…For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again….
…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who 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 people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
— 2 Corinthians 5:14-19
Many theologians have thought that reconciliation may be as important a word as any other in the biblical vocabulary of salvation. It is a word from the world of human relationships. It is that wonderful thing that sometimes happens when people at enmity with each other steer a course toward each other to confess wrongdoing, to repair a rift, to make up, to set aside differences, to cease hostilities, to reconcile.
Most people don’t really believe they are at enmity with God. They think God is quite favorably disposed toward them. After all, why wouldn’t God be? Aren’t we quite lovable the way we are?
God’s love is not infatuation or God just being “nice.” The God of love loves the unlovable with a rigorous commitment. He loves human beings who have ignored him, who have arrogantly thought they don’t really need him, and who have been gods to themselves. God’s love sees us for who we can be, not who we are.
Christ, who had no sin, stood in the place of the sinner so the sinner could stand before God—enmity gone, opposition put aside, friends again.
And thus we bear a message of reconciliation, and we have a ministry of reconciliation. In other words, when people in the world think of Christians, they ought to think: Oh yes, those are the people who are passionate about peace and reconciliation. They live in it and they live for it.
Ponder This: Is that what people really see in our attitudes and values?
