Ambassadors for Christ and Righteousness
2 Corinthians 5:20-21 · Roger Henderson · May 15, 2022
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 107
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261926591672

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. We're going to continue on from last week, as you might have noticed already. And I must admit, the verses for today, especially verse 21, is... Monty said, Roger, you're going to talk in that verse? I said, well, we'll see. I must admit, I looked through maybe ten different commentaries, and...

We don't really know. It's an incredible statement, but we don't really know. Totally don't really know why the Lord... We know that He did that, but boy, it's amazing. Anyway, good stuff here today. Alright, so let's start it here. So I've labeled this, Ambassadors for Christ and Righteousness. Here's the outline. So today, this is a tremendous chapter. Chapter 4 was a tremendous chapter in 2 Corinthians. This is another just jam-packed chapter. We talked about the Bema. A couple of messages on that. Mike covered the love of Christ. The love of Christ controls us and motivates us.

In fact, we're a new creation a couple of weeks ago. and then last week the message of reconciliation and then this kind of continues on in the last two verses and then it actually continues on into chapter six a little bit and I'll cover that next week so all my messages these three times are on reconciliation and it deserves that and probably a lot more okay so with that in mind so I'm just going to go back and kind of review a couple charts of review here So, you know, if you think about reconciliation, the typical thing you think about, there's many situations, but one of the ones that comes to mind is like in a labor dispute, you have management versus employees, right?

And the employees want something, management wants something, and so they get together and they reconcile, right? There's an arbitrator, And so what happens is management says, we'll give you $10 more an hour. And the employee says, oh no, we've got to work less for $10 more an hour. And so they make some agreement, right? That's the human reconciliation. Well, forget all about that. God's reconciliation is totally different. And this is from Chaffer. He points out that reconciliation means that something or something is thoroughly changed and adjusted to something which is a standard, which is our God, our loving Heavenly Father.

God in His wisdom has changed his view of man, not that God has changed his view, not that God has changed from being wholly righteous and just, is that He, in eternity past, He and God the Son decided that this is the plan for man. This is how He would redeem or reconcile man. So God is the one that decided this. It's God's plan. And man is the one that's changed, not God.

Since the position of the world before God is completely changed through the death of Christ. God's own attitude toward man can no longer be the same. And his last point is that he, God, is prepared to deal with the soul now in light of what Christ has accomplished. You know, Christ's death changed the whole ballgame, if you will. It allowed God to extend to man salvation. Without Christ's death, that would have been impossible. I mean, this is all one-on-one for us, but that's true. So reconciliation just kind of comes at salvation, if you will, from a different perspective, and it's a wonderful perspective.

So I'm going to use my two summary charts from last week. I added a few more little bubbles to it. I'm into bubbles now. Bubbles on charts, you know, if you're if you're if you know PowerPoint, you know, the problem is I've been around PowerPoint too long I Had them I had the privilege I guess you could say I was starting with PowerPoint back in the 90s and Not that I'm an expert at it, but I just got it, you know, I feel comfortable with it So, you know bubbles are what they do in PowerPoint. So we're going to do bubbles here.

Okay, so verse 18 from last week This is God's reconciliation work So God is the author of reconciliation. It's His idea, His plan, His purposes. So actually there are five things in verses 18 through 19 that are presented. They're actually prepositional phrases, and so I'm going to list all five of those.

So the first one, having reconciled us to Himself through Christ. So God on His part has reconciled us, seeking believers here, to Himself through Jesus Christ. We see that idea here in Romans 5 10 a For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son as I pointed out last week You know scratch the idea that you're going to improve if you're if you don't know Christ if you don't understand what the message of reconciliation is you can improve yourself to understand it better in a sense you and God is the One that's taking the action.

He asks you to believe it. It's the death of His Son that He wants you to believe in. And the point is, we were enemies. He didn't wait until we became good. He did it while we were enemies. And two parts to that, two parts to this reconciliation work is through the death of His Son and having made peace. It took His blood, His blood on the cross to accomplish that.

So then, the second part of Romans 5.10 is, much rather, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life or by the power of his life. It was by his resurrection that we were saved.

So, based upon that, verse 18 says, we now have this, every believer, I've always thought about this, people sometimes come to church and they say, well, what can I do around here? What's my job? What should I be doing? Well, this verse tells us if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have a ministry. You don't have to wonder about it, pray about it, ask a friend. He tells you right here.

He's given to us, every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has been given this ministry of reconciliation. And then verse 19, he's going to amplify that more and make it more specific. But every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has this ministry of reconciliation. So that's verse 18. So the verse 19 starts off with God was in Christ and here's what God in Christ was doing.

And that phraseology is a little bit strange, maybe a little bit different, you see. It's just Christ is deity. He is totally God. And he is operating according basically to the eternal covenant, if you will. So the third point is he's reconciling the world to himself. And it's present tense, that's going on right now, 24-7.

And so the question comes up, what's the world? And the world in this context, there are a couple of different definitions, but the world in this context is the one whom Christ loved and whom he died for. That's the world. There are other parts, other ways that word is used, but in this context, it's the one whom God loved and whom Christ died for. That's the world.

So God is reconciling all of mankind to himself, present tense. The next part of this is not reckoning to the world or to unbelievers their trespasses. So here's the incredible thing. Man comes before a holy God and all that he has is sin. All he has to present is sin, his trespasses. But God says, no, I'm not going to account that to you. What God's going to do is He's not going to put that to our account or to the world's account.

He's going to put it to Christ's account. He's going to put all the sins of the world on Christ. And we're going to see that. 21 just really amplifies that so much. He's going to put our trespasses on the sinless Savior. It's all totally on Him. So man is free now to come to Him.

So what God has given us, every single believer, We not only have the message of reconciliation, I'm sorry, the ministry of reconciliation, we have the message of reconciliation. And I really like that word, what Wiest has done here. He says he has lodged in us the story of reconciliation. That's a song that I love to tell the story. We have that message in us. It's been put in us. Every single believer, because we've experienced salvation, we've experienced reconciliation, we have that message.

Maybe we aren't the best at telling it. Maybe we aren't quick on our feet or whatever it might be, but we have that message. And so, I think God is saying, and verse 20 is going to even make this more clear, that's what we're to be about. We're to be about His ministry and his message of his reconciliation, which is no more than the gospel message Okay, so that's a review of the last two verses from last week So today therefore based upon all that that we just read therefore we are ambassadors for Christ and so God were making an appeal through us we beg of you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God and He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him."

Just incredible. Incredible verses here. Okay, so let's just start with the first one here. The first phrase, therefore, since we have this message of reconciliation, We are ambassadors. An ambassador is one who represents another, who represents his sovereign, if it's in the case of a king.

I think in today's world, our world, in my mind, is so far heading down the tubes, it's hard for me to think of representing any country to anybody else. I don't know. At one time, that was a great honor. It seemed like you'd be honored. Let's take the King of England. ambassador for the king of England you would feel well I'm honored I'm representing the king of England to whatever it might be to this place anyway in today's culture that's kind of been corrupted I think but it's still we're representing our Lord and Savior we're his representatives and his present tense continuous action we are ambassadors And it's actually the idea of the word is we're doing the work of an ambassador. We're not only an ambassador, in this phraseology, we are doing the work of an ambassador. So an ambassador, what is he doing? He has his ministry and his message, right?

That's what he's doing. And I like, this is from Merriman, I like his phraseology here. Christ is not now here. So Christ is not now here, so we are his representatives. I mean, we all know that. We are his representatives. Christ is not now here. We are his representatives. In Ephesians, it uses the word ambassador. It kind of starts in the middle of an idea, for which I am an ambassador in change, that in proclaiming it, the gospel, I may speak boldly. And it says, for, we're an ambassador for Christ, or hupere.

And this Greek word is going to be pretty important in our study here. It's this word, it has a twofold meaning. And I'm not enough of a Greek scholar to understand, but it has these two ideas. And I read through a bunch of different things, and there's some debate about when you can apply both parts of this. But in all the verses today, you can imply both ideas. We are ambassadors on behalf of Christ and in His place. Kind of just incredible. On behalf of Him and in His place. We're on behalf of Him and taking His place as we present this message. So now, we'll see this preposition used. Paul will use it three times, in this verse twice, in 20, and then once in 21.

Okay, continue on, more on being an ambassador. So what Wiest does, which I love it, what I like to do is you study it, you look at it, and you say, well, how would I translate that? Well, thank you, Dr. Wiest. So how does he translate this first part of the verse? On behalf of Christ and in his place, we are acting as ambassadors.

Even the right verb tense, it's just amazing. I get excited about that. When I see, if I look at that and I see it there in the translation, wow, that's neat. Okay, so the gospel says, this makes us, the believer, God's ambassadors, one of the most exalted titles that a Christian can claim.

You think, we are We are on behalf of him in his place as we present our message of salvation to people Christ represents okay, this is kind of cool Merriman pointed this out Christ represents us the believer to God the Father We believers represent Christ to the world. I'll say it again Christ represents us to believers but us believers to God the Father and We believers represent Christ to the world. Pretty amazing, pretty amazing. So the gospel shares here, when Christ's ambassador entreats, it's equivalent to the voice of God entreating through him.

And I'm just amazed, so we get into this, it talks about we're appealing to man, we're asking, we're begging, we're saying, be reconciled to God. I mean, it's just, it's such a personal point that the believer has, the personal message that he has. Okay, so the middle part is here, as though, or as if, God the Father were making an appeal, and this is where parakaleo I think it's pronounced, to call upon someone to do something, to exhort, It's a present participle. So it's we're presently doing we're making an appeal or making an appeal So here's this word translate urge.

We also urge you to do to receive the grace of God not in vain Through our diya us By means of us for the focus on this message is the believer is central to God's plan He is the central aspect of God's plan for getting God's Word and the Savior out to mankind. He is the central focus of that.

Merriman kind of phrases it, we are the instrument through which God makes his appeal to mankind. God is not voices from heaven. And I don't think there's only angels appearing at your doorstep. You have other believers just like us in this body, just like us, sharing who Christ is and what He's done. That's how God desires it. Here's this amazing part.

So Ambassadors Authority, and this I thought was kind of interesting, I include this one last thought on Through Us. Ambassadors Authority announces a message to others, requests, not demands, acceptance. So in our giving out this wonderful message, we're not demanding that others believe, we're imploring them, we're begging them that they accept this wonderful message of reconciliation. We beg on behalf of Christ, We beg is the idea to be seeked, to pray, to ask.

In Galatians 4.12 it says, I beg you, brethren, become as I am, for I also have become as you are.

And here again, this is the second time we're going to see who pair. So we're to beg on behalf or in place of our Savior. We're begging people to respond to this message. And in this case, he doesn't use exactly what he says. He says, I beg of you, please, through us as his intermediate agents. I beg of you, please, through us as his intermediate agents. I wish he'd put in, I beg of you, put the full, you know, on behalf of and in place of. But anyway. OK. So, a little bit more. So, the point comes up, you know, I looked at this verse, some people get a little bit, the you in here, who's the you in this verse?

Well, it has to be, in my mind, it has to be unbelievers. You, unbelievers, be reconciled to God. And it's eris imperative active. I'm sorry, eris imperative passive, excuse me. God is the one that's reconciling men. Be reconciled to God at once. So what does this mean? Some people have thought it possibly could be the Corinthians, but they're already reconciled. We as believers represent God and the Lord Jesus Christ in reconciliation, so this message to them is to unbelievers. Reconciliation is provided to all unbelievers. And that's kind of an important point here, which I haven't made totally clear. has reconciled all mankind, but men must accept that reconciliation. Just like He paid for the sins of the entire world, we have to accept what God has done. Okay.

So, you think, well, this verse doesn't seem to fit. But if you think about it, it does fit. Okay, it starts off in the New American Standard, it says, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. Well, you'll notice in italics you have to be.

So those words have been supplied. So in the interlinear, which is a word-for-word translation from the Greek, and this is in the interlinear kind of rearranged. The one that I have and other people have, it shows you the order. So it's a little bit rearranged, but it's word-for-word from the Greek. The one not knowing sin, he has made sin on behalf of us. And that's our preposition we've been focusing here. We'll see a little bit more. So let's think about that for a second. So the first part I want to kind of concentrate on. The one not knowing sin.

Interesting in Sunday School, Andrew's spent a long time, Andrew Molloy spent a long time in our Sunday School class in 1 John on the fact that God is truth. He's the only source of truth. Well this is kind of a corollary to that, if you will. He's not only the source of truth, but he is totally sinless in his entire being.

Sin never entered his being, and never has entered his being, and never can enter his being. And scripture says a lot about this. And it's this word, Gnosko. So what it's saying is, he never experienced sin. Gnosko is a knower of experience, if you will. Taking in knowledge.

He didn't learn about sin. He knew what it was and he paid for it. But he didn't have to know about sin. He did know about sin. He did not know sin in an experiential way. That's how we translate that. He didn't experience sin. He didn't know about sin. So what does scripture have to say about the sinless Christ? It says things like this.

In Hebrews 4.15 it says, For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. but one who has been tempted in all things, as we are, yet without sin."

And then in 1 Peter 2.22, Christ who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth.

And then in 1 John 3.5 it says, you know that he appeared in order to take away sins, plural, and in him there is no sin. Actually, I think it when we haven't studied that yet, but I think it's probably no sin nature. I haven't Hold that in abeyance until we get to Anyway, but there's so these verses He's without sin. He committed no sin. There's no sin in him is no sin. And can we kind of continue on here? And Christ has no interaction with sin Since he is not tempted by sin and this first kind of confirms that I Let no one say, when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone.

And then another verse in Hebrews 7.26, For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. So he cannot be tempted by sin or evil, He's holy innocent undefiled separate from sinners Therefore Christ is fully God and fully man without a sin nature.

You know, it's funny. It's not funny, but it's interesting In in different Bible studies I've done actually Cheryl and I were in a Bible study and we had a gentleman who kind of said well, you know, I don't think Christ can be fully man because he's got to have a It's got to have man's nature, and I don't think he really understood what a sin nature is. He equated that to human nature. He said, well, Christ can't be fully man unless he has a human nature, and he equated that to sin nature. Well, you can't do that. Christ never had a sin nature, and so he's sinless in all his entire being.

And that's going to be crucial to this verse. Okay, let's get back to here. So we said, the one not knowing sin, our Savior Jesus Christ, He, God the Father, made sin on our behalf. Wow. He, God the Father, this word made is poio, to make a product, it has in view the end of the work, the display of the results, it's a past point fact. So in a point in time, a past point fact, He made Amazingly, the product of what God made is Christ to be sin. That's from Merriman. Sin is harmatia, to miss the mark of God's righteousness. So he made him sin. There's no definite article here. And I first thought, I said this before, I thought, well, maybe it's the sin nature. No, it's not that. So it speaks to the character of the thing.

Christ was made, and Michael has shared this, Christ was made the thing sin itself. Boy, you start just scratching your head and say, man, this is, the sinless Savior was made sin itself? Ah, man. Only the Father could do this to the Son. So the gospel shares, so complete was the identification of the sinless Christ with the sin of the sinner, Paul could say profoundly, God made him to be sin for us. So this is, as I mentioned, as I look through, so what does this mean? And so I'm going to put in the, you know, he was made sin on behalf of us who pair.

So here's Coates. I know Mike uses Coates a lot. Coates kind of says, throws a head and says, we can't understand what it was for him to be made sin. We can't. That's what Coates says. Constable says, there's no sentence more profound in the whole of scripture. that He was made sin for us. So what do we know? Let's take an inventory. Help us understand. What do we know about this?

Well, we first know in 1 Peter 2.24, He Himself bore our sins, plural, in His body on the cross. So we're all pretty well, this is pretty basic 101 we understand.

We understand that Christ bore our sins If we look at 1 John 2.2, he's a propitiation for our sins, plural. Not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. So we pretty well understand that he bore those. He paid the penalty for our sins.

Okay, we got that down. Then we know, if we're here at Holly Hills, we know this fact too. God has sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. This is a Weiss translation. Concerning and concerning sin condemning sin in the sinful nature So he condemned our sinful nature and by condemning it we were separated from it. We've been separated from it We were we were baptized into Christ. We were separated from our sin nature. So We have information about our sins plural the source of our sins the sin nature and this one this verse here seems to add another aspect to that So I put it in the Uist translation.

I add the word he in here, in the Uist. So using what Uist did, he uses the full definition of the hupeer. On behalf of us and instead of us, he was made sin. So I begin to rethink. I said, wow, if Christ didn't do this, if this final step wasn't taken, he did that on behalf of us in our place and instead of us.

It just kind of amplifies the rest of his dealings with sins, plural, and the sin nature. This is another aspect of that, being made sin. And how that happened? There's actually a gentleman that adds a little aspect here in a minute, I'll show you. But it's just, on behalf of, instead of us, he was made sin. But here's a wonderful purpose. So why did he do that? Why was he made sin on our behalf?

So that, with a purpose of that, We believers might become, this is a tremendous statement here, might become, ginome, come into a new state of being, a state that never existed before. It's a past point that we became, we became the righteousness of God in Him.

We couldn't become, this is the final step of our being saved. If we can't become the righteousness of God in Christ, then we can't have fellowship with Him. We can't have this intercourse with God the Father. We can't have this discussion or this fellowship with Him. We have to be on the same level with Him. We have to be righteous. So that only could happen as the first, that He was made sin for us.

So in Romans it says, here's some other verses about righteousness, even though the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. Then in 1 Corinthians 130 it says, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Okay, so just continue on.

So here's a paragraph that, Vani really liked this paragraph. She reviews all my stuff, she looks through it, she finds all kinds of mistakes I've made, I make many, and she said, boy I like this statement, so I'm going to read it carefully and see if you think this helps. Paul has chosen this exceptional wording, made sin for us, in order to emphasize the sweet exchange, whereby sinners are given a righteous status before God through the righteous one who absorbed their sins and is judgment in himself. I'll read it again. Paul has chosen this exceptional wording, made sin for us, in order to emphasize the sweet exchange, whereby the sinners are given his righteous status before God through the righteous one who absorbed their sins and his judgment in himself.

I'm still thinking about that. I'm interested in what Mike thinks. Talk to me about this first. Absorbed? I'm not sure. I don't know. It hangs on that word absorbed in my mind. I don't know. Is that made sin? Is that equivalent to being made sin? I don't know.

The tension here is Christ is totally sinless. He can't become sinless. He can't give that up. In my mind, He can't give that up. He who knew no sin became sin. He can't give that up. So you can't come to an understanding of being made sin that makes him sin. I'm sorry, that makes him a sinner.

That's what I'm trying to say. Okay, we see the problem with this verse. You're welcome to come up and teach anytime you want. So the riches of God's grace are many times explained, you know this verse has this statement which we all like, in Him, we just love, I mean, I know Courtney loves it, in Him, boy you see that, you say, right on Lord, thank you Lord, it's in Him, because we know that it can't be in us, okay?

So here's some examples, excuse me, Ephesians 1.4, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, Colossians 2 10 in him you have been made complete and here's one that we all really like Ephesians 3b Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus? So this wonderful blessing we have this wonderful exchange of him being made sin and as a result of that We are the righteousness of God in him Okay So I have final thoughts, and then I actually have a new thing I created this week. Andrew has final thoughts now. If you're in 1 John class, you get final thoughts twice, but that's another story. Anyway, so final thoughts, and then I have one last story after that. Okay, final thoughts. This is from Chafer.

He says, He Christ has wrought for them a complete reconciliation. Speaking about believers. and unbelievers, their position before God is vitally changed by being those for whom Christ died. God is satisfied with that which Christ has wrought as a solution of the problem of sin and its required judgment. When the sinner will believe and receive the provision to the point of being himself suited with that what satisfies God is quite another question.

It's kind of a tough paragraph there. To the end, the unsaved may believe the reconciling message is committed to us, to ambassadors who are appointed to go forth beseeching the unsaved world to be reconciled. Okay. Alright, so I have one last thought here. And I was thinking about the verse 20 where it talks about We have the message of reconciliation. I thought, well, what does that look like? Can I put together a chart that just has what we should be doing? So I said, well, let's start this way. All men have been reconciled by Christ's death on the cross. They all have been, but what do I do with that?

We beg you in Christ's dead. This is this is the body of Holly Hill saying this or any believer saying this We beg you in Christ's dead to be reconciled to God at once For all the sin and fall short of the glory of God For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life and Then here's here's what we're here's the gospel message. I Christ died for our sins, on behalf of our sins. Christ was buried. He only buried a dead man. Christ was raised. God raised him up again, since it was impossible for him to be held in his power.

So what do we do with that? And we see an ax there. It says this is a Philippian jailer. And after he brought them out, he said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved, you and your household. So I hope that was interesting. Next, we're going to go on into Chapter 6 a little bit. So let's have a word of prayer.

We thank you, Father, so much. We thank you for the wonderful message of reconciliation. Lord, we also thank you for this incredible statement about you were made sin on our behalf. And we thank you for that, Lord. We don't fully understand it, but we know that According to that verse, it was required for us to become righteous before a holy God, and we thank you for that. We ask it in His name. Amen.