Our citizenship is in heaven. We belong in the fellowship of the saints. Heaven is our true home.

We are aliens and strangers in this world. We don’t like the way they think. We don’t like the way they act. We don’t like the things they advocate. We don’t like what they perpetrate upon us. We do all we can to protect ourselves from it, insulate ourselves from it, protect our children from it and the people we love from it.

But at the same time we are here because we have been mandated to proclaim the message of reconciliation in a ministry of reconciliation as ambassadors in an alien culture. And our responsibility here is not to change the culture. An ambassador who goes into a foreign culture doesn’t have a mandate to change that culture. Your job is to represent the sovereign government that sent you there.

Evangelical Christianity today is spending too much time, too much money, and too much effort trying to change the culture rather than preach the ministry of reconciliation. The sovereign has given us the message. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We uphold righteousness, we live as righteous citizens in this world. We have been given an ambassadorship not to fix the culture but to proclaim the message of reconciliation, changed people, changed by the gospel will change the society. This is our ministry. This is your ministry, not just mine. It’s yours.

But God puts His nature on display as a Savior by allowing sinners to live. And it is His kindness and forbearance intended to lead them to repentance. God is by nature a Savior. It is the will of God. So you work on the sinner, not God.

God so loved the world…the world of sinners…that He gave His Son to reconcile them. Reconciliation with God is not something we accomplish when we stop rejecting Him. In truth, it is something He accomplishes when He stops rejecting us.

What is involved in this ministry of reconciliation? Reconciliation is by the will of God.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 (NKJV)
¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. ¹⁸ Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, ¹⁹ that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
²⁰ Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Look at verse 17, “It all is in Christ,” verse 18, “It all is through Christ.” Verse 19, “Again it is in Christ.” We are ambassadors, verse 20, for Christ, on behalf of Christ. Look at the rest of verse 21, “That we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace and reconciliation was laid on Him. God caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. All of that is in Isaiah 53. He became sin for us who knew no sin. But here’s the other side of that. That we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Peter puts it this way, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, by His wounds you were healed.”

“That we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” I’m not righteous. You’re not righteous. We know that, don’t we? We all live in Romans 7, don’t do what we ought to do and do what we ought not to do.

1 Timothy 4:10 (NKJV)
For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.

Romans 2:4 (NIV)
Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

Ephesians 1:7 (NKJV)
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace

Acts 16:31 (NKJV)
So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Matthew 3:15 (NIV)
Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.

Prayer: Father, we are reminded that this is all Your plan, all of grace, grand and glorious, incomprehensible grace that You would treat Your Son as if He were a sinner so that You could treat us as if we were righteous. We bless Your name, for giving us this reconciliation, for making us Your beloved, adored children though we are undeserving. May we be faithful in the ministry of reconciliation to preach the glorious gospel by which we were reconciled, so that others may be as well. In Your Son’s name, amen.

Reference: John MacArthur sermon

The Ambassadors’ Ministry of Reconciliation