It’s Not a Shouting Match // Living Life as an Ambassador of Christ, Pt 6

Anyone who believes in Jesus – is also meant to be an Ambassador of Christ. Now – that’s not an easy role. Sometimes being Ambassador requires some tough talk.  Other times it’s about diplomacy – the question is, knowing when to call a spade a spade, and when to be more … circumspect.

One of the most embarrassing things I've ever seen as a Christian and I've seen it a few times, is some guy standing up on a soap box in the mall or on the street corner or, as I shared a few weeks ago at Saturday morning markets, screaming out the so called good news of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes they're preaching about hell and damnation and other times there's something esoteric or apparently esoteric to the casual passer by. And sometimes I have absolutely no idea what they're ranting on about.

Now I'm a Christian and so I'll sometimes stop and see if I can understand where they're coming from and truly I can't figure out what it is most of the time. But they stand there on their soap box with a Bible in their hands and surrounded by some pretty tacky placards normally screaming the Gospel at people.

Now do I think that God can use that? Well sure, He seems to use the foolishness that I preach sometimes in people's lives so why not the guy on the soap box on the street corner?

But do I think that this is the most affective way of dealing with the issue of sharing the good news? Is it the best way to communicate the incredible love of God and the grace of Jesus Christ? The riches available to those who put their faith in Him. Is it the best way to do that?

No, not by a long shot. Not by a very long shot. And yet it's easy, so easy for us to imagine that telling people about Jesus, it's kind of like that. That it's about two equal and opposite ideologies, God’s and the world’s, butting heads and locking horns.

Last week and again this week on the program we're having a chat about living our lives out as ambassadors of Christ, His emissaries if you will. If I believe in Jesus, if you believe in Jesus then one of the things that we have to do with our lives, one of the main things is to communicate His love, carry His love out into a lost and hurting world.

That's what the Apostle Paul said in writing to his dear friends at the Church in Corinth way back in the 1st century. In the letter 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20. He writes:

So we are ambassadors of Christ since God is making His appeal through us.

And I guess much of what we chatted about last week had to do with us being ambassadors. Looking and being and walking and talking like Jesus because if we're going to be His ambassadors, well we better just do that. We better look like Him and walk like Him and talk like Him and be like Jesus.

Each one in our own way of course but unless we do, how can we possibly claim to be His ambassador? How can God make His appeal to this world to be reconciled with Him through someone who looks nothing like Him, who behaves nothing like Him, who talks nothing like Him?

Now that kind of presents us with something of a dilemma, does for me anyhow. Because what I see is that sometimes Jesus stood up and berated people. Not too often granted but sometimes he did. He called the religious leaders of the day hypocrites, a brood of vipers and a whole bunch of other things.

In fact it was that attitude towards them that got Him crucified. And yet other times He dealt with people with such tender love and compassion it almost moves you to tears when you read about those times. Like the woman caught in adultery, you can read about her story in Johns Gospel chapter 8. I mean He pretty much put himself between her, this sinner, and the angry mob who wanted to stone her to death. Now go figure that out.

So how do you reconcile these two things? How do you or I know if we want to be like Jesus, how to speak into this world the way that