'Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God
did beseech ... by us: we pray ... in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God.'--2 COR. v. 20.
These are wonderful and bold words, not so much because of what they
claim for the servants as because of what they reveal of the Lord.
That thought, 'as though God did beseech,' seems to me to be the one
deserving of our attention now, far rather than any inferences which
may be drawn from the words as to the relation of preachers of the
Gospel to man and to God. I wish, therefore, to try to set forth the
wonderfulness of this mystery of a beseeching God, and to put by the
side of it the other wonder and mystery of men refusing the divine
beseechings.
Before doing so, however, I remark that the supplement which stands
in our Authorised Version in this text is a misleading and
unfortunate one. 'As though God did beseech _you_' and 'we pray
_you_' unduly narrow the scope of the Apostolic message, and confuse
the whole course of the Apostolic reasoning here. For he has been
speaking of a world which is reconciled to God, and he finds a
consequence of that reconciliation of the world in the fact that he
and his fellow-preachers are entrusted with the word of
reconciliation. The scope of their message, then, can be no narrower
than the scope of the reconciliation; and inasmuch as that is
world-wide the beseeching must be co-extensive therewith, and must
cover the whole ground of humanity. It is a universal message that
is set forth here. The Corinthians, to whom Paul was speaking, are,
by his hypothesis, already reconciled to God, and the message which
he has in trust for them is given in the subsequent words: 'We then,
as workers together with God, beseech you also that ye receive not
the grace of God in vain.' But the message, the pleading of the
divine heart, 'be ye reconciled to God,' is a pleading that reaches
over the whole range of a reconciled world. I take then, just these
two thoughts, God beseeching man, and man refusing God.