What it means to be an ambassador of Christ
By George Oduor
If you were to do a detailed review of your relationship with Christ, would you say your quality of living is representative of Christ’s disciple?
Wherever God has placed you, be it as an elder or a younger brother or a sister, the head of your family, an employer or an employee, what is your character like?
Paul the Apostle tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:20, that we are commissioned to be ambassadors of Jesus Christ.
But what does it mean really?
According to Wikipedia, an ambassador is an envoy. Someone who represents a state and is usually accredited to another country, as the resident representative of their own government; for a special and often temporary diplomatic assignment.
So how are you an ambassador of Christ?
Just as the earthly ambassadors are commissioned to represent the interests of their host nations, you are meant to represent and communicate the desires, and the will of God that called you and sent you to share His message with the rest of the world.
Paul cautions Christians (Philippians 3:17-20) not to be distracted by the citizenship of this world.
Just as it is today, there were some people in the church then, who professed to be Christians, but whose lives reflected everything that defied their status as citizens of heaven.
In his exhortation, Paul tells the church that they have a higher citizenship than that of Rome. And cautions them not to fall into the trap of living as those around them.
The popular trend nowadays is to determine how you’d like to live your life and then conform Christ to that lifestyle.
Many have been conditioned to the “don’t-offend-anyone” class of thinking; that even Christians are folding up against moral and spiritual wrongs around them, fearing they may be labelled as intolerant, alarmists or heretics.
The world encourages us to remain tolerant and positive in the face of an onslaught from the enemy. Sin is at the very heart of all that is against Almighty God, bowing to worldly living and selfish desires so that the things that we’ve always known as sins, are now considered socially acceptable in the eyes of men.
As an ambassador of Christ, you’re the “light” (Ephesians 5:7-9) on top of the mountain – a thorn in the flesh of the world; illuminating all the lies and evil planted in our midst. And as the salt of the earth, it is your duty to preserve God’s word from any and every kind of corruption.
Jesus tells us to let our light shine before others in the book of (Matthew 5:16). He further explains that no one lights a lamp just to hide it under a basket. For a lamp is meant to be placed on a stand, that it can give light to everything around it.
We are Christ’s representatives. As so, we must be wary of accommodating any temporal interests and pleasures of this world. Anything that may lead to neglecting of our spiritual calling, to stay relevant to the norms of this word is a blatant disrespect to our Heavenly Father.
You tend to become like those whom you spend a great deal of time with. If you want to view the world as Christ does, you need to spend consistent time with Him, through prayer, worship, and meditating on His Word.
At each moment, our sinful nature rallies against our ultimate purpose of knowing God and making Him known. To live—and think—victoriously, you need to lean hard into Christ.
Your entire life should be a conviction and reproach to sinners, a beacon of hope to the oppressed, a ray of sunshine to the hopeless, a source of encouragement to the destitute and a visible sign of the invisible realities of Christ.