Ambassadors for Christ

A Bible study written by Darrell L. Guder
2 Corinthians 5:17-21

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"17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (New Revised Standard)

Seen through the lenses of the gospel, the world is desperately in need of reconciliation. Certainly
we would confirm that diagnosis-the news reported in any daily paper would document humanity's need to be reconciled. But the human diagnosis will not identify the problem as our need to be reconciled with God. We focus upon the brutal divisions that make nations, tribes, religions, and cultures into each other's deadly enemies. We struggle to find human resources to bring about the reconciliation for which we all long. The gospel defines creation's distress as the result of our separation from God. It is not merely a matter of human resources but of divine intervention. So, the gospel announces that God has intervened. Our separation from God and each other has been overcome, the chasm bridged, the opposing factions brought together. Our message starts with the assurance that in Christ there already is a new creation. The work of reconciliation was accomplished at Calvary, Easter, and Ascension Day. Thus, our calling to the role of ambassadors is a consequence of what God has already done. As ambassadors,
we are called into royal service, to bear this wonderful message to the world: your distress has
been resolved, your rebellion overcome, your separation ended. Nothing more needs to be done before the reconciliation can take place-except that we should accept and receive the gift of forgiveness and healing that seal our reconciliation. The unlikely ambassadors who make up the church of Jesus Christ are sent out to the world to make plain that God has transformed our plight on the cross of Jesus. We are to invite the world to receive what is already available and to claim what is already true. Of course, this means that the church itself must live out this wonderful reconciliation in every dimension of its life. So the call to be reconciled is still addressed to the church as well, so that we can embark upon the embassy to the world that is our calling: "Be reconciled to God" (5:20).

NOW
Our study reaches its climax and conclusion with this text. Again, all of the missional questions help us to encounter its formative power.
But the central question to consider as you read this passage is the mission question: How does this text equip us to be sent?

At the center of this text we encounter one of the apostle's greatest and strongest images for the missional church: We are ambassadors for Christ. It is linked to a major apostolic understanding of the gospel as God's action to reconcile the world to himself. This passage has been, through the centuries, one of the most influential and discussed interpretations of the Christian faith. For North American Presbyterians, this apostolic emphasis has particular importance as the dominant theme of our Confession of 1967. Our brief study can only highlight aspects of its meaning-there will always be more to discover as we revisit this text.

To get at its message for us, it is helpful to ask these questions: What has already been accomplished and by whom? What is currently happening and who is doing it? What remains to be accomplished and who will do it?

What has already happened? There is now a new creation. Everything old has passed away and everything has become new. Paul had already brought the theme of creation to mind when in 2 Corinthians 4:6 he spoke of the "God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness.'" With both of these references, the apostle asserts that the gospel event of Jesus Christ can only be compared to creation itself in terms of its significance and impact. John's prologue parallels the grandeur of this affirmation when it states that the Word through which all things were made is now the Word become flesh, living among us.

This mighty act of new creation is defined as reconciliation. God has reconciled us to himself
through Christ. God was present and working in Christ to reconcile the world to himself. God did not count their trespasses against them. For our sake, God made Jesus Christ to be sin, the very one who knew no sin. Why reconciliation? Because all of creation was pervasively distorted by human rebellion. Our human idolatries had left humanity in a posture of rebellion towards God. Our human history certainly attests to the consequences of that rebellion. Now, however, the hostile parties have been restored to fellowship with each other. This is a comprehensive claim: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." If this is true, then clearly all the old has been swept away, and there is only newness.

Who has accomplished all this? God is the subject of every aspect of this great work of reconciliation. Clearly the apostle is proclaiming what Peter calls "the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2:9b). The mighty acts of God in Christ center on the death and resurrection of Jesus, as was already emphasized in verses 14 and 15. Their outcome is already a completely new life, a new creation. As we just said, this new creation now lives in a transformed relationship with God in which what was formerly divided and at enmity is now restored in peace and wholeness. Because of what God has already accomplished, there is gospel, good news, to be made known. The gospel is the report of what has been conclusively accomplished for the salvation of humanity in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Nothing needs to be added to it.

What then is happening now, and who is doing it? The outcome of the once-and-for-all event of Jesus Christ is the gift of a new life, a new creation, a whole new beginning. This new way of living is no longer defined by human rebellion against God. It is reconciled living. In this life, those who live in Christ have "become the righteousness of God"-they have been accepted by God as righteous because Christ's death has removed their guilt and made them his children and his people. All of this emphasizes that the outcome of what God has done in the past is the present newness of life that we describe and experience as reconciled. Paul uses similar
words in Romans 5:1-2: "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand."

But this new way of living is not just a status to be enjoyed by all who receive this gift. With it comes a new task, a commission, which the apostle stresses by saying it twice: "God has given us the ministry of reconciliation . . . entrusting the message of reconciliation to us." God wants the world to know that this reconciliation is in effect, and so he has continued his ancient strategy to make it known. Just as God called Abraham as the father of a nation to bless the nations, the disciple community now becomes an apostolic church, empowered to carry this message into all the world. "By God's mercy . . . we are engaged in this ministry" (4:1).

Here is the clear missional mandate of the church! As a result of what God has done and of the transformation of our lives that has been accomplished, we are now ambassadors for Christ. What that means is immediately spelled out: "God is making his appeal through us." This is the necessary consequence of the love God has for the world. This is what must happen because God does not desire that any should be lost. God wants the world to hear and respond to this invitation. God wants humanity to enter into the full enjoyment of what is already true of the creation-from the cross of Christ on, all things are new, and the old has passed away.

With this definition of our calling as ambassadors for Christ, Paul summarizes what he has been
emphasizing from the beginning of the epistle when he addressed it to "the saints in Corinth." To be Christ's ambassadors, through whom God is making an appeal, is

• to be Christ's letter to the world,
• to be engaged in this ministry by God's mercy,
• to commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God by the open statement of the truth,
• to proclaim not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord,
• to be clay jars bearing this great treasure,
• to make the life of Jesus visible in our bodies,
• to believe and speak so that grace may extend to more and more people,
• to know the fear of the Lord and persuade others.

God continues to act, as God has acted in the gospel events themselves. But now God's action takes place through the church that is called into being to continue this ministry. God entrusts this message to us, and we are capable of receiving this trust because we are given the Spirit so that we can carry out our assignment. Good Friday, Easter, and Ascension lead up to Pentecost, the event that completes the gospel story. For the good news can only truly be good when it is proclaimed news, when the witnesses spread out from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth to make Christ known.

Does anything remain to be accomplished? And if so, who is to do it? It should be clear, as we come to the end of this study, that the church's agenda for the future is the continuation of faithful witness to the gospel. The language of this text implies continuing action. What has become new continues to become new. What has been reconciled continues to need and to experience reconciliation. God continues to do this as God's appeal is made through us. What has been converted must necessarily continue to be converted. "We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (5:20). The formation of the Christian church for its mission is a constant process of hearing the gospel, responding to the gospel, experiencing the healing of the gospel, and being sent by the gospel. We are always called to discipleship with Jesus so that he can equip us and send us out as his apostolic people. This continuing missionary mandate defines who we are and what we are for as the church of Jesus Christ in North America in the 21st century, as it did in Corinth in the first century.

We have often been misled over the centuries of Christendom to think that the missionary vocation of the church had been accomplished, in the same way that the work of salvation had been accomplished. As long as we could describe ourselves as Christian cultures and Christian nations, there was little sense of missionary vocation in our life as the church of Jesus Christ. The global missionary movement revived that sense of mission, but it was directed away from our own situation and interpreted only as our taking of the gospel to the unsaved overseas, beyond our boundaries. Now, that is a further dimension of oldness that has passed away. We are keenly aware, as we said at the beginning of this study series, that we are now living in one of the world's most difficult mission fields. Gradually we are beginning to understand how radically that changed context must reshape our sense of ourselves.

The Scriptures are God's tool to shape and form us for our missional vocation today-as they have always been. We hear that mandate today perhaps more clearly than we have for a long time. It is not easy, however, to re-engage God's Word as missional formation, when we have assumed for so long that mission was over and maintenance was our task. Paul speaks of our need to end all our conformity if we want to be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2). For the church at the end of Christendom, there are enormously complex and deeply rooted patterns of conformity to confront. It is hard work to have our minds renewed, but that is the precondition for the transformation for which we long. It will happen only when we are willing to make this kind of scriptural formation our priority-at the cost of many programs and activities we cherish, and even more tellingly, at the cost of much time. We have begun to explore how this might happen as we have brought our missional questions to this passage in 2 Corinthians. We have seen how clearly the apostolic instruction focused the Corinthian church on its mission, and how that translates to us in our context today. But there is clearly much work to do as we grapple with the entire Bible in this way!

We are certainly aware, as we look back over our history, that the apostle was very accurate when
he described the church as a clay jar. The Christendom church was not comfortable with that definition. We had a more elevated sense of ourselves. But now, after Christendom, such candor about who we are and how we function is welcome and healing. Repentance is good for the soul. It is good to admit that we are a church still needing conversion. It is good to approach Scripture expecting to be changed rather than assuming that we know already what we will find. It is wholesome to recognize that our only strength is in proclaiming Christ and not ourselves. It is humbling and encouraging to confess that we are engaged in this ministry by God's mercy alone, and through no qualifications or merits of our own.

The church is a community of unlikely ambassadors. We don't look like an ambassadorial company, and if we are honest (our integrity requires that we be honest!), we do not function with ambassadorial prestige and dignity. But that is precisely how God has chosen to accomplish God's mission in the world. "Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are" (1 Cor. 1:26-28). When we understand this divine strategy, we begin to glory in our clay-jar-ness, and we lose any desire to proclaim ourselves. The longing of the missional church is to "proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake" (4:5). For, in full view of our modest clay-jar existence, we cannot and must not evade the apostolic mandate: God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors for Christ, unlikely as we may be. We are Christ's letter to the world. We are empowered to see ourselves and the world with transformed vision, and no longer from a human point of view. This gospel is an incredible treasure that has been entrusted to us, and we will pass it on, eager to let everyone know that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

Discussion Questions:
1. How would you respond to the objection of some that there does not seem to be much evidence
in the church that "there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has
become new" (5:17)?
2. Where have you experienced the Christian community practicing the reconciliation that is our
message?
3. How do you think this message of reconciliation can be effectively communicated in our North
American setting today?
4. If our reconciliation has already been accomplished, why do we need to continue hearing the
entreaty, "Be reconciled to God" (5:20)?
5. Based upon your own re-reading of this text, what is clearly God's activity, and what is our
human activity? How do they relate to each other?
6. What are some practical implications of the apostolic calling to be "ambassadors for Christ" for
your congregation?

Let us pray:
We acknowledge with profound thanksgiving, loving and holy God, that you have brought about
a new creation and made everything new. We thank you that we can look back upon the wonder of your reconciling love in Jesus, and that we can look forward to the completion of your healing of all creation. We ask you to empower us to hear your clear mandate now; that we should continue faithfully in the ministry of reconciliation that you have given to us. Make us into a reconciled people so that we can both proclaim and demonstrate your reconciling and healing love to the world.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

About the Author
Darrell L. Guder is the Henry Winters Luce Professor of Missional and Ecumenical Theology at
Princeton Theological Seminary. His earlier seminary appointments were as the William A. Benfield Professor of Mission and Evangelism at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (1991-1997) and as the Peachtree Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Columbia Theological Seminary (1997-2001). He is a native Californian who completed his education in Germany with a Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, Guder has served as a student outreach pastor and as a faculty member of the Karlshöhe College in the German Lutheran Church, as minister of Christian education at Hollywood First Presbyterian Church, as director of the Institute of Youth Ministries of Fuller Theological Seminary and Young Life, and as vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of the faculty of Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. His publications include Be My Witnesses:
The Church's Mission, Message and Messengers 1983), and The Continuing Conversion of the Church (2000), The Incarnation and the Church's Witness (2000); he edited Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (1998). His translations of German theological works into English include Otto Weber's Foundations of Dogmatics, Eberhard Jüngel's God as the Mystery of the World, and together with his wife Judith, Karl Barth's Theology of the Reformed Confessions (forthcoming). Guder is active in the Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America, focusing on the missional challenges to the churches
in the cultures dominated by the earlier paradigms of Christendom. He serves as secretary-treasurer of the American Society of Missiology, on the Board of the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, and has worked with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches since 1964 as interpreter and coordinator of language and document services for its major meetings.

Recommended Further Reading
On 2 Corinthians and reading Paul from a missional perspective:
Bosch, David. 1979. A Spirituality of the Road, Scottsdale, Pa. Herald Press.
Bosch, David. 1991. "New Testament Models of Mission," in Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 15-180 (especially "Mission in Paul: Invitation to Join the Eschatological Community," 123-180).
Martin, Ralph P. 1986. 2 Corinthians (Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 40), Waco: Word Books.

On Biblical foundations for the understanding of the church's mission:
Arias, Mortimer. 1984. Announcing the Reign of God: Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of Jesus, Philadelphia: Fortress.
Blauw, Johannes. 1962. The Missionary Nature of the Church, New York: McGraw Hill.
Brownson, James V. 1998. Speaking the Truth in Love: New Testament Resources for a Missional Hermeneutic, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International.
LeGrand, Lucien. 1990. Unity and Plurality: Mission in the Bible, translated by Robert R. Barr,
Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.
Lohfink, Gerhard. 1984. Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith, translated by John P. Gavin, Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

On the missional theology of the church:
Guder, Darrell L. 1985. Be My Witnesses: The Church's Mission, Message, and Messengers, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Guder, Darrell L., ed. 1998. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Guder, Darrell L. 2000. The Continuing Conversion of the Church, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Hunsberger, George R. and Craig Van Gelder, eds. 1996. The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Hunsberger, George R. 1998. Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Cultural Plurality, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Newbigin, Lesslie. 1978, rev. ed. 1995. The Open Secret: Introduction to a Theology of Mission, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
Office of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). 1991. Turn to the Living God: A Call to Evangelism in Jesus Christ's Way, Louisville: Office of the General Assembly.
Scherer, James A. and Stephen B. Bevans, eds. New Directions in Mission & Evangelization I: Basic Statements 1974-1991, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992; see especially "Ecumenical Affirmation: Mission and Evangelism (1982)," 36-51; "Stuttgart Consultation" (1987), 65-72; "Mission in Christ's Way: Your Will Be Done" (San Antonio, 1989), 73-81.

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This study is taken from

Unlikely Ambassadors
Clay Jar Christians
in
God's Service

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Clay Jar Christians in God's Service is the final in a series of three General Assembly themes
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FIRST IN THE SERIES
For All Are One in Christ
The Unity and Diversity of the Body of Christ in Pauline Christology
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SECOND IN THE SERIES
Rooted and Grounded in Love
by The Reverend Dr. Eung Chun Park PDS order #OGA-01-003