here. The Corinthians, to whom Paul was speaking, are,
by his hypothesis, already reconciled to God, and the message which
he has in trust for them is given in the subsequent words: 'We then,
as workers together with God, beseech you also that ye receive not
the grace of God in vain.' But the message, the pleading of the
divine heart, 'be ye reconciled to God,' is a pleading that reaches
over the whole range of a reconciled world. I take then, just these
two thoughts, God beseeching man, and man refusing God.

I. God beseeching man.

Now notice how, in my text, there alternates, as if substantially the
same idea, the thoughts that Christ and that God pray men to be
reconciled. 'We are ambassadors on _Christ's_ behalf, as though
_God_ did beseech you by us, we pray on _Christ's_ behalf.'
So you see, first, Christ the Pleader, then God beseeching, then
Christ again entreating and praying. Could any man have so spoken,
passing instinctively from the one thought to the other, unless he
had believed that whatsoever things the Father doeth, these also
doeth the Son likewise; and that Jesus Christ is the Representative
of the whole Deity for mankind, so as that when He pleads God pleads,
and God pleads through Him. I do not dwell upon this, but I simply
wish to mark it in passing as one of the innumerable strong and
irrefragable testimonies to the familiarity and firmness with which
that thought of the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the full revelation
of the Father by Him, was grasped by the Apostle, and was believed by
the people to whom he spoke. God pleads, therefore Christ pleads,
Christ pleads, therefore God pleads; and these Two are One in their
beseechings, and the voice of the Father echoes to us in the
tenderness of the Son.

So, then, let us think of that pleading. To sue for love, to beg that
an enemy will put away his enmity is the part of the inferior rather
than of the superior; is the part of the offender rather than of the
offended; is the part of the vanquished rather than of the victor; is
the part surely not of the king but of the rebel. And yet here, in
the sublime transcending of all human precedent and pattern which
characterises the divine dealing, we have the place of the suppliant
and of the supplicated inverted, and Love upon the Throne bends down
to ask of the rebel that lies powerless and sullen at His feet, and
yet is not conquered until his heart be won, though his limbs be
manacled, that he