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CHRIST’S AMBASSADORS

“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” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

What does it mean to be Christ’s ambassadors? There are two views within churches of Christ. One, Paul is talking about the apostles, the idea being that an ambassador is a special envoy. The second is that Paul is calling all Christians ambassadors. Let’s take a look at the background and context of this scripture.

2 Corinthians is the second known letter by Paul to the Corinthian church. It is about six months after the first letter according to scholars. First Corinthians reveals a church deeply divided over a number of issues including preachers, immorality, going to law courts with brothers, marriage and divorce, meat that has been sacrificed to idols, the assembly, and the resurrection. According to Bruce Winters, Corinth was in a cultural shift from being influenced by Rome to returning to a more Greek style cultural. This cultural conflict affected the church and the divisions within her.

It appears that over that brief period between the letters, the Corinthians were able to work out some of the divisions and came to a better understanding of living in Christ. In the second letter, he challenges them to be the “pleasing aroma of Christ” (2:15). Paul and Timothy are the authors of this letter (1:1). Throughout the first six chapters, they use pronouns such as “we,” “you,” and “us.” Sometimes this becomes confusing and we must ask ourselves some questions. Are they referring just to themselves or are they referring to the Corinthians as well? For instance, in chapter 2, Paul speaks of himself using “I’ in verses 12-13, but then he uses “us” in verse 14, which would include the Corinthians. This needs to be kept in mind.

When we look at the context of 5:20, Paul is discussing reconciliation between God and humans in Christ, yet there are all those pronouns. In verses 11-14, it appears that it is Paul and Timothy speaking to “you” Corinthians about their work, and that Christ’s love compels them to preach and teach. Then in verse 15, they say, “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” Is it Paul and Timothy speaking only about themselves or are they including the Corinthians in this focus? If that is not clear, consider verses 17-18. “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.” Who is the “us”? Do we not have today a ministry of reconciliation? Was that only for Paul and Timothy? When they say that God has “committed to us the message of reconciliation,” is that exclusively to Paul and Timothy or would it also include the Corinthians? Skipping to verse 21, they say: “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Who is the “we”?

The going back and forth between all those pronouns makes it difficult sometimes to understand who is who in this. The first view in understanding Christ’s ambassadors is that Paul refers to the apostles. Since it is only Paul and Timothy writing this letter, and that nowhere from chapter one through chapter five are the apostles mentioned, this is reading into the text something that is not there. A better argument would be that the ambassadors are Paul and Timothy. The only other time ambassador is used in the New Testament is in Ephesians 6:20 where Paul says he is an ambassador in chains. We might be able to suggest that ambassador refers to the apostles based on this, but I think that might be a stretch. An ambassador is a special envoy and so were the apostles. Paul might have seen himself as an ambassador because of his special call as the apostle to the Gentiles.

The second view sees all Christians as ambassadors. Again, those pronouns can suggest this point of view. We can all be special envoys in our proclamation of the good news and how we live our lives before others. We represent Jesus Christ living in us. We have given ourselves to the Lord (8:5) and we preach Jesus as Lord and ourselves as servants (4:5). It is an interesting perspective of the Christian life.

I can see both views. When I preached this once and emphasized the second view, I was told by an elder that this was false teaching. That doesn’t make discussing this a positive experience. He opened his King James Bible and showed me the text which had two words in italics. Those words were not for emphasis but were added by the translators to help in understanding the text. One must be careful when arguing with words added by translators. That said, we have two legitimate views of this text and should be willing to acknowledge it. We might not agree with the first or second view, but it should not be labeled false teaching because of the disagreement. There are any number of texts that we will find different views and it is difficult to determine who could be in the right.

Think about it.

George B. Mearns