Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

Restored in Christ’s presence, shaped by his life, this new community lives out the ongoing story of God’s reconciling love, announces the new creation, and works for a world of justice and peace. (OWBTG 39).

Ambassadors. Continuing with what Pastor Michael challenged us with yesterday, do you see this as an identity that fits the church at present? Does it fit you? Are you a diplomatic statesman or woman who represents the best of the kingdom of God in which your citizenship resides? Are you a practitioner of that counter-cultural art of Christian statecraft that before all else is the offering of a message of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace?

There are a few arresting realities given to us in this brief little passage. Firstly: Christ became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. There are a number of Christians anxious today about the wrath of God coming against sin and sinners, as if the burden is on our shoulders as individuals or churches to escape this wrath. But that misses a critical point: the wrath has fallen on Christ. Not on his church. He became sin for us. When God looks at us: he sees righteousness—no matter how badly we continue to struggle with sin in this life. For those in Christ, our sins are not counted against us. Jesus paid it all. Period.

That brings us to the second arresting reality this passage drops on us. We are, already right now, utterly new creations in Christ. The old has gone, period. The new is here, period. Our identity and reality has changed completely. It may not look that way when we glance in the mirror or reflect on our lives, but again, the challenge is to see reality as God sees it, not as it looks from here. In the eyes of God, the kingdom has already come, we have already become his righteousness, we have already become the new creations that we look forward to in that new heaven and new earth. Challenge yourself to see in the mirror this strange new reality of new creation that God sees. Let it shape your self-perception and your perception of the church—and let it shape the way that you live! Live like the you are the person that God says you are!

When we believe and live these things—these things that no eye can see and no ear can hear, save through the gift of faith—we do, by our very presence and witness in the world, bring the good news of God’s redeeming love, of his new creation come, of the justice and peace of his kingdom and reign. This is what it is to be Ambassadors of the reconciliation of the Kingdom of God.