<p>5:15 <i>And he died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sakes died and rose again</i>- The representative nature of the Lord's death means that we are pledged to live out His self-crucifixion as far as we can; to re-live the crucifixion process in our imagination, to come to that point where we <i>know</i> we wouldn't have gone through with it, and to grasp with real wonder and gratitude the salvation of the cross. Paul is surely alluding to the idea of baptism, whereby we identify with His death and resurrection; the language here is similar to that concerning baptism in Rom. 6:8. &quot;As one has died for all, then all have died, 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&quot; (2 Cor. 5:14,15 Moffatt). It has been powerfully commented: &quot;To know oneself to have been involved in the sacrificial death of Christ, on account of its representational character, is to see oneself committed to a sacrificial life, to a re-enactment in oneself of the cross&quot; (W.F. Barling, <i>The Letters To Corinth</i>).</p><p>All that is true of the Lord Jesus becomes in some sense, at some time, true of each of us who are in Him. It&rsquo;s true that nowhere in the Bible is the Lord Jesus actually called our &ldquo;representative&rdquo;, but the idea is clearly there. I suggest it&rsquo;s especially clear in all the Bible passages which speak of Him acting <i>huper</i> us- what Dorothee S&ouml;lle called &ldquo;the preposition of representation&rdquo;. Arndt and Gingrich in their Greek-English Lexicon define <i>huper</i> in the genitive as meaning &ldquo;&rsquo;for&rsquo;, &lsquo;in behalf of&rsquo;, &lsquo;for the sake of&rsquo; someone. When used in the sense of representation, <i>huper</i> is associated with verbs like &lsquo;request, pray, care, work, feel, suffer, die, support&rsquo;&rdquo;. So in the same way as the Lord representatively prays, died, cares, suffers, works &ldquo;for&rdquo; us, we are to do likewise, if He indeed is our representative and we His. Our prayers for another, our caring for them, is no longer a rushed salving of our conscience through some good deed. Instead 2 Cor. 5:15 becomes our motivation: &ldquo;He died for (<i>huper</i>) all of us, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for (<i>huper</i>) them&rdquo;. We are, in our turn, to go forth and be &ldquo;ambassadors for (<i>huper</i>) Christ... we pray you in Christ&rsquo;s stead (<i>huper </i>Christ), be reconciled to God&rdquo; (2 Cor. 5:20). Grasping Him as our representative means that we will be His representatives in this world, and not leave that to others or think that our relationship in Him is so internal we needn&rsquo;t breathe nor show a word of it to others. As He suffered &ldquo;the just for (<i>huper</i>) the unjust&rdquo; (1 Pet. 3:18), our living, caring, praying for others is no longer done &ldquo;for&rdquo; those whom we consider good enough, worthy enough, sharing our religious convictions and theology. For whilst we were yet sinners, Christ died <i>huper</i> us (Rom. 5:6). And this representative death is to find an issue in our praying <i>huper</i> others (Acts 12:5; Rom. 10:1; 15:30; 2 Cor. 1:11), just as He makes intercession <i>huper </i>us (Rom. 8:26,34). We are to spend and be spent <i>huper </i>others, after the pattern of the Lord in His final nakedness of death on the cross (2 Cor. 12:15). These must all be far more than fine ideas for us. These are the principles which we are to live by in hour by hour life. And they demand a huge amount, even the cross itself. For unto us is given &ldquo;in the behalf of Christ <i>huper</i> Christ, not only to quietly, painlessly, theoretically believe on Him, but also to suffer for (<i>huper</i>) his sake&rdquo; (Phil. 1:29). In all this, then, we see that the Lord&rsquo;s being our representative was not only at the time of His death; the fact He continues to be our representative makes Him our ongoing challenge.</p>