@John Bauer, I'm interested in your understanding of this topic. Thanks.
Are you sure you want me to chime in? I’ve got some pretty ballsy convictions and opinions.
1. “Considering the context, who are the ambassadors?”
In context, it is Paul and those laboring with him in that apostolic ministry, the ones to whom God has given the ministry and message of reconciliation and through whom God is making his plea. That is an authoritative, ministerial “we,” not a suggestion that “all Christians are ambassadors” in the same sense.
2. “Who are ambassadors for Christ?”
The “we” are the ones through whom God appeals; the “you” are the ones to whom that appeal is addressed. That alone rules out any reduction of the verse into “all Christians are ambassadors.” Paul is distinguishing heralds from hearers. It is an apostolic appeal directed toward “the church of God that is in Corinth” (2 Cor. 1:1).
3. "Who is the ‘you’ in verse 20?”
So the “you” in verse 20 is “the church of God that is in Corinth,” which includes both believers and unbelievers, contrary to what you said (
source) (
source). Paul has a tendency to address entire congregations as churches of God, or saints, or those sanctified in Christ, and yet within those same assemblies he warns that some are false, unregenerate, self-deceived, or under judgment. So, visible churches consist of believers and unbelievers alike (whereas the invisible church consists of only the elect united to Christ).
“Where does Scripture teach that unbelievers (or reprobate) are to be reconciled to God? That just doesn’t make sense.”
Well, now don’t forget, it is not just the reprobate who are unbelievers. Unregenerate elect are also unbelievers, and by the grace of God they often do respond to such a call.
“The call to be reconciled doesn’t apply to those who are not saved.”
Why not? Are they not the very ones who need to be reconciled?
Note 1: Similarly, Acts 8 presents Simon Magus as baptized and incorporated into the church’s outward life, yet Peter tells him his heart is not right before God and that he remains in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity (Acts 8:13, 21–23). So here is a concrete narrative instance of a baptized church member who is not regenerate. Thus we are able to reckon with apostolic statements about defections from within the church; they went out from us, but they were not of us (1 John 2:19).
Note 2: Notice, too, that “be reconciled to God” does not require that the Corinthians were pagans. Paul can address a visible church according to its covenantal profession while still pressing the divine demand that they stand rightly before God. That is neither strange nor uncommon in the epistles.
I can also understand and accept the fact that ambassadors are also today's pastors and elders, …
These are the closest analogs, perhaps, but I don’t believe there remains in the church an office identical to the ambassadorial role exercised by Paul and his ministerial associates. It belongs to the foundational, apostolic ministry, not to a perpetually continuing office under that same authority.
[I don’t think Paul would call unbelievers to be reconciled to God] because unbelievers were never united with Christ. I thought that would be obvious.
If unbelievers are not united to Christ, then they need to be reconciled. It is therefore right and sensible that Paul should call them to be reconciled—because they are not, and they need to be. Believers don’t need to be reconciled, for they already are.
Attention should be paid to the fact that the verb is passive:
καταλλάγητε τῷ θεῷ (
katallagēte tō theō). The point is not “reconcile yourselves,” but rather “be reconciled”—that is, come into the state of peace with God that he has himself accomplished and now proclaims in Christ.
That imperative must be read in immediate context. In vv. 18-19, reconciliation is first God’s act: “All these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ,” and who in Christ was “not counting people's trespasses against them.” Then, in v. 20, Paul turns from declaration to summons. Because God has accomplished reconciliation objectively in Christ and now announces it through apostolic ministry, the hearers are commanded to receive that reconciling grace by faith. The imperative is thus grounded in the indicative. Paul is saying, “Embrace by faith the peace God that has established in the crucified and risen Christ.” Although a command, it is a gospel command. It is not law in a “do this and live” sense; it is the divine summons to lay hold of what God has done in Christ.
And look at v. 21: “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.” Verse 20 cannot mean that reconciliation is achieved by human movement toward God, because v. 21 locates its ground wholly in substitution. Christ is made sin for us; believers become God’s righteousness in him. Therefore the imperative to be reconciled means to be united to Christ by faith, and so enter into the reconciled relation to God purchased by his sin-bearing death.
(So there is also a covenantal and forensic dimension here that presupposes objective enmity under divine judgment because of sin. Sinners are reconciled to God because God has dealt justly and definitively with sin in Christ.)
It is passive because reconciliation is God’s work, not ours; it is imperative because that reconciling work must be personally embraced; and it is grounded wholly in substitutionary atonement, not in human contribution.
Believing is what is required of a lost sinner to be saved.
Wait, you think there is something lost sinners must DO to be saved?
Believing in Christ is the fruit of salvation, not a condition thereof.
Well, believing is a sign of salvation, is it not?
There you go, that’s better.
Confessing our sins and repenting is what is required for a backslidden saint to be reconciled to God.
Are not saints already reconciled to God and eternally secure? Do you reject the P of the acrostic TULIP? Are faith and repentance God’s gift to us, or our gift to him? And so on.
