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The ministry of reconciliation.
(II Cor. 5: 12 - 7: 4).
A | 5: 12. Not commending selves. "Appearance, not heart."
B | 5: 13, 14. Love of Christ.
C | 5: 15. Not live to self--contrary to resurrection.
D | 5: 16-18-. The reconciliation. Effect upon fleshly distinctions.
E | 5: 18-6: 3. Ministry of reconciliation. Received. Exercised.
Appeal made not to receive in vain. No offence. Not blamed.
A | 6: 4-10. Commending ourselves as ministers of God.
B | 6: 11. Our heart enlarged.
C | 6: 12. Straitened in selves--contrary to reconciliation.
D | 6: 14-7: 1. The promises. Effect upon fleshly connections.
E | 7: 2-4. The ministers. Receive us. Their unblameable character.
The ministry of the reconciliation does not go back to David or Abraham; that would
be a ministry which perpetuated the fleshly distinctions of Israel. This ministry goes
back to a period before Israel, to a time when God "gave up" the nations, and set them
aside. Just as the apostle contrasts the fading glory of the face of Moses with the lasting
and blessed glory seen in the face of Christ when comparing and contrasting the old
covenant with the new, so here he teaches us that for those "in Christ" the "old things"
pass away, and a new creation, and, as he had already told the Corinthians, a second Man,
the last Adam, the Lord from heaven, are vitally connected with the reconciliation. The
ministry of the reconciliation is defined:--
"Namely, that God was by Christ reconciling a world unto Himself, not imputing to
them their trespasses, and hath put in us the word of the reconciliation" (II Cor. 5: 19).
The structure just suggested puts "The promises" (D D) in correspondence with "The
reconciliation." These promises, "I will dwell among them, and walk among them, and I
will be their God," look forward to Revelation 21: 1-7. There, when all things are made
new, the tabernacle of God will be with men (not merely with Israel), and He will dwell
with them, and they shall be His people, the distinction between Israel and the nations
having passed away. Israel, as a nation, were blind to this truth. The Corinthians were
"straitened" (6: 12), narrowed and cramped by the Judaistic teaching they were
imbibing. "The love of Christ" held the apostle back from any other reckoning than that
"If one died for all, then they all died, with the object that the living should live no longer
unto themselves, but to Him Who on their behalf died and rose again" (II Cor. 5: 14, 15).
We had hoped that the series of studies dealing with the various issues that were
connected with the death of Christ, as distinguished from the doctrine of the cross, or the
shedding of blood, or the sufferings, would have by this time prepared our minds to
observe the great difference between the truth that Christ died on behalf of all, and the
further teaching of redemption. The outbreak of war prevented our brother from
continuing his researches, and so we must call attention to the fact that the death of Christ
for all as the basis of the reconciliation must not be confounded with salvation,
forgiveness, justification, &100:, which Scripture links not only with death simply, but with