The Godly Beggar’s Plea

Because of the brevity of time
last week, I only hinted at the great truth that outside of Christ
or prior to our coming to know Christ, the natural man is at
war with God. And I know that that is shocking
imagery. Especially given the fact that
we have seen images of war and images of fighting, and we know
how graphic those are in our own minds. And to think that
we either are currently or were at once before we came to know
Christ, to think that we were at war with Almighty God is almost
an absurd thought, unless you know the content of Scripture.
But we are naturally God’s enemies. The Scriptures speak of enmity
and strife and hostility that is in our hearts toward God until
God puts it to death. Galatians 5.19 talks about the
deeds of the flesh. And if you’re familiar with those
passages, there is either the flesh or the spirit. The Spirit,
speaking of those who have come to faith in Christ and who have
begun to be transformed by him, their heart from the very beginning
is new. But the deeds of the flesh, Paul
says, are evident immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry,
sorcery, enmities, strife. Romans 1, which we just considered
briefly last week, said that we are haters of God in our flesh. Romans 1.29, just prior to that,
said that being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness,
greed, envy, full of envy, murder, strife. And that strife, that
striving is with God. James 4 puts it quite bluntly. When it says you adulterous is
in James four, four, do you not know that friendship with the
world is hostility? It’s war toward God. Therefore, whoever wishes to
be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Jonathan Edwards, more than 200
years ago, captured this thought. Of those who are in their natural
state at war, to the death with God. In a little message entitled,
Men Naturally God’s Enemies, Jonathan Edwards said this. What
brings about this war with God? That is the essence of where
we pick up. And he said the strictness of
God’s law is a principal cause of man’s enmity against God.
If God let us have our own way, in other words, what Edwards
is saying, we would be pleased to be his friend. We wouldn’t
mind him. We wouldn’t, you know, if he
was just a kindly old grandfatherly character, we wouldn’t mind some
of the rules that he lays down as long as we had the privilege
to obey them when we pleased. That’s what Jonathan Edwards
is beginning to say. And he goes on, if God were one
that did not so much hate sin, if He would allow them gratification
of their lusts in some degree, and His threatenings were not
so awful against all criminal indulgence, if His threatenings
were not so absolute, if His displeasure could appease by
a few tears a little reformation or the like, they would not be
so great enemies, nor hate Him so much as they do.” In other
words, Edwards goes on to say, if we could mold God in a little
idol to make Him how we would like Him to be, we would love
Him more. We would not hate Him. We would
not be at war. But God, Edwards goes on to say,
shows Himself to be an implacable enemy to their idols and has
threatened everlasting wrath, infinite calamity for all that
they do in the service of their lusts. And this makes them incurable. Irreconcilable enemies to him. And unless God. Steps in and intervenes and interposes
a peace treaty, they are doomed. to forever battle this war out
to the very death. But God is the God of peace and
Jesus is the Prince of peace. That is the very reason that
Christ came. Remember, in those opening pages,
even of Luke’s gospel, it spoke of Christ that he was to shine
on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death to guide
our feet into the way of peace. And it’s not talking about political
peace. Even the angels, as they proclaimed
Christ at His birth, glory to God in the highest and on earth
peace among men with whom He is pleased. It’s God’s prerogative
to spread the peace treaty. God’s message was and is and
always will be a message of peace. God is the one that enacted this
peace treaty. God is the one that pleads with
sinners to lay down their sword. Paul encapsulates this very thought
when he calls the gospel, the good news of Christ. He calls
it the gospel of peace in Ephesians 6.15. And so we come to this backdrop. of 2 Corinthians 5, verse 11,
which will carry us all the way down through 2 Corinthians 6,
verse 10. And it is all about reconciliation. It’s all about this whole ministry
of reconciling sinners to God. Those who have gone astray, have
sinned, and are grievously, unless God intervenes for them, hopelessly
locked away in a battle with God. In order to end the war, there
must be reconciliation. And God sent His Son, Jesus Christ,
to reconcile people to Himself for the very purpose of bringing
about peace. Ephesians 2 says it this way,
But now Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly
far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for He
Himself is our peace. who made both groups into one
and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing
in His flesh the enmity, the battle, the war, which is the law of commandments
contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the
two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them
both in one body to God through the cross, having put to death
the enmity.” God is against this war. God will have an end to
this war. God would have an end to the
war in many sinners hearts. And it’s to that great end that
Paul lays before us this passage as a great call in our own lives,
having been saved, that we are to engage in this ministry of
reconciliation. We are to be used by God in this
ministry of reconciliation. God would have us to participate. Look, if you would, and I want
to pick up so we can get a running start. Pick up, if you would,
in verse 18 of chapter 5, where Paul says, now all these things
are from God, pointing back to verses 16 and 17, speaking of
our salvation and the glorious state that we now find ourselves
in as saints. Now, all these things are from
God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation. Namely, that God was, in Christ,
reconciling the world to Himself. Not counting their trespasses
against them, And He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. God didn’t leave us out of the
loop in this great ministry of reconciliation. We pondered these
verses for some time last week. That first and foremost, reconciliation
is toward God or to God in Christ. God sent Christ to be the propitiation
for sin so that he might receive sinners to himself, having been
saved. Reconciliation is not only to
God through Christ, but it’s a ministry gift from God. It is given to us as a gift. That’s the language of the passage. But thirdly and finally, reconciliation
is by means of the Word. And so we have been equipped
We’ve been called to rise up to the occasion of participating
in this glorious ministry of reconciling sinners to Christ,
and we’ve been given everything that we need. He says, we have
the Word. Given that, given that great
truth, Paul issues a great call, a challenge, a summons, if you
will, when he says in verse 20, therefore, we are ambassadors
for Christ. as though God were making an
appeal through us. We beg you, on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.” And I want you to note the depth and the
intricacy of the divine participation in this reconciliation. In the
first portion of this little verse, we have Christ as the
main focus. We are ambassadors for Christ. But it’s as though God were making
an appeal through us. In the lower part of the verse,
it’s God who is the main focus. We beg you be reconciled to God. And it is Christ who stands behind,
undergirding that great verse. We beg you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God. But here, this ministry of reconciliation
in this great and intricate verse is spoken of as our indispensable
duty. We cannot not participate. Just as God has shown himself
desirous of reconciling us to himself and with many of us he
has, we ought to be eager to fulfill our part in meeting God’s
desire to have others reconciled to him. One Puritan summarized it in
these terms. He said, this is the great end
and the design of the gospel, the word reconciliation to prevail
upon sinners, to lay aside their enmity against God. Christ’s
ambassadors are sent to deal with sinners on peace and reconciliation. They come in God’s name with
his entreaties and they act in Christ’s stead, doing the very
thing he did when he was upon the earth. that what He wills to be done
now that He is in heaven. God doesn’t lose, in a sense,
as one commentator pointed out. God doesn’t lose this war. God
isn’t hurt by this war. It’s not that God wants to put
an end to it because it’s damaging His reputation or His character
or His resources. He’s not depleted in the least
by this ongoing battle of sinners against Him. The interesting
thought, the commentator went on to point out, nor is he a
gainer by the peace. If there wasn’t even a soul saved,
God loses nothing really. God Himself isn’t diminished
in the least. And yet, yet God pleads. begs, as it were, sinners to
lay aside their enmity and to come to Christ, to accept the
terms that he lays down, to come to the mediator who is Christ
and Christ alone. I want to take just a brief perspective
of this short little passage. What I’ve entitled the godly
beggars plea. And what we’re looking at is
the nature or the kind of work that the heavenly peacemaker
engages in. In our service to God, first
and foremost, for his kingdom. We speak as emissaries who bear
a king’s message, look at the passage. And you note that right
off the bat, it begins with therefore, and those of you who have already
begun to exercise diligent Bible study know that you’ve got to
look for the reason behind that and you’ve got to look to the
context. The context, the immediate context
is verses 18 and 19, as we just read, namely, now all these things
are from God and so on. But the context here shows what
Paul is referring to is not just the fact that we ourselves have
been reconciled. There is motivation there as
well. And in a sense, there’s motivation
enough that just the fact that we had been reconciled would
be cause enough for us to go out and tell others where we
found food, spiritual food. Having been reconciled, we would
seek to be reconcilers. That would be reason enough.
But also that we have been explicitly tasked, we have been given the
ministry of reconciliation, that is a double. Command to us, God
has reconciled us to himself. We are saved, God has given us
the ministry of reconciliation, we are dispatched, God has committed
to us the word, the gospel, we are equipped. Therefore, therefore, we are ambassadors. We go. That’s the flow of the
passage, because God has done all of this, saved me, sent me
and equipped me. Therefore, we go. The word ambassador, we tend
to think of it in somewhat stale modern minds as
the stodgy people with the tall hats that go and minister in
times of great crisis. But the word ambassador is a
rich one. The word ambassador represents a king from whom he
is sent. Everything that the ambassador
does is by design by the king that he represents. The root
word for this original is presbyo, which you probably hear ties
in with presbyteros or elder of the church, typically older
men. The term is an appropriate one,
as one pointed out, because ambassadors in those days were expected to
be men who were wise and discreet and exercised great wisdom and
decorum. Paul was an ambassador. Paul
identifies himself in Ephesians 6.20 as an ambassador in chains. He was one who was sent. Sent
by a king. Didn’t have a message of his
own. Paul did what God wanted him
to do. And that’s what we’re called to. Being an ambassador
in those days was a very important duty. To go from one nation to
another. To speak on behalf of the sovereign
that you represented was a very solemn task. It was a very highly
regarded duty. People were very highly respected
as ambassadors because the ambassador was a messenger, but he was also
a representative of the one who had sent him. One characterized
it this way. He said the ambassador before
acting receives a commission from the power for whom he acts.
He doesn’t do anything. In other words, unless the king
sends him, unless the king motivates and prompts and dispatches the
ambassador while acting, acts not only as an agent, but as
a representative of his king. The ambassador’s duty is not
merely to deliver a definite message, to carry out a definite
policy, but he is obliged to watch opportunities, to study
individuals, to seek expedience so that he may place it before
his hearers in its most attractive form. You wanted the wisest man
to go before the nation on your behalf. An ambassador essentially
did not speak his own words. He did not exercise authority
of his own. He did not act on his own, independent
of anyone. But he was in place of the king
that he was representing. It was his ultimate duty to proclaim
with great faithfulness and precision the messages that were given
to him. Essentially, It could be well
said that the voice of the ambassador was to be the voice of the king.
Another characterized it in very graphic terms when he said, an
ambassador is at the same time a messenger and a representative.
He does not speak in his own name. He does not act on his
own authority. What he communicates is not his
own opinions or demands, but simply what he has been told
or commissioned to say. What a hedge for us. What a safeguard
for us to not have to go outside of God’s Word, to not have to
invent plans for mankind. In fact, that’s exactly where
the church has gotten off task, hasn’t it? In beginning to offer
other helps, whether psychological or some kind of personal help
that goes outside of God’s Word. But the ambassador’s message
comes from the king. But at the same time, he’s more
than a messenger. He goes on, he represents his
king. He speaks with authority. He
is accredited to act in the name of his master. And so any neglect,
any contempt or any injury done to him in his official capacity
is not a personal offense, but an offense to the king or the
state by which he’s commissioned. And we would do well to remember
that. that if they hated Christ and we are His ambassadors, they
will hate us as well. But ultimately, the rejection
of the message of Christ is a rejection, not of us, but a rejection of
Christ Himself. Some weeks ago in the Institute,
we read about ambassadors where Martin Lloyd-Jones used
this very passage as an illustration. And he used it to talk about
preaching. And I don’t want you to misunderstand that it’s not
just preachers who were called to be ambassadors. It’s all of
us who are in Christ, called to serve as ambassadors, called
to go wherever we are and to be Christ’s emissaries to our
neighbors, to our friends, to speak God’s Word to them, to
bring God’s message, to be God’s representative. Nevertheless,
Lloyd-Jones said it this way with regards to true preaching.
And what better place to start than there? Any true definition
of preaching, he said, must say that a man is there to deliver
the message of God. A message of God to those people.
He is an ambassador for Christ. And to go outside of this is
a most grievous error. and a most grievous offense to
God.” He goes on and says, he has been sent. He is a commissioned
person. And he is standing there as a
mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. And just as an ambassador lives
in a foreign land, we too live in a foreign land. We don’t belong
here anyway. So we might as well speak on
behalf of the king and speak as the one to whom we will return
and to whom we will answer. Paul said, even though we are
citizens of heaven, we represent our king in this world. As Peter
said, we live as aliens and strangers, which speaks of that homegoing
that we will enjoy as ambassadors. We will be called home. We will
be summoned home. Note again, if you look at the
passage, we are ambassadors for Christ. We’re not ambassadors
for our denomination. We’re not ambassadors for our
particular viewpoints. We’re not ambassadors for ourselves,
which is occupies the greatest amount of our concern, doesn’t
it? We’re so concerned about what people think about us. What
people think of our viewpoints. But we’re ambassadors for Christ.
There are two possible senses that this could be taken once
one laid it out this way in Christ’s behalf or for his sake, in other
words, to promote his interest, we are ambassadors for Christ
and that’s appropriate. The other way of taking this
would be to say that we are ambassadors for Christ that is in his place. as his substitute, as his representative. And in a sense, it’s both. But
the second is better because to act as an ambassador for someone
is to act in his name or to be his representative. And the whole
nature of that mission, the whole purpose for which we have been
sent occupies the whole rest of this verse. Look again at
verse 20. Therefore, We are ambassadors
for Christ as though God were making an appeal through us. God had long used ambassadors,
hadn’t He? Beginning with the angels that
God sent. Beginning with Moses and the
prophets and all of those that God had sent. They always were
sent with God’s message, not their own. And so we don’t find
it to be surprising that it’s God ultimately who is making
the appeal through us. That little Greek word can be
translated a number of different ways, exhort, rebuke and so on. And so it’s an interesting translation
here that God is said to be making an appeal. I think sometimes
the church wrongly pictures God as up there twiddling His thumbs
and worrying whether people will come to Christ. We know that
some will. All of His sheep will come to
Him. All of the elect will be saved. And yet, here we find God being pictured as making an appeal,
a plea to be reconciled. What a loving, merciful God. And we find it to be true. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul began this epistle in verse
3 of chapter 1 where he called Him the God and Father of all
mercies and comfort. This is the merciful God that
looks to sinners and pleads with them to put down their sword,
pleads with them to come to the treaty that is signed in the
blood of His Son. This is our merciful God. But
the fact that God is entreating through us is a momentous, almost
shocking observation that God wants to use us as His emissaries
and then plead through us But that’s exactly what God did with
those prophets, faithful prophets who were willing to go when they
were sent, willing to obey when they were dispatched. And it
has this resonance, doesn’t it? This ambassadorship that we now
possess has the same feel to it of thus saith the Lord. When
we go, we don’t have to apologize for Scripture. We don’t have
to prove Scripture. We take the Word and we say,
this is what God’s Word says. Thus saith the Lord. There is
one Savior. Thus saith the Lord. That Jesus
died on the cross. Thus saith the Lord. When the ambassador for Christ
pleads with others to come to Christ, he pleads with the voice
of God, as it were, entreating through him an overwhelming thought
that his message and his authority and his power are imparted to
us by the Lord, that Christ’s messengers are really just mouthpieces,
ambassadors and that God actually does the entreating through him.
We looked at a passage a few weeks ago in another I want to
take you back to 1 Thessalonians. I want to take you back to 1
Thessalonians chapter 2 because I want to show you that even
the greatest evangelist of all, even the greatest apostle the
church knew, the writer of the book of the New Testament, the
greatest pastor, the greatest evangelist, did not lay claim
to a message of his own, but he rejoiced in the privilege
of being the mouthpiece of God. Look at 1 Thessalonians 2, verse
1. You yourselves know, brethren,
that our coming to you is not in vain. And there you have this
burst of light and hope. Success. Paul had come to the
Thessalonians and he, by their own recollection, points out
that his ministry among them was quite successful. But after we had already suffered
and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we have the boldness
of our God to speak to you the gospel amid much opposition.
As an ambassador, he went and he did what he was told. Nothing
more and nothing less. For our exhortation does not
come from error or impurity or by way of deceit, but just as
we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel,
so we speak. We don’t add anything. We don’t
take anything away from it. So we speak. Not as pleasing men, but God
who examines our hearts. For we never came with flattering
speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from men,
either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ,
we might have asserted our authority. And if you would skip to verse
13. For this reason, we constantly
thank God that when you received the Word of God, which you heard
from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but for what
it really is. The Word of God, which performs
its work in you who believe. And so this whole crass mentality
of putting notches in your belt for everyone that you lead to
Christ is misguided. It’s God that leads them to God. It’s God’s Word that points them
to Christ. If we go and we preach or we
speak or we hand out a tract or whatever conversation in which
we engage, if a person ultimately comes to Christ, it’s God’s Word
by God’s Spirit that leads them there. Even the Apostle Paul
was humble enough to acknowledge that as an ambassador of Christ,
it was God who was making an appeal through him. It wasn’t
Paul. It wasn’t his eloquence. But there’s a second, second
major point to this great section. We’re considering the nature
of this work in which we’re engaged as heavenly peacemakers. And
in our service to God for his kingdom, we speak not only as
those who bear a king’s message, But secondly, we plead as representatives
of him who made a savior’s sacrifice. Look again at verse 20, therefore,
we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making an
appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ
be reconciled to God. We beg you. And you get the note
here, the sense that Paul is deeply involved with this Gospel. Paul is emotionally wrapped up. Paul is fully invested in this
ministry that God had called him to. You get the sense of
he is absolutely pleading, burning out as God would have him to
for the sake of this message. That Christ had come for sinners.
The message of reconciliation is not something that we should
be casual about, or not something, as one said, that the ambassador
announces with impersonal detachment. As if you come up to someone
and say, here’s a tract, if you would like one, read it if you’re
able, and call me on the number on the back. And sadly, so many
are not personally invested. There is no emotion. There is
no effort. There’s nothing there. There’s no heart for the Gospel.
There’s no urgency. There’s no longing for the salvation
of souls. There’s no burdensome prayer
that weighs on them over and over again that ultimately bubbles
to the surface and says, we beg you, It reminds me of Jonah. So many
people remind me of Jonah who didn’t want to go in the first
place. And yet, if you pick up chapter four, go ahead and pick
up their turn to Jonah. We have a minute. We have a lot
of minutes. Jonah, chapter four, it’s in
the clean portion of your Bible. And in Jonah 4, verse 1, it says,
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. We know what happened the first
time. He was told to do what God wanted him to do. He did
exactly the opposite. Went exactly in the opposite
direction. Ultimately, God appointed a storm
and a fish and then commanded the fish to spit him out. Brought
him to repentance. And Jonah finds himself Right
back where he started. The word of the Lord came to
Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great
city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I’m going
to tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to
the word of the Lord. That’s what a prophet is supposed
to do the first time. That’s what an ambassador does.
Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days walk. And don’t miss the imagery here
because it’s absolutely rich. Then Jonah began to go through
the city, a one day’s walk. Did you ever see those race walkers?
They used to be in the Olympics. I don’t think it’s an Olympic
sport anymore, but that’s what I picture when I think of Jonah
going through Nineveh, you know, and that’s his attitude. His
attitude is all over the place and you’ll see it more in a minute.
But Jonah’s going through the city like a race walker, about
to throw his hips out of joint. He’s going so fast because he
can’t wait to get out of there because the bottom line, he doesn’t
want them saved. He’s not really an ambassador.
He wants his plan, not God’s. Then Jonah began to go through
the city, a one day’s walk, and he cried out and said, yet 40
days and Nineveh will be overthrown. than the people of Nineveh, shockingly
believed in God. And they called a fast and put
on a sackcloth from the greatest to the least. When the word of
the pardon me, when the word reached the king of Nineveh,
he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered
himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes. Repentance, salvation
had come to Nineveh. They had turned. By God’s grace,
from their wicked ways, they had heeded the word of the Lord.
The very design of the prophet and the ambassador. And in verse
10, picking up there. Pardon me, verse 10 of chapter
3, if I had you in the wrong chapter the whole time. Verse
10 of chapter 3, when God saw their deeds that they had turned
from their wicked way, then God relented concerning a calamity
which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not
do it. What a glorious day it is, right? How happy the ambassador
must be that God’s message was heard and heeded and that people
were saved. But it greatly displeased Jonah.
Chapter 4, verse 1. He was greatly dismayed at this.
This is the most shocking part of the story. Well beyond that
a fish could swallow a man and all that other part of the story. It greatly displeased Jonah.
The souls were saved that the people repented from their sin
and turned their hearts. And he became angry, it says.
He prayed to the Lord. Please, Lord, was this not what
I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order
to forestall this, I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this salvation. I fled to Tarshish. For I knew
that you were a gracious and compassionate God. Ultimately,
Ultimately ends his little speech to God is the pouting prophet
with please kill me. This is such bad news. I just
want you to kill me. And I tell you, that is the attitude
of so many of us. We didn’t want to go anyway.
And so we go with kind of a half hearted approach. We kind of
toss the gospel in like some little element in a salad. In
the midst of our conversation, There’s no sense of urgency.
There’s no personal investment. There’s no motivation. There’s
no emotion. And as one said, the message
of reconciliation cannot be something which Christ’s ambassador announces
with personal detachment. He has been entrusted with the
vital news for people in desperate need. It is for this reason that
He begs His hearers. He sees people as God sees them
in a lost state. He has the Word which, because
of the fact that it’s a Word of reconciliation, is a Word
above all else that they need to hear. And because He is proclaiming
what God in His mercy and grace has already done for them in
Christ, His voice has the authority of the voice of God. The begging, this begging that
Paul talks about, people begging others to be reconciled, makes it clear that Paul knew,
if no one else, Paul knew that people desperately were under
the wrath of God and under God’s judgment and desperately needed
reconciliation, desperately needed Christ, desperately needed a
Savior. And it’s in that sense that Paul
says, we beg you. That sounds funny to our modern
ears. But this is the godly beggars
plea. That if we are in Christ, it is only because of God’s doing,
God has reconciled us to himself. We are as beggars, but it’s a
different kind of begging. We are pleading with people to
be reconciled to God. Let me tell you a little story
of probably the last time I preached this passage, and I really didn’t
even recall it until I came to this verse. It was at a funeral. We had a ministry in our church
in Iowa. We had a good man, a very good
man who complained of a backache. One day, the next day, it was
worse. I went down, prayed with him. His wife had gotten it had
gotten so bad that his wife had called the ambulance to take
him up to town. They took him up to town, took
him to the hospital, and by noon he was in heaven. Died of a heart
attack on his way by helicopter to a bigger hospital in a bigger
city. And so I did his funeral and I can remember talking with
Marge and sitting there and with his Bible in my lap and just
flipping through at the verses that Lou had marked up. And when
I preached the sermon, I just went through the verses that
he had marked up as a testimony and a final message to all of
his friends. And they said that he was such
a lover of Christ and a lover of others. He would go on his
little Pepsi route and he would go into the stores and he would
he would bring them their Pepsi, but he would also bring them
just a happy heart and he would always tell them about Christ.
This is the testimony of unbelievers that would tell me this. And
so I’m reading through Lou’s Bible and I came to this passage.
And at the end of it, At the end of it, I got down
on my knees and I read this passage that Lou had underlined. Therefore,
we are ambassadors for Christ. We beg you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God. And I remember making a beeline
after the sermon to Marge. It wasn’t planned. I hadn’t told
her. At first, I asked her forgiveness for being so dramatic. And she
just sobbed and said, that’s exactly what Lou would have wanted. Lou had the passion that Paul
has that so many of us lack. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. And note,
first of all, that Paul doesn’t say reconcile yourselves. Build yourselves up. Pull yourself
together. Reform yourselves. It reminds me very much of that
passage in the Gospel of John where Nicodemus comes to Christ.
Remember? Kind of sneaking around. Kind
of lurking. Doesn’t want anybody else to
know that he’s there visiting Jesus. Jesus knew his heart because
he knew all men. The previous passages tell us.
During the course of his interaction with Nicodemus, he says you must
be born again, but he never tells Nicodemus to do a single thing. He just simply tells Nicodemus
what desperate condition he’s in, that he is absolutely desperately
in need of rebirth and that unless God visits him with that. He is doomed. We have the privilege of pointing
people on Christ’s behalf to lay out the entirety of the gospel
message, not just to tell them what desperate straits they’re
in, but to tell them that there’s hope, that there is a peace treaty
that is already signed with Christ’s own blood, the blood of the cross,
and that he stands pleading for them to lay down their weapons
and come to Christ. He doesn’t say reconcile yourselves,
but be reconciled, embrace the offer that is given you by faith. You’re called to faith. Essentially,
all we have to do is not refuse the offered love of God. Open
your hands, open your heart and receive it. And there’s a major question
here. To whom is Paul speaking with whom is Paul pleading be
reconciled to God, the Corinthians? It doesn’t make any sense at
all, because for now five chapters, Paul has been talking to them
as those in Christ. And some took that route. Some
commentators said that the believer has daily need to avail himself
of the offer of peace. In a sense, I mean, we have to
daily feast on God’s grace, but we don’t come to Christ in a
new sense every day. We don’t receive salvation every
day. We grow in respect to salvation
every day. But most others, including me,
took this approach regarding this question, to whom is Paul
talking, with whom is Paul pleading to be reconciled to God? One
summed it up in these terms, he said, and at this point, Paul
is concerned with the ministry of reconciliation for the world
at large. rather than a particular little
application to a town called Corinth. He is referring not
to the requirements of believers, but to the evangelistic duty
of Christ’s ambassadors to go into the world and announce the
good news and reconciliation to everyone, pleading with men
to receive as their own what God had freely provided in his
son. And so, as one commentator Translated
it. He left out what he called the
inessential pronouns and essentially the sentence shakes out like
this. We beg on Christ’s behalf. Be reconciled to God. That’s
our message. Wasn’t to be taken as a direct
address. And those are. Our marching orders,
that is our commissioning. that we are ambassadors for Christ. And as we go, we have the hope
of pleading with others, of essentially letting God plead through us,
through the words that he gives to us as we minister to others.
And ultimately, we beg them to be reconciled to God, to a God
that has done everything. We go on behalf of Christ. Let’s
plead for Christ’s grace that we can please Him in that. Let’s
pray. Our merciful God, we thank You
and praise You that of all the gifts that You give us over and
above salvation, and they are so many and so plenteous, the
thought that You would include us in this great ministry of
bringing others to the spiritual nourishment, to spiritual life,
and to forgiveness to Christ. To think that you would include
us in that is so overwhelming. Such a great privilege. Grant
us the grace, Father, to be faithful in that. And Lord God, if there
are any here who do not know that they are saved. Father,
we pray that you would stir their hearts to seek out any of the
ambassadors here in our midst, that we would eagerly reach out
to them and lay out the gospel with clarity and simplicity that
Christ died for sinners and that there is forgiveness and eternal
life available for all. Lord God, we thank You and praise
You. We pray that even today might be the salvation of some.
It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray, Amen.