The Ministry of Reconciliation – 2 Corinthians 5:11-21

The crux of Paul’s message in 2 Corinthians 5 comes in the last six verses.  It begins with his statement that he – and those who are also in ministry with him – no longer regard anyone from a human point of view though once he and others knew Christ from such a view.  Paul is recognizing that the disciples – and even himself – did not understand who Jesus really was.  Their first impression was that this was a learned man who spoke with authority and explained many mysteries around the word and wisdom of God; but there was no real recognition that there was anything to Jesus beyond the physical presence that they traveled with, ate with and observed in his interactions with people of different ethnic and social backgrounds.

But that changed over time and the more that the disciples came to know about Jesus, their eyes were opened and their minds came to understand that this was a person unlike any the world had ever known.  The revelation that this was the Son of the God of their ancestors, the one sent by the Father to be the sacrifice for their sins and the sin of the world did not become real until after all the events of Jesus’ life had taken place and he appeared to them in the upper room.  From then on, they could not imagine Jesus as simply a wise teacher or even as a miracle worker. The resurrection from the dead was the proof that this person was far more than flesh and blood.  God himself had come among them, lived with them, died for them, and was raised from the dead in order to assure the disciples that indeed God desired not that this be the only life they would know but that there was life beyond this life.  But although that life would become real to them only at the end of this life, their journey began at the moment that they accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and committed themselves to the ministry that he gave them with the strength, wisdom and support of the Holy Spirit.

Paul affirms in his letter that each one who is a believer in Christ is already a new creation.  What he means by that is that while we continue to live this life, we are living a new life within us. We have been recreated by God in Christ. Outwardly we do not appear to be different than we were before we accepted Christ but inwardly we have changed – not perfectly or completely but the process has started.  For Paul the old has passed away for it no longer has a hold on the lives of the believers. Everything has become new in his eyes.  It is a moment of revelation for him and yet more than a moment for it is something that he is grateful for each day of his life.  And while he often expresses his desire to leave this world and be with his Lord, he accepts that what God has begun in him will never leave him and that he can spend as many days as he will be given spreading the message of God and drawing others to be made new in Christ as well.

Paul then begins to write about the ministry of reconciliation.  But before there can even be a ministry of reconciliation, there needs to be a decision by God to be reconciled with us.  Whether Paul was aware of John’s Gospel or not, the words from John 3:16 seem to resonate through Paul’s declaration that God reconciled us to himself through Christ.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

And so began the ministry of reconciliation.  Each teaching, each miracle, each phase and moment of Jesus’ life was a revelation of the reconciling decision of God. The choice to believe, the choice to follow, the choice to accept God’s reconciliation was left to each person to make.  The wonderful and mysterious part of all of this is that the ministry of reconciliation revealed by Jesus was not just something reserved for those who would choose to believe, follow and accept.  Everyone in the whole world is given the gift of reconciliation with God who made the decision to forgive the trespasses of all humanity – past, present and future – not allowing our independent nature and our free will to decide for ourselves the path we would choose to prevent anyone from coming to recognize and accept God’s gift of forgiveness and life.

The departure of Christ in a physical way from this world might have brought this plan of God to reconcile the world to him to an end but the plan was not just for Christ to bring the message for one generation.  The plan was for the message to be picked up by those who had come to believe and who had experienced the peace and joy of knowing that they were reconciled to God and that their sins were forgiven.  And the plan was to keep on spreading that message until the time of Christ’s return.  That return was expected in the lifetime of Paul and the other apostles but they were counting time as humans for whom a hundred years was potentially a lifetime but for God whose presence has been in the world since the beginning of all time, time is not measured as we would measure.

And so we have been granted the opportunity to experience the message of God’s reconciliation and we have been granted the opportunity to participate in the ministry of reconciliation for our time.

Now Paul does not flesh out – so to speak – the ministry of reconciliation in this part of his letter. Here he has emphasized to the Corinthians the fact that he and others who have been called as ambassadors for God have been given the responsibility to  tell people about God’s decision and invite them to accept this gift of God into their lives.  But a large part of the ministry of reconciliation goes beyond the acceptance of this gift of God for our own lives.  God’s decision to reconcile with us and forgive our trespasses, our sins is to be for us an example that we are to follow and put it into practice in our daily lives.  All of us are guilty of sin and all of us have had experiences that have caused us to become distant or separated from people in our lives.  God’s decision to reach out and forgive is to be for us a motivation to be reconciled with one another seeking to forgive and to be forgiven for ways, words, actions or whatever may have been the cause of our separation from one another. Not an easy thing to contemplate or to even imagine taking the steps needed.  But just as Christ did and as the apostles did, we need to be mindful that whatever might be the cost to seek reconciliation, when we do so we are following in the footsteps of the One who not only brought reconciliation to this world but whose very life and death and resurrection ensured that this reconciliation was real and would never be taken away.

The last verse of Paul in chapter 5 says it all: For our sake God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might be put right with God.

AMEN