A Sermon by Rev Donald MacLean
2 Corinthians 5:20. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
The Apostle Paul is stressing in this chapter the great fact that, in the realm of spiritual things, all things are from God – that God is the author of all spiritual good. He is the author of that salvation in which His glory is revealed to be very great. In these last verses, Paul speaks about the method God in His wisdom has taken, in order that sinners might enjoy the salvation that the divine Saviour has worked out, being delivered from the power and reign and guilt of sin and eventually from its very being.
We shall notice: (1.) How God has revealed the nature of this salvation. (2.) How this salvation is to be declared. (3.) The exhortation which the ambassadors of Christ are commissioned to send forth.
1. How God has revealed the nature of this salvation. The nature of the salvation that brings peace with God is brought before us in the words, “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him”. Here are two prominent words: sin and righteousness. Both have a direct relationship to the law of God: sin because it is a breach, a transgression, or contravention of the law of God, and righteousness because it means the fulfillment of the claims of the law. The man who is righteous is free from all claims of the law of God, for its claims against him have been completely fulfilled.
Man was created in a state of innocence, as a holy being. If we do not understand man’s true relationship to the law of God, we do not really understand anything about this world. People are for ever talking about relationships – between the sexes, the races, between employer and employee, between the state and the people, and so on. But if they fail to grasp man’s true relationship to the law of God, what they are saying is something irrelevant – something defective.
We are under that law, and under it we shall eventually be judged, as we read in this chapter: “We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ”, to receive what we do in the body, in relation to the law of God. Man at his creation had an original righteousness, because his soul was fully conformed to the law of God, and so he was in an innocent, holy condition,
1Preached on 8 May 1983.
and consequently happy. Therefore, when God made a covenant with man, in which he embraced the whole human family, it was based on the righteousness of man, man’s ability to keep the law of God. He was given a special command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was warned, “The day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die”.
Man, by sinning against God, fell from his state of innocence; he became a sinner in the sight of God. And down through the generations, to this very generation in which you and I live, man is born in sin, shapen in iniquity. He comes into this world lacking the capacity to fulfill the claims of God’s law. He is filled with the carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Sin is a breaking of God’s law, coming short of that perfect obedience which God’s law requires of us: we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and our neighbour as ourselves. But sin brings before us the fact that we have broken the law of God, and therefore we are guilty in God’s sight, exposed to the sentence of eternal death, for the wages of sin is death.
Men may say other things and imagine other things, but the stern, unchangeable reality is that all are guilty. They have sinned against God and brought upon themselves His wrath and curse, and the wages of sin, which is death. However they may scoff at the doctrine of sin, however they may excuse the nature of sin, however they may deceive themselves and others by denying the presence of sin, the fact remains that, when they pass into eternity with guilt on their conscience, they will know there is no place for them but the place of eternal condemnation, suffering and despair.
The other word used here is righteousness, which involves, first, obedience to the law of God; second, receiving the wages of sin, the penalty against sin. No one can possibly discharge either of these obligations. Because of the sinfulness of our nature, we cannot fulfill the claims to obedience that the law of God makes; and because of the eternity of the death that sin deserves, we can never come to the end of that death.
Therefore the gospel of the grace of God is what deals with sin and provides righteousness. This glorious Person, the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, referred to here as the One who knew no sin, who was never guilty of any sin of any kind – because, first, He is the Son of God. As God the Son, the co-equal with the Father and the Holy Ghost, it is impossible for Him to sin. In order that He might provide the righteousness, make an end of sin and bring in an everlasting righteousness, He became man. And in order that He would not be born in sin as you and I are, He was born by extraordinary generation – that is, Christ was conceived without a human father, but by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin. It is not a doctrine that
only reveals the omnipotence of God; it is absolutely essential to the sinlessness of Christ’s humanity. Had He been born by ordinary generation, He would have been a sinner, just as you and I are. He would have been born in sin, shapen in iniquity. He would have come into the world under the guilt of Adam’s first sin.
But He was born by extraordinary generation, in order that His humanity would be sinless and yet a real humanity, created in the womb of Mary and conceived by the Holy Spirit; so it was a sinless humanity, taken into union with His divine Person. He would never sin. He could suffer and die; He could have pain and sorrow. He could be tempted in all things like us. Therefore, when he had died and risen again and Paul was writing this epistle, he could say that the Saviour “knew no sin”. He was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners. And His appearing in the world was to provide a righteousness for a number that no man could number, not to provide a righteousness for one man – not even to provide a righteousness for Himself, for that He did not need – but to provide a righteousness for a number that no man could number, who shall shine as the stars in the kingdom of His Father.
Although the people of God may be few today, and you may say that these Christians make a great noise about various things, but their voice is weak. There is a great deal of interest in minority groups today, but you do not find people taking much interest in real Christians, a minority group whose protests are drowned out. But things will be vastly different when you and I stand before the judgement seat of Christ. The people of God will be as the sand by the seashore for multitude, and every one of them saved in the same way.
Christ, as the Son of God in our nature, came to work out this righteousness, and first of all by His obedience to His Father’s will. When He came into the world, this was the language in His heart: “To do Thy will I take delight, O Thou My God that art; / yea, that most holy law of Thine I have within My heart”. His obeying the law of God, His loving the Lord His God with all His soul, strength, might and mind and loving His neighbour as Himself: it was the love, not merely of a man, not merely of one anointed with the Spirit of God, but of the God-Man, the eternal Son of God. All the merits of the glory of His divine Person were behind His obedience to the law of God in the place of sinners.
The Saviour’s being born, living in this world, obeying the will of the Father with every breath He drew and loving Him as none other could – that would not have been sufficient to save sinners. It would not provide the righteousness the law of God required, because there was sin to be put away. Therefore He, God the Father, made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin – this holy being, of whom the Father said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased. He was made sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. But how could a holy being be made sin? We were singing of it in Psalm 32: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not his sin”. Why? Because He imputed the sin elsewhere.
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” That is what we have done, adding sin to sin and laying up wrath against the day of wrath. But what has God the Father done? “The Lord hath laid on [Christ] the iniquity of us all.” This great doctrine, the imputation of the guilt of His people’s sins to Christ, is what is taught here. This was necessary in order that the righteousness might be complete. The Father made Him to be sin by taking the guilt of the sins of all those who shall be saved and causing it to meet on His beloved Son. That is why John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”, that bears the sin in His own body upon the tree.
Now it is a principle of justice that every one is innocent until he is proved guilty. That is to say, a man may be accused of a crime, he may be put in the dock, but he cannot be punished until he has been found guilty. And guilt is the gate through which human justice carries in the punishment that the crime deserves. Because the guilt of sin was laid to Christ’s charge, a gate was open for divine justice to carry in the death that these sins deserved.
Here it is the same thing. Only we are dealing with divine justice. Once the guilt of the sins of God’s people was imputed to Christ, that was the gate through which divine justice carried in the death due to these sins. Therefore Christ said, “The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” That was the cup of eternal death, which He drank until He cried, “It is finished”. He made an end of the guilt of the sins of those who shall be saved; He died the death they deserve to die. So now, for those who are in Christ, there is righteousness, which ensures that the justice of God has no claim against them. Although the law of God is the rule of their life in this world, its claims have been met in Christ. And the righteousness spoken of here is one that God has provided and has accepted.
How do we know that God has accepted this righteousness? How do we know that, when Christ cried on the cross, “It is finished”, it was true? We know it by His resurrection. He was delivered because of our offences; He was raised again because of our justification. If it was not true that there is eternal righteousness in Christ, He would never have risen from the dead. And if He did not rise from the dead, then as Paul says, “Your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins”. Those theologians who say that Christ did not rise from the dead – and that it is not necessary to believe this to be a Christian – they are deceived. They do not understand the gospel of the grace of God.
And the sooner they are out of the Christian church the better, and take their place with atheists and agnostics. Let us be clear that if Jesus has not risen from the dead, our faith is vain; we are yet in our sins, with no righteousness to cover us in the sight of God.
We come to show that Jesus has risen from the dead. No court of law would, for a moment, deny the resurrection of Jesus if they consulted the witnesses: 500 witnesses seeing Him at one time as one who rose from the dead. There were also Mary Magdalene, Peter, James and John and the rest of the disciples. People talk about theological acumen, but why do people deny the resurrection of Christ from the dead? Because they are on the broad way to everlasting destruction. But this is One who rose from the dead by the power of an endless life, and because there is eternal salvation in Him. This is the gospel of the grace of God.
Now this righteousness is in Christ, not in Buddha or Muhammad, not in the gods of the Hindus, not in the philosophies of the world. It is in Christ, the Lord our Righteousness. Those who have this righteousness are in Him. That is, they are united to Him by faith. Those who know they are sinners and who come to exercise faith in Christ – they are united to Christ. And the God who imputed their sins to Christ imputes the righteousness of Christ to them. Consequently they have the forgiveness of sins, the favour of God and justification, which is a declaration by God that His justice has nothing against this person. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.”
I would like to stress this particular point: He made Him to be sin who knew no sin. Christ was made sin as a holy being; the sinner who is made righteous was altogether unholy. After the publican prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner”, he went down to his house justified. God justifies the ungodly who believe in Christ. He imputes the righteousness of Christ to the sinner; it is received by faith alone. When he is united to Christ, the righteousness of Christ becomes his. His sins which are many are forgiven. He is accepted as righteous in God’s sight, for the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him, laid to his account. This is the gospel. If you or I will not have it, we have nothing. If you and I will not be made the righteousness of God in Christ, we have nothing to face death, eternity, or the judgement seat.
But if we have this righteousness, we will never perish, and the sinner that is justified this Sabbath evening is as justified as he will ever be. He will yet be more sanctified than he is. He will be more holy in his soul; he will be made perfectly so at death. This is wonderful because it means he cannot lose the favour, the love, the kindness of God. This is his in Christ, in the righteousness God imputed to him when he received Christ by faith alone. This doctrine is, as Luther called it, the doctrine of a falling or a rising church.
The Church of Rome, having lost this doctrine, became a synagogue of Satan. It is remarkable how people try to cover up the solemn reality of the superstitions and heresies of Rome. When the gospel is lost to Scotland, as it largely is, people are going to perish eternally in their sins.
2. How this salvation is to be declared. Paul says, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ”. That is what Paul was. That involved two things. First, he was called to Christ. He became a partaker of the righteousness of Christ in his spiritual experience. He learned what it meant to be united to Christ by faith and to have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, through His righteousness. More than that, the Prince of Peace sent him forth with authority as His ambassador. Now an ambassador has no authority from himself. If you send an ambassador from Britain over to China, say, he must produce his credentials. He must have authority for what he is doing. This applies to ambassadors for Christ. When they come to you with their message – the terms of peace they have been commissioned to declare – they come as ambassadors for Christ; they do not come in their own name.
No one is going to get any benefit from the gospel of the grace of God unless they have the conviction that the one who ministers to them is an ambassador for Christ. Now Paul says with regard to this and other points: “We are made manifest unto God”. He goes on to say, “I trust also [we] are made manifest in your consciences”. The ambassador for Christ is to deal with men’s souls, consciences and understandings, directing the message as those who are commissioned by Christ to do so. You will appreciate it is entirely different from modern religion, both Evangelical and Modernist, and Popery too. The idea behind it is: ministers are entertaining people so that they get a nice cozy feeling – they are all going to heaven, not to suffer the torments of a lost eternity.
That is not the work of Christ’s ambassadors. They are commissioned to deal with consciences, to deal with souls on the way to eternity. There can be no greater tragedy than for a man to undertake to be an ambassador for Christ, although Christ has never called him. It will be one of the most painful experiences for a soul to go into eternity having dared to take to do with souls, without ever being called to do so – a minister without this: “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us”. What tremendous authority, yet what tremendous responsibility! Surely no one would take it who cannot say, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”
But when Christ ascended on high, He received gifts for men, and these gifts were the apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers. They are sent forth to preach the gospel of the grace of God as one of the great proofs that Christ is alive for evermore and that He is reigning in His Church, that His name
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace, and that the government is upon His shoulder in providing ministers as ambassadors for Christ. If Christ has not risen from the dead, we were never called to the ministry. We have no right to stand in a pulpit. But if Christ is risen from the dead, He has received gifts for men and gives men as gifts to the Church for the work of the ministry.
We can be assured that no woman was ever called to be an ambassador for Christ. The Church has the light of God shining in it; it should not be prepared to step aside from the divine revelation: “We are ambassadors for Christ”. Men were called to this office because Christ chose it to be so. Women have their own place in the Church, in the home and in society. But this is one place that they do not have, to be an ambassador for Christ. Those who dare to take this on themselves are insulting the Head of the Church. It is an attack on the ministry of the gospel. Satan knows that if he can destroy the conception of a minister as an ambassador for Christ in the consciences of sinners, he has gone a long way to defeating the gospel message. We have the same thing in connection with homosexuals in the ministry.
3. The exhortation the ambassadors of Christ are commissioned to bring.
The ambassador comes with a message from the Prince of Peace to declare the terms of peace with God. That is why he has come. This is not merely a theological thought, but a divine reality. The minister who preaches the gospel declares the terms on which a guilty, hell-deserving sinner can be reconciled to the God against whom he has sinned. All who believe hear the Word of God; the Holy Spirit blesses it as the ambassadors preach. The hearers are brought face to face with God and His Word – His message.
You can see here the spirit in which they declared it: “as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ’s stead.” They have to be earnest. This is a solemn matter! Eternal issues of life and death rest on it. It is not a theological discussion group but the preaching of the gospel. And preaching the gospel is the instrument of effecting this reconciliation. These terms are, as they are brought before us here, “Be ye reconciled to God”. Cast down the arms of your warfare. You cannot win a victory against God. Cast aside the arms with which you are warring against the God of heaven. Be reconciled to Him in whom there is eternal peace and love. Reconciliation takes place when the sinner believes in Christ, when he casts aside his weapons and stops foolishly running against Jehovah’s buckler and on to destruction. He realises that he has sinned against heaven and before God, and he comes now to look by faith to Christ, and God has mercy on him and he is reconciled to God – not God reconciled to you.
Many people would like God to be reconciled to them, to give them peace
and then let them go on behaving as before – letting them go to the cinema, to dances and so on, and still be called Christians. But that is not the gospel. It is not: let God be reconciled to you and your ways. On the contrary, be reconciled to God. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
These are the terms: (1) Whosoever believes shall not perish but have everlasting life. You are not called upon to work out a righteousness of your own. You never can do that. You are asked in the gospel of the grace of God to receive this as a gift, as a poor sinner who has nothing of your own and who has nothing to pay. (2) The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (3) It is by faith in Christ, trusting in the Lord, that we are to be saved. This involves, and must involve, us coming to Christ and leaving the world and its ways, its pleasures and our worldly companions behind us. We cannot serve God and man. These are the terms, brought before us by the Word of God, that the ambassador is to make known. The terms are according to the mind of God. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life”, “and I will raise him up at the last day”.
This now brings me to this point: “We pray you in Christ’s stead”, Paul says, “be ye reconciled to God.” “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.” God the Father and the Son are praying and beseeching you through the ambassador of the everlasting gospel. And will you remain callous, cold, dead under it all? Will you neglect the great salvation? Will you turn your back on this reconciliation, on this salvation in which God’s glory is made great? Will you cling to the world, its pleasures, its ways and your worldly companions?
When I was in England recently I made a visit to Bedford, to the green where John Bunyan heard these words spoken to him: “Wilt thou have thy sin and go to hell?” Surely that question must be put to you if you are prepared to despise Christ, if you are prepared to despise the message of the ambassador who prays you in Christ’s stead, “Be ye reconciled to God”. It is as though God had to beseech you by us, Will you have your sins and go to hell, or will you have Christ and go to heaven? I set before you, says Moses to the children of Israel, “life and death”. This is far more important than any career that young people may be shaping out for themselves. This is far more important than anything that this world can ever press upon your attention. “Be ye reconciled to God”, is the great command, the great offer and the great declaration of Christ, and of God in Christ, through the ambassadors of the everlasting gospel. And therefore we beseech you in God’s stead, and we pray you in Christ’s stead, “Be ye reconciled to God”.