Friday night I was over at a family's house from the church. Kids running everywhere, dads out front pulling the cars into the street, because we were about to go around the neighborhood together.
One of them backs out an old Chevrolet truck. 1950s. Rounded hood, curved back end. From back when they made cars beautiful.
Then he cranked it.
That did not sound like an old truck. I said, what did you do to that? He said, come over here. He opened the hood. Underneath seventy-year-old sheet metal sat an 800 horsepower Corvette engine. The suspension underneath had been completely rebuilt.
That truck was not updated. It was not polished and cleaned and improved. It was a new creation.
Which is exactly what Paul says about you. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.
Your identity is received, not achieved
For years I thought I was what I did, what I had, and what other people thought of me. I looked for my identity in anything except Christ. Then I started wrestling with the Scriptures, and God opened my eyes: my identity is not achieved. It is received.
Look at Jesus in the wilderness. Three times the enemy comes at him with if you are, if you are, if you are. Three times Jesus answers, it is written, it is written, it is written. He is not out there earning a title. He already has one, handed to him by his Father.
You will never do enough. You will never have enough. And there is only one opinion that finally counts, and that Voice calls you beloved.
So many of us are convinced we are disqualified. Gone too far. Sinned too much. Not true. God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines. He does not call the qualified — he qualifies the called.
And a new creation gets a new mission
Two words in verses 18 through 20. Ambassador. Reconciliation.
An ambassador represents his leader in a foreign land. He speaks for the interests of his own kingdom, not the host nation. He is invested in that country — he was sent to serve it — but he never speaks on his own authority.
That is you. New kingdom. New King. Not you, not the people around you. Christ.
And the job description is a ministry of reconciliation.
I was at airborne school as an Army Reserve chaplain, standing around with a bunch of soldiers. I love soldiers. They are honest, and they say what is on their mind. When they ask what I do, the response comes one of two ways — that's awesome, or, I'm not sure I want you around here.
So with one of them I skipped the word chaplain. I told him I was a minister of reconciliation, helping soldiers find forgiveness for their sins so they could be right with God. He looked at me like I was about to ruin his weekend and moved down the line.
Then we did what the government does best: hurry up and wait. I pulled out my pocket Bible, and another soldier came over with questions. Is that a Bible? What does it say about this? We had nothing but time.
At the end I asked him one. Have you ever sinned?
You better believe it. I've sinned a lot. In fact, I'm planning on sinning tonight.
All right. So how do you find forgiveness for your sins?
I just hope my good works outweigh my bad ones.
How's that going?
I don't know.
I told him that given his profession — jumping out of perfectly good airplanes for a living — that might be worth figuring out sooner rather than later. And right there, on a hot Georgia day, that soldier put his trust in Christ. He is still walking with the Lord, raising his family, serving his country. A dangerous man — exactly the kind you want confronting evil in the dark places of the earth.
That is the ministry of reconciliation. Not because we are better than anybody. Because we are beggars who found food and can point other beggars to it.
If it is worth dying for
Jim Elliot went to Wheaton thinking about medicine and came away compelled to take the gospel to people who had never heard the name of Jesus. He and his wife learned the language of a tribe in Ecuador and worked at it for years. Then they landed a float plane on the beach, walked out to meet the very people they had come to serve, and were killed.
What a waste, people said. What a tragedy.
In his journal Jim had already written this: he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
His wife believed the mission had to continue. So she went back to that tribe. And they received her. Over time many of those men and women put their faith in Christ. Years later the pilot's son returned, and the man who had killed his father baptized him.
It did not stop there. Thousands of young people heard that story and gave their lives to the same work all over the world. What everyone assumed would end missions is what ignited them. If that message is worth dying for, it must be worth living for.
The exchange underneath all of it
Here is why any of this holds together. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Fifteen Greek words. God treated Jesus as though he had lived my life, and turns around and treats me as though I lived his. Christ was never a sinner for a split second — holy, harmless, undefiled, hanging there. But when God looks at the cross, he sees you. When he looks at you, he sees Christ. He takes your shame so you can have his glory.
Forget that you were sent and faith turns into a hobby, a church turns into a club, marriage becomes expectation management, parenting becomes behavior control, and a job becomes a paycheck.
You were not saved only from something. You were saved for something.
So write a name down. Right now, on paper or in your phone. The person who is far from God and close to you. Pray for them this week and watch for the opening.
Who is your one?
