What Does 2 Corinthians 5:20 Mean?

(20) **Now then we are ambassadors for Christ**—The preposition “for” implies the same representative character as in 2Corinthians 5:14-15. The preachers of the Word were acting *on behalf of* Christ; they were acting also *in His stead.* The thought or word meets us again in Ephesians 6:20. “I am an ambassador in bonds.” The earlier versions (Tyndale, Geneva, Cranmer) give “messengers,” the Rhemish “legates.” “Ambassadors,” which may be noted as singularly felicitous, first appears in the version of 1611. The word, derived from the mediæval Latin *ambasciator,* and first becoming popular in the Romance languages, is found in Shakespeare, and appears to have come into prominence through the intercourse with France and Spain in the reign of Elizabeth. **We pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.**—It will be seen, in this conclusion of the language of St. Paul as to the atonement, how entirely, on the one hand, he recognises the representative and vicarious character of the redeeming work of Christ; how entirely, on the other, he stands aloof from the speculative theories on that work which have sometimes been built upon his teaching. He does not present, as the system-builders of theology have too often done, the picture of the wrath of the Father averted by the compassion of the Son, or satisfied by the infliction upon Him of a penalty which is a quantitative equivalent for that due to the sins of mankind. The whole work, from his point of view, originates in the love of the Father, sending His Son to manifest that love in its highest and noblest form. He does not need to be reconciled to man. He sends His Son, and His Son sends His ministers to entreat them to be reconciled to Him, to accept the pardon which is freely offered. In the background there lies the thought that the death of Christ was in some way, as the highest act of Divine love, connected with the work of reconciliation; but the mode in which it was effective, is, as Butler says (*Analogy,* 2:5), “mysterious, and left, in part at least, unrevealed,” and it is not wise to “endeavour to explain the efficacy of what Christ has done and suffered for us beyond what the Scripture has authorised.”