2 Corinthians 5:11-21 - Controlled By The Love Of Christ

¹¹ If I 'appeal to the interests of men,' then, it is with the fear of the Lord before my mind. What I am is plain to God without disguise, plain also, I trust, to your own conscience. ¹² This is not 'recommending myself to you again'; it is giving you an incentive to be proud of me, which you can use against men who are proud of externals instead of the inward reality. ¹³ 'I am beside myself,' am I? Well, that is between myself and God. I am 'sane,' am I? Well, that is in your interests; ¹⁴ for I am controlled by the love of Christ, convinced that as One has died for all, then all have died, ¹⁵ and that he died for all in order to have the living live no longer for themselves but for him who died and rose for them.

¹⁶ Once convinced of this, then, I estimate no one by what is external; even though I once estimated Christ by what is external, I no longer estimate him thus. ¹⁷ There is a new creation whenever a man comes to be in Christ; what is old is gone, the new has come. ¹⁸ It is all the doing of the God who has reconciled me to himself through Christ and has permitted me to be a minister of his reconciliation. ¹⁹ For in Christ God reconciled the world to himself instead of counting men's trespasses against them; and he entrusted me with the message of his reconciliation. ²⁰ So I am an envoy for Christ, God appealing by me, as it were ??be reconciled to God, I entreat you on behalf of Christ. ²¹ For our sakes He made him to be sin who himself knew nothing of sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.