2 Corinthians 5:18

all things are of God Whether natural or spiritual. He is the Creator of heaven and earth, Genesis 1:1, as well as of the work of redemption and of the new heart of man. Cf. chap. 2 Corinthians 1:21; 2 Corinthians 5:5; 1Co 3:23; 1 Corinthians 15:28; also John 3:16; Romans 5:8; Romans 8:32. Christ came only to fulfil His Fathers Will (John 4:34; John 5:30; John 6:39-40). The Father and He were one in love to the human race as in everything else, John 17:21-23. "All the life of God is a flow of this Divine self-giving charity. Creation itself is sacrifice, the self-impartation of the Divine being." Robertson.

who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ We have to observe here that not only was man estranged from God, but God from man. "We cannot imagine that God, Who is essentially just, should not abominate iniquity, yet there is no incongruity in this that a father should be offended with that son which he loveth, and at that time offended with him when he loveth him." Bp Pearson. "God is angry with the wicked. For Christ was the representative of God under the name of Humanity. Now Christ was angry. That therefore which God feels" or rather the relation in which He stands towards sin "corresponds with that which in pure Humanity is the emotion of anger. No other word then will adequately represent God's feeling" (or rather attitude). Robertson. But the reconciliation was God's work of love, carried out by Jesus Christ, Who came to reveal His Nature and beneficial purposes to mankind, and to accomplish them by taking our mortal flesh, by His pure and stainless life, by His mysterious Death upon the Cross for our sakes, by His Resurrection from the dead, as well as by His sending His Spirit to work out His blessed Will in us. This is -reconciliation by Jesus Christ." The words reconcile, reconciliation, are deliberately preferred by the translators of the A. V. to the word atone, atonement, which is only to be found as an equivalent for the Greek word here used in Romans 5:11. Cf. Romans 5:10; Romans 11:15; 1 Corinthians 7:11, as well as a similar word occurring in Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20-21. See also notes below.

the ministry of reconciliation Literally, the reconciliation, i.e. that which has just been mentioned. Cf. ch. 2 Corinthians 3:3, where St Paul describes the Corinthians as an Epistle of Christ ministered by him with the Spirit of the living God. The word ministry signifies service rendered freely, not of compulsion. It carries with it the idea of diligence, whatever derivation of the Greek word we take. It was the Apostles" task, voluntarily undertaken by themselves, to proclaim the good tidings of reconciliation through Christ throughout the world, and thus to put it in men's power to accept and act upon it. Tyndale, followed by Cranmer and the Geneva Version, render and hath given unto us the office to preach the atonement.