June 15, 2013, Reading

 Second Corinthians 5:14-21

14 For the love of Christ overwhelms us when we consider that if one man died for all, then all have died;

15 his purpose in dying for all humanity was that those who live should live not any more for themselves, but for him who died and was raised to life.

16 From now onwards, then, we will not consider anyone by human standards: even if we were once familiar with Christ according to human standards, we do not know him in that way any longer.

17 So for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old order is gone and a new being is there to see.

18 It is all God’s work; he reconciled us to himself through Christ and he gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

19 I mean, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding anyone’s faults against them, but entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

20 So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were urging you through us, and in the name of Christ we appeal to you to be reconciled to God.

21 For our sake he made the sinless one a victim for sin, so that in him we might become the uprightness of God.