Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
II Corinthians 5:16-21
We are to be kingdom representatives to a world in desperate need of things that are from God, such as goodness, kindness, love, and ultimately kingdom access. Many think that the church’s job is to be a “hospital” or a “container” for Christians. Erwin McManus captures the misguided attitude that many Christians hold saying,
“We somehow think that the Church is here for us; we forget that we are the Church, and we’re here for the world”.
If we intend to live fully as kingdom people we must recalibrate our thinking. George Hunsberger concludes this by saying,
“…the church’s essence is missional, for the calling and sending action of God forms its identity. Mission is founded on the mission of God in the world, rather than the church’s efforts to extend itself”.
Do you think I’m getting this right? Is the church’s core orientation or identity to be missional?
Thanks for the input BD. Yeah, I think we can mission can become muted social activism if we do not locate it within the missio Dei – His story and a robust Kingdom theology.
It definitely feels to me that Paul’s underscoring of ambassadorhood and reconciliation point to a way of being in the world. It certainly doesn’t feel as if it’s meant to be something sectarian, though Paul does reflect on how the message has varied reactions in others.
I suspect that many people who are wary of a church centered around mission are so due to evangelicalism’s hangover regarding the social gospel. I’m getting the sense that there’s still a lot of wariness towards any activity beyond vocal, confrontive evangelism due to seeing any engagement outside of that as “what the liberals do.”
Doesn’t that make a lot of sense of why there hasn’t been a lot of writing over the last 20 years from evangelicalism on the Kingdom? I think we are on the right track to recover Kingdom language and an understanding of the breadth of Christ’s reconciliation (while being careful to not abandon forgiveness of sins and repentance in the process).
Certainly there is no distinction being made in this text between the “already convinced” and the “unconvinced.” The problem in using those word is the perfect tense. “Convinced” acts as if every element of convincing is over. As if Paul is preaching to the choir. But it seems axiomatic to me that Paul is writing a missionary letter to a _church_ because there is a lot more convincing to be done.
I didn’t say “exclusive focus” I said “primary mission.” While I’m sure it is part of Paul’s entire mission, I’m not yet fully confident to say it is where he put his major emphasis. But definitely not exclusive. Your right in that he has a bigger focus than those convinced enough to read his letters.
Hey Michael, thanks for weighing in. I appreciate it.
While, I would agree that the text does encompass the people in the Corinthian church, to say they are the exclusive focus of mission seems to be missing Paul’s emphasis. When he writes, “…namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation,” he certainly has a bigger focus then the “already convinced.” What ministry of reconciliation? God, in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” He has committed that ministry to the Christians. The larger objective would certainly include “…the world,” or those outside of the church.
BTW – my mom’s maiden name was Robb.
It seems to be a question of how we name the “patients” of mission. (I can’t think of a better word than patients for those who receive the activity of our mission.) Who are we serving in mission?
When we look at this 2 Cor text as a text describing mission (we are ambassadors . . .) what tends to get overlooked is that the recipients of Paul and Timothy’s embassy are Corinthian “Christians” i.e. people who care enough about Christ to listen to Paul’s letter. We should therefore ask ourselves whether we are too quickly putting ourselves in Paul and Timothy’s place and too quickly putting our non-churched neighbors in Paul’s readers’ place. That is, perhaps Paul is the missionary and we, the “Christians”, are his mission field. It seems to me that if we want to use mission language with this text, we have to at least make room for Paul’s primary(?) mission _within_ the church.
Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new…