God in Christ.
I. "God was in Christ." In the Son of Man, as He loves best to call Himself, who bows His head in death, who suffers the common lot of humanity, that very circumstance of pain and ignominy shows something more than a Divine messenger from God, as some have described Him, or a Divine pleader before God and against God for man, as He has often been pictured. It is a real manifestation or revelation of, or rather a revealer of the very nature of God, that we have in Him. He is in the Father, the Father in Him, and His death is the close of a life in which this human nature, which we all share, has been raised and ennobled by close union with the Divine nature. The world has had before it the crowning act of God's love for the race which He long ago had moulded in something of His own image. It is in the closest union with God that He who was born at Bethlehem and crucified at Calvary has lived and died. The Father and the Son have moved together in the great work of restoration and redemption. There is no crossing or thwarting of the Father's will, no hard-won, dearly bought victory over an offended God.
II. The text is a blessed message, worthy, surely, of the name which the Apostle twice gives it, as one of reconciliation. And he adds one point more: "not imputing" not reckoning, as our Revisers have more exactly rendered it "their trespasses unto them." The metaphor, we see at a glance, is that of a debt, freely, frankly forgiven. This power of absolute and entire forgiveness, passing from God through Christ to man, is put among the very foremost attributes of the Divine nature as revealed to us in and by His Son; it is enshrined in our creed, it is embodied in the prayer of prayers, it is emphasised in the Sermon on the Mount, it is appealed to by the dying Sufferer on the Cross. We, whom it costs so hard a struggle, are bidden to forgive freely, "Yea, until seventy times seven" never to be weary of forgiving.
G. G. Bradley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 257.
References: 2 Corinthians 5:19. Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 638; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 10. 2 Corinthians 5:20. E. Garbett, The Soul's Life,p. 37; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,8th series, p. 151; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 80. 2 Corinthians 5:20; 2 Corinthians 5:21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxii., No. 1910.