The Ministry of Reconciliation

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 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 men'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.

As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you."

I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.

2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2

Extreme Makeover – Home Edition is a hugely popular television series. Entire towns work to give someone deserving a new home. Finally, MOVE THE BUS! And the new home is revealed.
What a glorious new home – the old house is gone – the new has come! This is God’s plan for our lives as well.

Let’s get a little background information on how this make-over has come to pass. In Genesis 15, we find a strange passage in which God tells Abram to take sacrificial animals and cut them in half, laying the pieces side-by-side. God made a covenant with Abram that night, confirming his promise from Genesis 12, when He said "I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others."

Then God’s presence went through the middle of those sacrificed animals, an act which signifies: may it be done to me as was done to these animals if I break my covenant.

Here’s the deal: God has always upheld his part of the covenant. We are the ones who have broken the covenant – over and over again. God did his part in making Abraham’s descendents into a great nation and making them famous, but they didn’t fulfill their part – to be a blessing to others. We are always blessed in order to be a blessing to others!

But here’s the deal: with a covenant, once the covenant is broken, it’s considered null and void. Only the wronged party is allowed to reinstate the covenant, not the party in the wrong. So there’s nothing that you or I can do once we’ve broken covenant. We’re helpless.

Pop Glass example: When I was in Russia, I met a guy named Radick. He was very spiritual and had a lot of questions. One night we were up pretty much all night talking. Radick held up a glass of pop and told me, "I’m like this glass – dirty through and through. I need to clean out the glass before Jesus can come in."

But the truth is: like that glass of pop, we’re helpless. A glass cannot pick itself up and clean itself out! It just doesn’t happen. And likewise, we can’t do the same for ourselves. Just filling ourselves with clean stuff doesn’t make the rest of us clean. Only God can do that.

From a worldly standpoint, Radick’s view makes sense: we have to do it ourselves. But scripture tells us that anyone in Christ is already a new creation – the old has gone, the new has come!

The Apostle Paul, the former persecutor of the Church, found himself reconciled to God and acting as Christ’s ambassador. He knows about reconciliation. This was God’s action completely – there was nothing Paul could do by himself. But God chose to not count our sins against us, that we might be reconciled to God. Reconciliation is not something we accomplish when we lay aside our enmity to God – it is something which God accomplished when in the death of Christ he put away everything that on his side meant estrangement. Though human response is required for it to be subjectively effective, God is initiator of the process. Paul recognized the magnitude of the gift he had been given, and that’s why he begs the Corinthians to be reconciled to God.

Back to the Extreme Makeover concept: I wonder how many people apply to get a new house. What about all the people who aren’t as deserving of a new house? They can only do so many houses… And I wonder what would happen if they redid a house like this one. What would the residents, undeserving as they might be, do with a new home?

This is the question that each of us has to ask ourselves. We, in our sin, were the crack houses. We were gross and nasty and utterly repulsive. Yet God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, that in Him, we might be made right with God through Christ. That’s what this "righteousness" concept means – being in a right relationship with God.

In other words, we have each been given the gift of a new life, the right life, the life we were meant to live.

Here’s the deal. Paul picks up a quote from Isaiah: "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you."

Now is the time of God’s favor. Now is the day of salvation.

What does this mean? It’s time to live like a Christian. It’s time to bring your beliefs and your behavior into line with God’s saving purposes. In other words, it’s time to start behaving as Christians.

It’s time to take the blessings we’ve been given and to use them to be a blessing to others.