The Christian Priest.
I. On the first two clauses of the text the third, of course, depends. "He has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation." St. Paul could have no conception, therefore, of a Christian minister, except as a man who was sent to testify that all things were of God, and that He had in Jesus Christ reconciled us to Himself. It is involved in the first proposition that the minister must regard himself as receiving his authority and commission from God. No Jew could think that he held any office whatsoever except by God's appointment. If the priest had not been taught to consider himself as chosen and clothed by God for His service at the altar, he would have been the one exceptional man in the whole commonwealth. The continual assertions in St. Paul's writings that he was an Apostle not of man nor by man are vouchers for this conviction, as far as he himself was concerned. He never suggests that the difference between the Old and the New Testament ministry is, that the one was appointed by God and the other not; that those who had the one might call themselves ministers of God, and that those who had the other might call themselves ministers of some society which had chosen them to do certain offices on its behalf. What he does say is, that the ministers of the Old Testament were, to a great extent, ministers of a letter written and graven in stone, and that those of the New Testament are ministers of the Spirit; that the one are ministers of condemnation, and the others of righteousness; that the one are to exhibit the glory of God under a veil, and that the others are to present it openly, as revealed in Jesus Christ.
II. In modern times, when people have become weary of the oppressions of a body calling itself the universal church on the one side of them, and of the sects which they see tearing nations into pieces on the other, the notion has gone forth that if men could but shake off all the associations which are connected with the priesthood as a Divine institution, and could merely elect officers to perform the devotional services which they think requisite for the satisfaction of their consciences or their religious impulses, a church might grow up suitable to our time, or to some better time that is approaching. If such persons lead us to think that there can be any reconstruction of a church which has not the doctrine that all things are of God at the basis of it, which does not lead us to regard all offices as more, not less Divine than we have regarded them hitherto, I believe we can expect nothing from such a change but the reproduction of all ancient corruptions and the removal of the good which has counteracted them. We have not believed wrongly that we are called by God to our work, and that we cannot perform it if we are not called to it. We have been very wrong in not making it evident that our calling is for your sakes, that we are witnesses of His care for you. We have not been wrong in asserting a communion between God and His children. We have been very wrong in limiting it according to notions and fancies of ours; in not believing and rejoicing that God may make the truth and the power of which we testify known without our testimony; in not desiring that all shall be prophets, that all shall have God's Spirit; as that old legislator did, who would not suffer the order of the Priesthood to be changed, because it concerned not him, but the nation and its Lord.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. i., p. 42.
I. Consider one or two things which are not distinctly expressed in this passage, but which are necessarily implied, and must be regarded as underlying what is expressed for it to have any consistent meaning. (1) Humanity, in itself considered, is supposed to be in some way separated from God; in a state of estrangement, if not of antagonism. (2) A second thing implied is that God loved the world, even when it was dead in trespasses and sins. (3) It is also implied that God's love, if it is to take effect in the highest sense, if it is to secure and accomplish the reconciling of the world, must be expressed and manifested in some form of supernatural interposition.
II. Consider what the text does distinctly express and declare. The pre-existing love of God takes a positive form and is made manifest by a Divine act. (1) There would seem to be two reconciliations referred to in the text; there is one which is accomplished by God, and there is another to be secured by man. (2) The reconciliation effected by God was accomplished by His doing two things: "He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin"; then, as the result of that, He did not impute to men their transgressions. The one thing became possible on the ground of the other. (3) In this reconciliation and return of God to the world, a foundation is laid for the return to and reconciliation of man with God.
III. Christianity is something more than (1) the mission of a teacher or prophet, (2) the embodiment in Christ of perfect virtue, (3) what was simply subjectivein God, or even (4) the fatherly love of God. There is a true thought in each of these things, but neither includes the whole truth standing alone.
T. Binney, King's Weighhouse Sermons,2nd series, p. 51.
References: 2 Corinthians 5:18. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vi., No. 318; Homilist,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 568; Spurgeon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 81; H. P. Liddon, University Sermons,p. 183. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1124; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 84; W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons,vol. i., p. 272.