For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.  And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again … God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s 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 5:14-15, 19-21).

Chatham Church seeks to be a church that is Gospel-centered, Biblically-guided, relationally-connected, generous-hearted and outwardly-focused.  Last week, we explored some of what it means to live relationally-connected; this week, Gospel-centered.

It’s not easy telling people that they’re dead (“we are convinced that one died for all; therefore, all died”).  Despite their health, wealth, reputation, power, or status, they are not merely dead, but something more like zombies, slave-agents of the Kingdom of Sin and Death.

But ambassadors have responsibilities.  Ambassadors have a job to do, and that job is to represent their government, their King and his Kingdom truthfully and faithfully.

Ambassadors need a special kind of resilience.  It’s not a self-help-y technique or superpower that one can develop and then use for the improvement of one’s own life.  Instead, it’s a kind of resilience that you need when representing your King while living in often-hostile territory.  It’s a resilience that comes from outside oneself – not a resilience that I have and control and use to make my life go better, but the kind of resilience that is grounded in the love of Christ, in the power that comes through Christ, in the Good News that God is reconciling the world to himself in Christ.  The kind of resilience that keeps me going in faithfully living for my King, even while facing great resistance.

The Good News we ambassadors carry is that the already-dead-in-Sin do not have to desperately and futilely try to keep themselves alive by accumulating more wealth, more power, more stuff, friends, awards or “likes.”  Instead, they can be reconciled to the God who raises the dead in Christ.  Thanks to the True King, whom we ambassadors represent, the presently-dead can become the righteousness of God.  They can be made new, re-created, set right and made servants of what is good and true and right rather than slaves to Sin and Death.

Congratulations, all you read this, and welcome to the diplomatic corps of the Kingdom of God!  We bear the Good News of Christ’s Kingdom, and will need Kingdom resilience to deliver it faithfully.

King Jesus, thank you for reconciling us and the world to God through your death and resurrection!  Thank you for making us truly alive, truly free.  Now, please make us truly resilient in your service.  We your ambassadors ask this together in your good name.  Amen.