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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: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people\u2019s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ\u2019s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ\u2019s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

Restored in Christ\u2019s presence, shaped by his life, this new community lives out the ongoing story of God\u2019s reconciling love, announces the new creation, and works for a world of justice and peace. (OWBTG 39).

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Ambassadors.\xa0 Continuing with what Pastor Michael challenged us with yesterday, do you see this as an identity that fits the church at present?\xa0 Does it fit you?\xa0 Are you a diplomatic statesman or woman who represents the best of the kingdom of God in which your citizenship resides?\xa0 Are you a practitioner of that counter-cultural art of Christian statecraft that before all else is the offering of a message of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace?

There are a few arresting realities given to us in this brief little passage.\xa0 Firstly: Christ became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.\xa0 There are a number of Christians anxious today about the wrath of God coming against sin and sinners, as if the burden is on our shoulders as individuals or churches to escape this wrath.\xa0 But that misses a critical point: the wrath has fallen on Christ.\xa0 Not on his church.\xa0 He became sin for us.\xa0 When God looks at us: he sees righteousness\u2014no matter how badly we continue to struggle with sin in this life.\xa0 For those in Christ, our sins are not counted against us.\xa0 Jesus paid it all.\xa0 Period.

That brings us to the second arresting reality this passage drops on us.\xa0 We are, already right now, utterly new creations in Christ.\xa0 The old has gone, period.\xa0 The new is here, period.\xa0 Our identity and reality has changed completely.\xa0 It may not look that way when we glance in the mirror or reflect on our lives, but again, the challenge is to see reality as God sees it, not as it looks from here.\xa0 In the eyes of God, the kingdom has already come, we have already become his righteousness, we have already become the new creations that we look forward to in that new heaven and new earth.\xa0 Challenge yourself to see in the mirror this strange new reality of new creation that God sees.\xa0 Let it shape your self-perception and your perception of the church\u2014and let it shape the way that you live!\xa0 Live like the you are the person that God says you are!\xa0

When we believe and live these things\u2014these things that no eye can see and no ear can hear, save through the gift of faith\u2014we do, by our very presence and witness in the world, bring the good news of God\u2019s redeeming love, of his new creation come, of the justice and peace of his kingdom and reign.\xa0 This is what it is to be Ambassadors of the reconciliation of the Kingdom of God.

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