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New Testament Reading - Ambassadors for Christ

¹⁶So stop evaluating Christians by what the world thinks about them or by what they seem to be like on the outside. Once I mistakenly thought of Christ that way, merely as a human being like myself. How differently I feel now! ¹⁷When someone becomes a Christian, he becomes a brand new person inside. He is not the same anymore. A new life has begun!

¹⁸All these new things are from God who brought us back to himself through what Christ Jesus did. And God has given us the privilege of urging everyone to come into his favor and be reconciled to him. ¹⁹For God was in Christ, restoring the world to himself, no longer counting men’s sins against them but blotting them out. This is the wonderful message he has given us to tell others. ²⁰We are Christ’s ambassadors. God is using us to speak to you: we beg you, as though Christ himself were here pleading with you, receive the love he offers you — be reconciled to God. ²¹For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us!^a

6 ¹As God’s partners, we beg you not to toss aside this marvelous message of God’s great kindness. ²For God says, “Your cry came to me at a favorable time, when the doors of welcome were wide open. I helped you on a day when salvation was being offered.” Right now God is ready to welcome you. Today he is ready to save you.

1. Literally, “Him who knew no sin, he made sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”