RECONCILIATION

“Be reconciled to God” (NIV) is the ending challenge of 2 Cor. 5:20.

Reconcile is defined as “to make friendly again, to settle a quarrel or a difference.” Man’s sin brought God’s judgment and it still does. We cannot be God’s friend if sin is the difference between us. But God provided the means for our reconciliation. He gave us His son. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ” (v. 17-18a).

The Gospel message is clear. We need to accept Christ as our Savior and Lord. We need to acknowledge and repent of our sins and accept the wonderful fact that Jesus Christ paid the price for all sin. Through Him, we can be reconciled to God. But there is more to this

process of reconciliation. There is our expected part in it.

God reconciled us to Himself “through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: That God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (v. 18a-19).

We have the message of reconciliation. The astonishing and understandable challenge is that “from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view” (v. 16a). No one includes each other, our fellow Christians, our neighbors, our boss, that person who makes us uncomfortable, those people who we really don’t like, even the person we want to see punished.

Our ministry and message should be directed by our spiritual views as taught and led by God’s Spirit. This definitely involves the development and maturing of our spiritual natures. We are the present means through which God appeals to others. “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (v. 20).

L. Urbaniak

“I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him.

I ended up by asking Him to do His work through me.”

J. Hudson Taylor