The Gospel Embassy.
If any man should ask what is the chief work of the Christian ministry, here is the answer: God has sent us; we are ambassadors for Christ. God has given us our message, and that message is that He has reconciled the world unto Himself; and He sends us to pray and beseech every one in the world whom we can reach to be reconciled to Him.
I. We are ambassadors men sent by a King. When an ambassador comes to our country, before he can be received as an ambassador he must show his credentials. St. Paul had proved to those to whom he wrote that he was sent by Christ. He went into the synagogue of the Jews first and testified that Jesus is the Christ. When the Jews refused to receive his message he went to the Gentiles, and many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized. No doubt he did miracles also, but they are not mentioned in the account of his embassy to the people of Corinth. The power that went with the message proved that the message was from God. The effects of his message on the minds of the Corinthians were his credentials, for they were the handwriting and the seal of God Himself. They were a new creation. Old things were passed away; all things were become new. They had been renewed in the spirit of their minds, and therefore their life was a new life, and every one might read it for himself.
II. The message is the gospel. God has reconciled us to Himself, and we must be reconciled to Him. He offers us a full, free, eternal pardon for all sins, for all our acts, words, thoughts, done, spoken, and conceived against Him and His law. You must accept that pardon. He assures you that He loves you, loves you with a deep, mysterious, inconceivable love. You must believe that. He tells you that the exceeding great love led Him to give His only-begotten Son to become man, that He might suffer in your place what you deserve to suffer. You will be reconciled to God because you believe that He has reconciled you to Himself.
W. W. Champneys, Penny Pulpit,new series, No. 405.