The Ministry of Reconciliation

This week, I am preaching on Paul's description of his own ministry as a ministry of reconciliation. Preaching this passage raises a question of application: how widely can we apply this language of the ministry of reconciliation? Is it just a description of Paul's own ministry, or possibly also of other leaders in the church? Or is there a sense in which every Christian should think of themselves as involved in the ministry of reconciliation? I will argue that there is. But first, a look at the passage in question:

¹⁸τὰ δὲ πάντα ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ καταλλάξαντος ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῷ διὰ Χριστοῦ καὶ δόντος ἡμῖν τὴν διακονίαν τῆς καταλλαγῆς, ¹⁹ὡς ὅτι θεὸς ἦν ἐν Χριστῷ κόσμον καταλλάσσων ἑαυτῷ, μὴ λογιζόμενος αὐτοῖς τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν, καὶ θέμενος ἐν ἡμῖν τὸν λόγον τῆς καταλλαγῆς. ²⁰ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ οὖν πρεσβεύομεν ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ παρακαλοῦντος δι ἡμῶν· δεόμεθα ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, καταλλάγητε τῷ θεῷ. ²¹τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς γενώμεθα δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21

¹⁸Now, all these things are from the God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation, ¹⁹(as God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their transgressions), and assigned to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰Therefore, we act as ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as God exhorts through us, we plead on behalf of Christ, "Be reconciled to God." ²¹The one who knew not sin he made sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Paul's ministry as the immediate referent here. Even though the first "us" in verse 18 plausibly refers to Paul's team together with his Corinthian audience, and likewise the "we" in verse 21, the other first person plural pronouns probably refer specifically to Paul and his team. The immediate context is that Paul is trying to explain his ministry to the Corinthians so they know how to defend it against detractors (v.12). Nevertheless, we can make a case from the book as a whole that Paul would understand key elements of the ministry of reconciliation described here to apply more broadly to the lives of the average Corinthian Christian.

For one thing, Paul resists an understanding of his apostolic authority which would elevate him too highly above the Corinthians. "Not that we lord it over your faith, but we are fellow-workers of your joy, for you have stood firm in the faith" (1:24). It is true that Paul and his team are the "ministers of a new covenant" (3:6), which he contrasts with the ministry of Moses - the Corinthians themselves are a letter which Paul and his team "minister" (3:3), a pun on the fact that the verb "to serve, to minister" can also refer to one who delivers a letter. But the point of the chapter is not so much to contrast Paul with the Corinthians, as a new Moses who speaks for God to them, but to compare them as fellow recipients of divine illumination. The situation under the new covenant is precisely not like that with Moses, where the people could not bear the reflected glory of his presence with God - now, whoever has turned to the Lord views him without a veil (3:16), so that "we all" reflect the same glory of the Lord (3:18), something that was the prerogative of Moses alone under the old covenant. By the way, I would take the reference to the veil being removed in the Lord's presence in 3:16 as an allusion to Exodus 34:34, where Moses removes his veil when he enters into the Lord's presence. Thus, Paul's comment in 3:17 that "the Lord is the Spirit" identifies "the Lord" mentioned in Exodus 34:34 with the Holy Spirit. "The Lord" does not refer to Christ, as if Paul was equating Christ and the Spirit here - rather, he is identifying the theophany of the Lord in Exodus 34:34 with the third person of the Trinity. So then, Paul is saying that really, all Christians are Moses - since the Spirit has written the truth about Christ on their hearts (3:3), they have an access to divine truth comparable to what Moses had when he entered God's presence to speak with him. The point I am driving at here is that, while not all Christians are ministers of the covenant in the way Paul and his team were, nevertheless the glory of this new covenant is such that all of them hold a place in it similar to Moses' place under the Old Covenant.

Paul's teaching here fits well with the Reformation theme of "the priesthood of all believers," and there are a couple other examples of such language in the book. In 8:15, the supplying of needs by the generous giving of believers is compared to the miracle of the manna which was worked through Moses. The implication is that God's miraculous provision of food through Moses is analogous to his provision of funds through regular believer's charitable giving to each other. In 9:12, Paul, still discussing charitable giving in the church, says that "the service of this ministry" (ἡ διακονία τῆς λειτουργίας ταύτη) involves both the provision of goods by the givers as well as giving thanks by the recipients. The term for ministry that Paul uses here (λειτουργία) is drawn from the ministry of the Levites in the temple - in fact, part of this service involved administration of funds offered at the temple. Paul is portraying believers' act of giving and of giving thanks as a Levitical service of worship to God. Given the prominence of such themes in the letter, we should remain open to the possibility that, even when Paul is describing his own ministry specifically, the way he understands how God is working through him may connect up to a broader model of how God works through believers in general - though God's work through believers will of course be through a diversity of individual giftings, as Paul emphasizes elsewhere (e.g., 1 Corinthians 12 or Ephesians 4).

With this broader context, there is one big clue from the text itself that we may apply it more broadly. Paul says in verse 20 that he and his team function as ambassadors on behalf of Christ, "as God exhorts through us." The verb used here (παρακαλέω) has several meanings, including "to encourage," "to exhort," and "to appeal," and together with its noun cognate (παράκλησις) it is a theme-word of the book as a whole, in all these meanings. At the beginning of the book, God is introduced as the God of comfort, who comforts Paul and his team so that they may be able to comfort others with this same comfort from God (1:3-7). Often in the book, the ones doing the comforting or exhorting or appealing are Paul and his team (2:8; 6:1; 8:6, 17; 9:5; 10:1; 12:8, 18). The inclusion of the verb in the closing list of imperatives in 13:11 probably calls the Corinthians to respond to this apostolic action: "be encouraged."

But the agent of this verb is not always Paul or his team. Paul tells the Corinthians that they should now "forgive and encourage" (2:7) the one whom they had punished for his sin in obedience to his last letter. Paul's reference to "punishment by the majority" in 2:6 invites us to consider the role of the people in church discipline. Already in 1 Corinthians, though Paul is not shy to give an apostolic command that church discipline must be rendered (1 Corinthians 5:2; he describes their response as "obedience" in 2 Corinthians 2:9), the actual execution of this sentence by the assembled congregation is hardly an afterthought. When they assemble together, Paul will be present with them in spirit, as will the power of the Lord Jesus (1 Corinthians 5:3-5). Paul seems here to teach the real (spiritual) presence of the apostles in church discipline, as well as the real (spiritual) presence of Christ, in a manner similar to Jesus in Matthew 18:20, who says he will be present wherever two or three are gathered (how often do we cite this text while forgetting that it is, in the first analysis, about church discipline specifically?). Now that the time has come for forgiveness, Paul follows his apostolic direction with an affirmation that whatever they forgive, he also forgives (2 Corinthians 2:10 - again with a mention of the presence of Christ!). This sounds very similar to the language of binding and loosing in Matthew 18:18. This is a strikingly strong affirmation of the authority of the Corinthian congregation, that their decisions, at least ideally, are backed by the apostle and by Christ himself - and this is made all the more striking when we consider the history, that the Corinthians have in fact erred in withholding discipline, and even as this second letter is sent, only partially understand Paul (1:13-14). Paul's verdict must be ratified in the gathered assembly, the binding and loosing of judgment and forgiveness is enacted through the assembly of the whole church.

Furthermore, the way the Corinthians have obeyed Paul and treated Titus has resulted in great encouragement (7:4-13). Paul hints that he sees the encouragement of the Corinthians as God's encouragement as well when he says in 7:6, "the God who encourages the humble encouraged us by the arrival of Titus." So, just as God is exhorting through Paul and his team, he is encouraging through the Corinthians. Also, the Macedonian Christians "pleaded with great exhortation" (8:4) to be able to give from their resources for the saints - the verb for "pleading" here (δέομαι) is the same term Paul uses alongside the verbal cognate of "exhortation" in 5:20.

We thus have two major examples of divine/human synergy involving regular Corinthian Christians - in church discipline, God encourages the repentant sinner through the forgiveness of the Corinthians, and in the service of giving, God encourages through the Corinthians (and the Macedonians). This is structurally very similar to how Paul describes his ministry in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, as God exhorts through his pleading, so that we might even say that the Corinthians could be called God's "fellow-workers," the label Paul adopts for himself and his team in 6:1 as the basis for their exhortation.

So then, what are we to make of the role of the average Christian in the ministry of reconciliation? First off, we should note that we are not the ones who reconcile people to God. This is not true even of Paul and his team. When Paul describes the gospel using the language of reconciliation, it is always God who reconciles. Furthermore, this reconciliation is in some sense a finished reality: it is what God was doing in Christ, and is now finished with his completed work.

The role of Paul and his team is to proclaim the message about this reconciliation, and to plead with their hearers to "Be reconciled to God." Though only God reconciles, and this is in some sense a finished past work, nevertheless humans are called to "be reconciled," to accept the message of reconciliation and God's declaration of peace. To proclaim this message is Paul's ministry in the ministry of reconciliation, to accept this message and be reconciled is for his hearers.

Obviously the preaching of the gospel (the message of reconciliation) is a special calling of Paul as an apostle, and of those in the church who are specially called as preachers. God exhorts and encourages through all believers, but the specific message of this exhortation, "be reconciled," may be the particular burden of gospel-preachers. Then again, this may be too limiting. God's reconciling action in Christ is elaborated as "not reckoning to them their transgressions," as allusion to Psalm 32:2 which for Paul stands as an equivalent for the forgiveness of sins, or justification. Paul began the letter by calling attention to God's "mercies" and "comforts" (1:3). But then, do not the Corinthians display this divine mercy when they show forgiveness and comfort to the restored sinner? What is the action of the majority, with the presence and power of Christ both in punishing and in forgiving, if not an exhortation to "be reconciled to God?" The work of the apostle and the work of the whole church cannot be too neatly separated here: "Whomever you forgive, I do also" (2:10). While reserving a special role for those called to preach the message of reconciliation, we might say that God is at work in all believers, whenever they embody his justice and mercy, exhorting the world to be reconciled to him.

More broadly, every Christian is called to live their lives in line with the message of reconciliation. Ephesians 2:16 makes it clear that in being reconciled to God in Christ, humans are reconciled to each other - the enmity between them has been killed. This is communicated as a past act of God. Paul says something very similar in Galatians 3:28, that the difference between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female has ceased to exist - now, presently - in Christ. But far from inviting us to ignore the work of justice and peace, this reality becomes the basis for exhortations to avoid enmity later in Galatians. Likewise, the unity already given to us in reconciliation through the cross of Christ (Ephesians 2:16) is a unity which we are to rush to keep (Ephesians 4:3). Nothing could be less biblical than the suggestion that because we have been reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ, we need make no effort to address the injustice of remaining enmity and division.

This is a suggestion I see more and more around discussions of racial reconciliation, and it seems to me that there is something antinomian about it: It is as if the call to "be reconciled to God" referred only to the moment of conversion, rather than calling us to a whole life of keeping the unity of the Spirit with one another, showing to one another the mercy and comfort we have been given by God. It seems to me too narrow to restrict what Paul means by the "ministry of reconciliation" to the initial preaching of the gospel unto conversion, as if it did not include his exhortation in his first letter to the Corinthians that they should all agree and avoid schisms (1 Corinthians 1:10) or his exhortation to Euodia and Syntyche to agree in the Lord (Philippians 4:2).

Unfortunately, it is a little unclear whether Paul's exhortation, "Be reconciled to God," is in fact addressed to the Corinthian hearers of his letter, as something they still need to do, or merely provided to them as an excerpt from his preaching to other (unconverted) hearers. Everywhere else where divine reconciliation is mentioned by Paul, it is temporally located in the death of Christ on the cross (Romans 5:10; Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20, 22), just as verse 18 of our passage locates it in the past work of Christ. The imperative language of "be reconciled to God" here is unique, and suggests a moment or moments of reconciliation in the life of a believer, much later in time than the moment of Christ's sacrifice for them. Is this a once-only event, at conversion, similar to how we talk about justification? Or is the call to "be reconciled" something we need to hear repeatedly, to be called back to believe in and live in accordance with the reconciliation that was accomplished in Christ's death? It is hard to say for sure. But we should note the word "also" in "we also exhort" in the verse which so closely follows (6:1). To my mind, this tends to connect Paul's exhortation to "be reconciled to God" with his other exhortations to the Corinthians.

At the end of the day, whether we think of keeping the unity of the body as a direct response to the call to "be reconciled to God," or as a consequence of living our lives in line with this message, the two cannot be far separated. In which case, we should include the encouragement of giving as an example of a faithful response to the message of reconciliation. It is an expression of "participation in the ministry which is for the saints" (8:4), as well as a picture of the grace of the incarnation (8:9). By it the comfort of God is expressed through humans - in a sense, the fact of our reconciliation to God in Christ is preached to each other by this giving.

Having worked this all out here (to keep me from feeling like I should put it in my sermon), this Sunday I will be focusing on how this passage applies to the average believer. Without denying that Paul is talking about his own ministry, or that there is a special call to preach the message of reconciliation, we will be thinking about how we all, together and individually, may expect God to be working through us to bring his comfort and exhortation to the world which he has reconciled to him in Christ. This is true at least in the exercise of church discipline, especially as we display God's mercy through being a forgiving community. It is also true in our giving, as we display God's grace through our fellowship in each other's needs. But I am sure there are other examples and applications we can think of!