So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
As God’s partners, we beg you not to accept this marvelous gift of God’s kindness and then ignore it. For God says,
“At just the right time, I heard you.
On the day of salvation, I helped you.”Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation.
We live in such a way that no one will stumble because of us, and no one will find fault with our ministry. In everything we do, we show that we are true ministers of God. We patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind. We have been beaten, been put in prison, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, and gone without food. We prove ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, by the Holy Spirit within us, and by our sincere love. (2 Corinthians 5:20–6:6 NLT)
When we think about unity in the Scriptures, the first glimpse we get of this concept is in Genesis 1 when God says, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us” (Genesis 1:26, emphasis added). This passage is one of the key illustrations of the Trinity, the God who is Three in One: Father, Son, and Spirit. In this specific passage, we see them working together in unity to create all that is. They are unified in direction, action, and purpose.
From that point onward throughout the Bible, we see God working to bring us into a similar unity with himself. The task of caring for creation bestowed upon Adam and Eve by God was his invitation to join him in direction, action, and purpose, but the Fall changed everything. That invitation to join him in direction, action, and purpose is still there, but now the only means of accepting it lies through the cross of Jesus.
When we choose to follow after Jesus – denying our own ways of doing things in favor of God’s plan for our lives – we are actively pursuing this unity. One big part of that is this role of ours Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians: “We are Christ’s ambassadors.”
Though we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, having been naturalized through the work of Jesus on the cross, we are still living in the land of our birth. With a foot in both worlds, we are called to be people of the cross, acting on Christ’s behalf in our world by proclaiming the Gospel in all things. “In everything we do, we show that we are true ministers of God. [. . .] We prove ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, by the Holy Spirit within us, and by our sincere love” (2 Corinthians 6:4, 6). Thus, we are called to invite those around us into the same unity we ourselves are actively pursuing.
The unity on display in the Trinity is the same unity we are invited to share with God and we are called to announce to the world around us so they too might partake in it.
The question we must continuously ask ourselves is, “Am I acting in my own interests, or am I allowing the Holy Spirit to use me as Christ’s ambassador?” To put it another way, “Am I seeking unity with God in direction, action, and purpose?”
Michael Benson is the communications director for the North American Baptist Conference.