of peace,” but God has forestalled you. He has sounded His message, ― “Be ye reconciled to God.” Before you have cried for mercy, or sued for peace, He has proclaimed pardon.
(1.) What, then, is the source of this marvelous intervention of grace―this wondrous “ministry of reconciliation”―that came in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ? God is the source. “All things are of God.” Who was the first ambassador? It was the Son. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” God is the source of this lovely ministry of grace, this matchless ministry of mercy, to lost and ruined man? Yes, God Himself.
The heart of God has never changed, although man’s history has been one tissue of deceit, and opposition to God, since the day sin came in, and God drove the man out from the garden. God’s heart has been yearning over the sinner—yearning over the lost one. I grant you there were difficulties in the way of God going after man, because the claims of His righteousness, holiness, and majesty, and the truth of His word, must be maintained and vindicated; and man, having been put under the test, of law to bring out all, was found and proved to be guilty and lost.
At last the moment came, when, as it were, the Almighty woke up, not to judge and condemn man, utterly lost and undone, but, as you have read, “The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” Did you ever read that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,”―oh! mark, God gave His Son, “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life?” There I have the source of it, ―God loving, and giving. What is man’s side of it? Believing, and having.
All things are of God, “who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” Reconciliation is putting man, and things, in their due place, their right relations toward God. In Col. 1 we read, “It pleased the Father, that in him should all fullness dwell: and by him to reconcile all things unto himself.” It is God who does it.” And you, that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet Now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death” (Col. 1:2121And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled (Colossians 1:21).). Sin has dislocated everything between man and God. Sin has produced the most violent dislocation that ever was known; it has dislocated man from his right relations with God; Sin has come in, and the state of the heart is, alas! thenceforth one of opposition to God. “Enemies in your mind by wicked works.” Mark how strong it is. The necessity of reconciliation Scripture contemplates everywhere. It is God who begins it. It comes entirely from God. The Lord in His wonderful pathway down here, as He went through this world, shows what was the object of His mission. Not to curse, but to bless; to bring the grace and goodness of God to man.
The first heavenly ambassador was God’s own Son. As for perfect result in time, it was total failure. He Himself says so in Isa. 49, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught, and in vain.” The world was not reconciled. On the contrary, the world triumphed when they got rid of Him out of this scene. The testimony of Scripture is, “They slew him, and hanged him on a tree.” He came to unfold the heart of God, and man crucified Him. His mission absolutely failed in that sense. But God raised Him from the dead, and, in unwearied patience and grace, committed to His servants the “word of reconciliation.”
God made Christ to be in for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The notion has got abroad, that because the Son of God became incarnate―became a man, ―that by this He lifted up manhood info nearness to God. This is a great mistake. It is by His death, not His life, we are reconciled to God. Do you not see the greatest difference between His assuming flesh, and His giving His flesh for the life of the world? ―between Christ living, and Christ lifted up? A living Saviour could not save you. He himself said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)). All your prayers could not wipe out one of your sins. Do you think your prayers or sacrifices are going to prevail? Never. Only one thing can blot out sin, ―the blood of Christ. “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” Not all the tears, or living agonies, of Jesus could blot out one of our sins, but His death, His blood, “cleanseth from all (every) sin.” God’s Word declares.
The last verse of our chapter tells us exactly how sin can be put away: ― “He hath made him to be sin for us, who, knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” He Himself was the holy, blessed, spotless Son of God. You may be respectable and religious, but in God’s balances you are not full weight—you are unfit for Him. Only by that wonderful death of Jesus could sin be put away. A wondrous moment was it indeed when the Saviour died on Calvary. The sun shone its brightest till noon, and then there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour of the day, we read in the gospels. There you get the statement. In those hours of darkness the atonement was effected, when the blessed Son of God offered Himself, as a sacrifice, by the Eternal Spirit, without spot to God. Nothing but His death could reconcile you and me to God.
(2.) The basis of reconciliation, then, is laid in the death of the Son of God Himself, ―not merely that He has come into the world. The ground of it―the confidence of it―is laid in the Saviour’s blood. God has sent forth His messengers of mercy to proclaim the ministry of reconciliation on the basis of that finished work. He loves me; He gave His Son for me. On the cross He said, “It is finished.” All is completely done. Not a single thing is left to be done. God made Christ to be what I am―sin, ―that I might be made what Christ is—the righteousness of God; and the apostle John could write, “As he is, so are we, in this world.” It is a question now of righteousness: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” If Christ has gone into death for me, ―aye, and drunk the cup of wrath that my sins demanded, ―it is but righteous of God to give me that which is due to Christ. God is satisfied; more than that, He is glorified. Christ has glorified Him about sin, and He has taken Christ out of death and glorified Him. It is not merely that you go to heaven in mercy, and through the love of God, but you go there in righteousness on the ground of Christ’s work. Sin has been condemned, atoned for, and God “has committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”
(3.) This brings us to the objects of reconciliation, ―that is, the world. To whom is God addressing Himself now? “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself;” “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The ambassador of Christ is crying to the whole world, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us; we pray, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.”
You may say, “I never prayed.” True, but the prayer of the sinner is not in the ministry of reconciliation at all. Here the prayer is on God’s side, not on yours. He sends the message to you through human lips, or by human pen, but it is God who beseeches. We are ambassadors for Christ. We come to you from heaven, reader, to win your heart for heaven, ―for Christ who is there. What an honor to come as an ambassador from the courts of heaven to call the sons of men to go there! God is beseeching, but, alas! man is refusing. The Lord grant you, dear reader, to give up all your opposition, and heed the call of grace as you read this. By-and-by, when the judgment causes your guilty soul to quake with fear, will you say, “Lord, thou didst not die for me, thou didst not call roe.” Never. When you see the hand that holds the scepter of universal power, that hand will be closed, it is true, but it will bear the marks of death, and too late you will learn that His death could have availed for you. As you go down to hell, you will say, “After all, I see He died for rile, but, alas! I refused to believe it.” Oh, the wail of sorrow that will burst from your lip then! God save you now.
(4.) The features of this ministry of reconciliation are lovely indeed, and all divine. Who but God would be found praying and beseeching His enemies? “Not imputing their trespasses” is another characteristic. God is not imputing your trespasses to you; nay, they were imputed to Christ. What does He impute instead? Righteousness!! “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” More blessed still “is the man to whom God imputeth righteousness without works” (Rom. 4:6, 86Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, (Romans 4:6)
8Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. (Romans 4:8)).
Who would not be a Christian? If you have never been a Christian before, oh let this ministry win you. I want your heart for the Lord. I want you for Christ. I want you to be reconciled to God. You may say, “I am sin, nothing but sin; there has been in my heart unbelief, sin, and folly.” True, but see the proof of God’s love, the gospel comes to you. Faith always says, “Lord, I give in; Lord, I believe.” You are broken down by the knowledge that He wants you, that He forgives you, that He loves you; and you turn round―the enmity gone, the distance annihilated; and the prodigal finds, not the Father waiting for him, but running out to meet him. That is the way God meets a believing soul. God give you to taste the sweetness of this ministry of reconciliation, which has its source in the heart of God, its basis in the death of Christ, its objects in the world, and its features, God praying and beseeching man, and not imputing trespasses. W. T. P. W.