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Christ’s Ambassadors

II Corinthians 5: 1 – 21

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 24 Jul, 2005

LAST WEEK I talked about having a Christ–centred lifestyle, aiming to bring the good news to those who have not yet responded to it. Today, I'm looking at fulfilling our ministry and growing.

 Last week’s passage and this week’s are remarkably similar. It’s not so much the language. It’s similarities in attitude and thought. Paul reinforces the importance of having goals for bringing the gospel to the world.

  As he says,

...God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

  And Paul makes it clear that what we do for God in terms of ministry reflects back on how we ourselves grow as Christians and as human beings.

 I was talking to my daughter, Naomi, the other day — about Martin Luther, the famous German Church Reformer.

 Someone asked Luther how he had achieved such world–shattering changes. He replied, “I just sat and drank my Wittenberg beer, and the Word of God did its work.”

  There is a principle of ministry in what he said. My experience is that my ministry is incidental to God’s ministry. God doesn’t need you and me just to do things for him. He needs you and me as channels. Then he can do his will through us.

 And when we let ourselves be that channel, we find our purpose in life and we grow in human maturity and in Christ–likeness.

  Paul writes about our eternal house in heaven, about our heavnly clothing, about the end of mortality and the beginning of life.

 He doesn’t deny our struggles, our disappointments, and our trials, but he does not seek annihilation: he seeks completion. He knows that we already have God’s Holy Spirit, and blessing upon blessing is guaranteed as a consequence.

  How would you write a manual for Christians? Would you begin with our tasks, how to plan outreach and evangelism, how to analyse situations, how to understand the spiritual issues they raise?

 Paul begins with our heavenly calling. We are made to experience the full glory of heaven, when life in all its splendour casts mortality into the outer darkness. Every day, you and I are dying; but, when that Day comes, death will be swallowed up in victory!

 Our primary task is to fit ourselves for what is yet to come.

  But we fit and equip ourselves, not by the athlete’s self–focus, but by obedient availability to the God who loves us. Did you ever see that movie, Zoolander, about Zoolander’s struggle to become the world’s top model. It was a parody, but it was too close to reality sometimes, when Zoolander was totally focused on winning but totally unavailable to the real world. Real ministry is availability.

 Writing to the Ephesians. Paul says,

11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, ¹² to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

^{EPH 4:14} Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

  When the saints are being mended to do the work of ministry, they can carry on; when they carry on, they grow up; when they grow up, they cease being infants; when they cease being infants, they become more like Christ.

  One day I was thinking about someone who had come to me to talk over a problem. I had a good relationship with the person, so I took a very personal interest in the problem.

 I was reflecting and wondering what could be done. Suddenly I realised that my friend was motivated in much the same way that I am motivated. I had a lesson to learn from this situation as much as my friend did!

  Did my friend ever solve the problem? I don’t know. I do know that I had identified the same issue in my own life. And I had found a solution that worked for me.

  That happens over and over. As we are involved in ministry, we ourselves grow.

 Paul calls us “Ambassadors for Christ.” At University, I knew a couple of blokes who were in the Public Service, training to be diplomats. Along the way, some of them would get to be ambassadors.

 They studied similar subjects to me. From memory, we were all studying Asian history together. Maybe they hoped to be posted to Cambodia or Indonesia or some such place.

  They had probably studied languages — Indonesian, or Burmese or something like that. I don’t know what, but I know that diplomats need to understand what people are talking about in the countries where they work.

  But the thing is that I also knew people studying the same kinds of things that diplomats study, yet these other people couldn‘t be diplomatic to their own bosses at Annual Assessment time.

  Being a diplomat means more than having done a course. It requires personal qualities of tact and quiet assertiveness. But it also means learning, observing what is done by others.

  In that process, they equip themselves to become ambassadors.

  It’s like when I worked in local government, and I had to be technically competent, but I also needed on the job training in how to talk to a Councillor or how to apply the right section of the Act at the right time. Some of those things you can only learn by doing, and seeing how it works.

  In the same way, to become Ambassadors for Christ, we have on–the–job experience, and that equips us to represent the Lord Jesus Christ wherever life might take us.

  Throughout this passage, Paul builds his case for the calling we have as Christians.

  His first point is who we are. We are not defeated, even if we sometimes struggle and yearn for what is better. But it is not a hopeless yearning. We long for our heavenly home, and to experience everything that God has promised to us. He writes:

2CO 5:1 Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

  But here’s the glory of it all:

5 Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

  How we feel, this restlessness and sense of being unfulfilled is a key part of God’s plan, designed to spur us on in a certain hope, guaranteed by the Holy Spirit himself!

 Consequently, we have a certainty which we can take into our ministries, a confidence that we will be able to please God, and an assurance that we will stand safely before Christ’s judgment seat.

2CO 5:6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 We live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

  Paul’s second point is that we are not here just to experience what God is doing in our lives. We are here to bring the message of salvation to the rest of the world. We know about judgment, because we have seen what we ourselves deserve, and we know that it is only through God’s grace in Jesus that are saved.

2CO 5:11 Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12 We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13 If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.

  But get this clear: the real driving force is not fear, but love. The fear Paul talks about is from the past; the love he describes is present forever more. The Corinthians were struggling with troublemakers. Some were saying that Paul was a mere boaster without much else going for him. Others claimed he was mad. But Paul is concerned with God’s plans and Christ’s love. He will not let himself be restrained by these troublesome people. He keeps pressing towards the goal.

14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

  Then he moves on from the importance of Christ’s love. He reviews the effect of our attitudes. Because of Jesus, Paul doesn’t even regard his enemies from a worldly perspective.

 A while back a woman came to our evening services for a while and tried to cause trouble. She was subtle, and I not many people realised what she was doing. Anyway, she wanted to cause me trouble, preferrably without being detected herself.

 Fortunately I had the wisdom by then to realise that my real battle wasn’t with her, but with the spiritual condition that drove her. I prayed against Satan and demonic influences in the services, and she left and didn’t return.

 But I still see her every now and then, and she is quite friendly, because I didn’t look at her, I looked at her spiritual problem.

 Paul writes:

2CO 5:16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

  Finally, Paul makes the point that our ambassadorship is part of God’s entire plan for renewal — for us, first, and for those who join with us in the same faith. In Christ we are in a new creation; in Christ, God’s new world is already begun; in Christ, we are already reconciled; and in Christ, we are called to be ambassadors, pleading with the rebel nation to return to its rightful king!

  He writes,

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 Rethink your roles! It is only as we put into practice the ministries we have that we will truly begin to discover the potential that God himself built into each of us even before we were conceived.

 And I am not merely talking here about discovering our ministry potential, although that is included. I am talking about discovering our human potential.

 When I worked in Local Government, I was a bit isolated and aloof from my fellow workers. It wasn’t that I was unfriendly, it was just that I didn’t really know how to mix properly.

 I am still a bit shy, and socially awkward at times. You know me.

  But you have also seen how, through the years, sometimes through times of struggle and pain, I have grown and learnt to see other people in a different light.

 It was a great encouragement to me that the people at work decided to get me a birthday card the other week. They don’t usually celebrate birthdays all that much, and certainly don’t do it on the day. Usually, we just have cake once a month and mention all the birthdays that have passed during the month.

  What made it more special was that one of the people organising the card was someone whom I've tried to make personal contact with and felt I'd failed with.

 I only occasionally get a chance to share the gospel with a fellow worker; but I do get the chance to show that I, a Christian, care; and that has its response. Being in ministry has changed me.

  Perhaps you have never yet begun a walk with Christ and you know that you need to begin that lifetime of transformation, becoming more and more like Jesus until you are just like him. If so, don’t put it off: have a talk to myself or one of the other leaders here; and we’ll share with you what you need to do.

 And perhaps you are still waiting to take that first step in ministry.

  How about a decision today? How about saying to God, “I’m willing to begin...”

  The beginning of my pathway into ministry was the day when I returned to work feeling very dejected because I felt a call into public ministry, but could find no way to do it.

  I thought of the four Christians who were my staff at the time. They needed a pastor, and my role with them already was more as a pastor than as a manager.

 I told God, “If those four are the only church I ever get to pastor, I’ll do it!”

 When God had my willingness, he moved mountains! There was no way that I would start in the next year as an accepted trainee minister — it was far too late: everyone told me so. In fact, I was accepted 2¹/₂ months before I was due to start College. When you are ready, God will move mountains for you, too.

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)