What Does It Mean to Be an Ambassador for Christ?
Ambassadorship in the New Testament
Ambassadorship is a major New Testament theme. We miss this because, when we read that Jesus called the twelve his apostles (apostolos, in Greek), we imagine that he must have been inventing a brand-new word to describe a spiritual gift or an office that existed only in the church. But the Greek word apostolos had existed long before Jesus’s birth; it was a perfectly secular word until Jesus used it. It connoted something along the lines of an ambassador,1 one who was sent (apostellō) to represent a nation, with the power to negotiate on its behalf.2 For example, the Greek historian Herodotus writes,
Then, when the Delphic reply was brought to Alyattes, straightway he sent a herald to Miletus, offering to make a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians. . . . So the envoy [from Greek apostolos] went to Miletus.3
The envoy is sent with power to negotiate a truce. Similarly, Josephus writes,
For a delegation of the Jews was come to Rome . . . that they might petition for the liberty of living by their own laws. Now, the number of the ambassadors [from Greek apostellō] that were sent by the authority of the nation was fifty.4
No Shortcut to Success
Matt Rhodes
In No Shortcut to Success, author and missionary Matt Rhodes encourages Christians to stop chasing silver-bullet strategies for missions and embrace long-term methods grounded on theological education, clear communication, and a devotion to ministry excellence.
The apostles are sent by a nation and have the authority to represent it and negotiate on its behalf. Apostles, then, are similar to ambassadors, and the message Jesus gives to these apostles focuses on God’s coming kingdom: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 10:7). Jesus sends his ambassadors to negotiate peace. His terms of peace must be accepted, or destruction will follow.
This is why, in 2 Corinthians, when Paul appeals to his own authority, he seems to treat his status as an “ambassador for Christ” (2 Cor. 5:20) and a “true apostle” (2 Cor. 12:12) somewhat interchangeably.
His duty as an ambassador to bring the “message of reconciliation” to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 5:19) is no different than his “apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Rom. 1:5).5
This helps us make sense of the apostles’ unique ministry giftings. They’ve been given miraculous powers (2 Cor. 12:12), they have firsthand knowledge of Jesus’s message (Acts 1:21–23), and they’re eyewitnesses of the risen Christ (Acts 1:21; 1 Cor. 9:1). These characteristics validate the apostles as ambassadors. They can believably say, “I have been sent by God!” because they come with clear signs from God. They can believably claim to know Christ’s message because they’ve been there “during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” (Acts 1:21). And most importantly, they can believably proclaim the resurrection because they’ve seen him with their eyes and touched him with their hands (1 John 1:1). Why did early Christians collect the writings of the apostles and those who worked directly with them? Why did they treat those writings as Holy Scripture? Because as Christ’s direct ambassadors, the apostles could be fully trusted to deliver his authentic message.
Once we view the apostles as ambassadors, some of Jesus’s unusual statements begin to make sense. For example, Jesus tells his apostles,
As the Father has sent me [from Greek apostellō], even so I am sending you. . . . If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. (John 20:21–23)
Like any king, Christ sends ambassadors to communicate on his behalf. In fact, communication is the sum total of the missionary task.
This doesn’t mean that Peter could have an argument with his wife and threaten to withhold God’s forgiveness until she did what he wanted. Instead, Jesus is entrusting the apostles as his ambassadors to faithfully determine who has accepted his terms of peace and thus who is to be forgiven. Elsewhere, Jesus says, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Matt. 10:40). Jesus equates receiving the apostles with receiving him because as ambassadors, they come with his message in his authority.
The Gospels tell the story of Jesus bringing his kingdom near and then sending out special ambassadors with his terms of peace. Consider Jesus’s Great Commission:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt. 28:19–20)
Missionaries as Christ’s Ambassadors Today
What does this have to do with missions today? Jesus sent the apostles as ambassadors to the nations 2,000 years ago—what does that have to do with us?
God knew that Jesus’s eleven apostles wouldn’t fulfill the Great Commission by themselves. Today, the wider church carries on their ambassadorial task. Missionaries among the unreached are at the forefront of these efforts. In saying this, I’m not equating missionaries with the apostles. I sincerely hope no one will collect my writings and revere them as Scripture! However, even without the New Testament apostles’ unique gifting, we can act as ambassadors in smaller, subsidiary ways.6
Understanding missionaries as ambassadors is helpful because it suggests a definition for the missionary task. I suggest that the missionary’s goal is “establishing Christ-centered churches that are sufficiently mature to multiply and endure among peoples who have had little or no access to Jesus’s message.” The missionary’s task, then, is to go in Christ’s authority as ambassadors of his kingdom, to communicate his message to the nations.
Like any king, Christ sends ambassadors to communicate on his behalf. In fact, communication is the sum total of the missionary task. David Hesselgrave writes,
If the Christian mission were something to be played, communication would be the name of the game. As it is, the Christian mission is serious business—the King’s business! In it, missionaries have ambassadorial rank. Their special task is to cross cultural and other boundaries in order to communicate Christ.7
Communicating and teaching are not optional. The oft-quoted8 line that “we must preach always, and when necessary, use words” is the death knell of missionary work. We must never downplay the necessity of words. Certainly, missionaries should live righteous, attractive lives that “preach” the word (see Titus 2:10). But that’s not enough for missionaries to fulfill their role as Christ’s ambassadors. If ambassadors don’t communicate their message, then they’re not doing their job.
Notes:
- Liddell and Scott define apostolos as “a messenger, ambassador, envoy” (Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek English Lexicon [Oxford: Clarendon, 2000], 107).
- David Hesselgrave, Paradigms in Conflict: 10 Key Questions in Christian Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2005), ch. 5.
- Herodotus, The Persian Wars: Volume 1, trans. Alfred Denis Godley (Cambridge, MA: W. Heinemann, 1920), book 1, 21.
- Josephus, Antiquities, trans. William Whiston (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1999), 579.
- Additionally, though the Greek word in 2 Cor. 5:20, presbeuō (to be an ambassador), is used only twice in the New Testament, its use mirrors that of the term apostle. It is used once to apply to Paul (Eph. 6:20) and once to apply to Paul and his missionary team (2 Cor. 5:20). In the same way, the word apostle—while it refers most often to Paul and the twelve—is also extended to describe Paul’s missionary teammates (Acts 14:14; 1 Thess. 2:6).
- Today’s missionaries may act as ambassadors to the nations, but our ambassadorship is only legitimate to the extent that our message conforms with the apostles’ original message, as recorded in their New Testament writings. The ambassadorship of missionaries today, then, is only a smaller, subsidiary extension of the apostles’ work and is “built on the foundation of the apostles . . .” (Eph. 2:20).
- David Hesselgrave, Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally: An Introduction to Missionary Communication, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991), 20.
- Though commonly misattributed to St. Francis of Assisi, this quote is modern.
This article is adapted from No Shortcut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions by Matt Rhodes.
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