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

¹¹ Therefore, because we realize how greatly the Lord is to be feared, we are endeavouring to win men over, and God recognizes what our motives are, and I hope that you, in your hearts, recognize them too. ¹² We are not again commending ourselves to your favour, but are furnishing you with a ground of boasting on our behalf, so that you may have a reply ready for those with whom superficial appearances are everything and sincerity of heart counts for nothing. ¹³ For if we have been beside ourselves, it has been for God's glory; or if we are now in our right senses, it is in order to be of service to you. ¹⁴ For the love of Christ overmasters us, the conclusion at which we have arrived being this--that One having died for all, His death was their death, ¹⁵ and that He died for all in order that the living may no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.

¹⁶ Therefore for the future we know no one simply as a man. Even if we have known Christ as a man, yet now we do so no longer. ¹⁷ So that if any one is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old state of things has passed away; a new state of things has come into existence. ¹⁸ And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and has appointed us to serve in the ministry of reconciliation. ¹⁹ We are to tell how God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not charging men's transgressions to their account, and that He has entrusted to us the Message of this reconciliation. ²⁰ On Christ's behalf therefore we come as ambassadors, God, as it were, making entreaty through our lips: we, on Christ's behalf, beseech men to be reconciled to God. ²¹ He has made Him who knew nothing of sin to be sin for us, in order that in Him we may become the righteousness of God.