II Corinthians 2:16-21
"16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave 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 to us the message of reconciliation.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore 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."
What is the mission of those who follow Jesus Christ?
What are we supposed to do?
Who are we supposed to be?
The answer to all these questions can be found in, what many have called, the pinnacle of Scripture. Second Corinthians is a letter written to some very messed up people. The church in Corinth is infamous for its moral and theological problems. In the second letter, Paul exhorts the believers to be "Ambassadors of Christ". In this passage we see our mission, and the Mission of God in us.
We are first and foremost to discard those prejudices which we once held. Even as we once considered Christ as merely a man, before our regeneration, we must now regard all people in light of Christ as the God-Man. This means that we stop showing favoritism, we stop carrying around grudges against others, we show the love of Christ to others. We are now, in Christ new people.
As we have been changed so we must now live. The change wrought in us is complete, and as such our actions must conform to our new nature. He goes on to state that we have been tasked with the duty of reconciliation as our Ministry.
Because Christ came to reconcile men to himself, it falls to us his followers, to carry out the reconciling work of Christ. While we can not save men, we can present them with the Gospel. For God uses his church, his followers to plead for repentance. We are the ambassadors of Christ to the fallen world around us. It becomes our responsibility to present Christ as he is, not as the world wants to see him. Love others with the Love of Christ.
I hope to expand these thoughts at a later date.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Labels:
Christ,
Emerging,
Grace,
Jesus,
Mission,
Reconciliation,
Redemption,
Revolution,
Theology
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Vision?
The vision is Jesus: obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? They are an army.
And they are free from materialism. They laugh at the markets.
They hardly care! They wear clothes like costumes:
to show and to tell, but never to hide.
They know the meaning of the Matrix; the way the West was won.
They are mobile like the wind; they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free, yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults break and cry.
It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might win, one day
the great "Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards
and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
And the army is disciplined.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrades at arms.
The tattoo on their backs boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their eyes.
Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And this generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond
talking, with warrior cries, sulphuric tears
Waiting. Watching: 24 - 7 - 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughing at labels, fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless
to shake their resolve
Material clothes matter not
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives,
swap seats with the man on death row;
guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears,
with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God
and live as if it all depends on them.
Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don't you hear them coming?
Here come the frightened and forgotten, with fire in their eyes.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
1 comment:
wow...good thoughts. challenging.
Post a Comment