Ambassadors for Christ
Scripture: 2
Corinthians 5:20-6:1 (ESV)
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.
6 Working together with him, then, we appeal
to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
Devotion:
The church today has an image
problem. We are being marginalized and even hated because we hold values that
the culture finds offensive. It seems that the golden age of the church in the West
(if there ever really was one) is over. We must begin to build anew on our
solid foundation in Jesus Christ. We should not waste one-minute placing blame
or lamenting and yearning nostalgically for the days gone by.
What, then, must the church do? The
short answer is found in today’s scripture reading. We must be ambassadors for
Christ. The city of Corinth in the 1st century was a hard place to
do church. There was every kind of distraction and pagan religion you could imagine.
Yet, Paul sought just that place to plant a church and spend much time in
person and via letter reprimanding, encouraging, and loving this church to be a
beacon of hope in a dark place.
We in the modern church are faced
with similar societal ills. The world is becoming darker and more challenging
to reach with the light of hope. Shining that light of hope in Jesus Christ in
our culture is precisely what we are called to do. We are to become ambassadors
for the kingdom of God. Evangelism and apologetics are seen in our churches as
old-fashioned and useless in the modern spiritual combat we are experiencing.
However, these are the best tools to win the world back to Jesus and His
church.
We must admit that our failure to be
good apologists and evangelists got us into this mess. Reviving these practices
will be what gets us out of this mess. As a church, we must take the time to
study the culture (as distasteful as we may find it), learn its values and
habits, and apply the salve of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to it. We must ensure
that we know our Bibles and can apply the principles found there to rescue our
culture from its moral disintegration. This will require work on our part, but
we are contending for people’s immortal souls here, so any sacrifice will be worth it.
We must do as Paul admonishes the Corinthian
believers to do and work together to see the world won to Christ. We must seek
to advance the gospel everywhere and at all times. As our culture erodes, we must seek God’s help to reverse the decline and make Jesus’ name
great again.
Prayer:
Father God, hear our plea. We want
to see Christ magnified as God in this land again. We admit we need to be the kind of ambassador the world requires. Help us to go back to the
scriptures and find Jesus there. And having found Him, build the church as He
desires it to be built. May we get back to serving you with our whole hearts. More
than anything else, we want to bring glory to Jesus, who saves us. God help us.
We cannot do this on our own. Amen
Comments
Post a Comment