3. What special ministry has God authorized? Through whom?

³ Well aware of our imperfect and sinful condition and of our inherited enmity with him, he invites us to seek a reconciliation to friendship with him, if we would gain his favor and goodwill while it may still be found. Through faithful witnesses on earth now who have already accepted the privilege of worshiping him as their God, and who have already become his “men of goodwill,” God makes his entreaty, his invitation, known to still others who desire righteousness and truth. Paul speaks of the privilege of representing God by bearing this message as the “ministry of the reconciliation”:

namely, that God was by means of Christ reconciling a world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and he committed the word of the reconciliation to us.