17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,(A) the new creation(B) has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!(C) 18 All this is from God,(D) who reconciled us to himself through Christ(E) and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.(F) And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors,(G) as though God were making his appeal through us.(H) We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.(I) 21 God made him who had no sin(J) to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.(K)

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Footnotes

  1. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Or Christ, that person is a new creation.
  2. 2 Corinthians 5:21 Or be a sin offering

16-20 Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

21 How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

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17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin,[a] so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

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Footnotes

  1. 5:21 Or to become sin itself.