Random Quotes & Articles to Provide Food for Thought
This is one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible. The Apostle Paul is talking here about reconciliation. Reconciliation of course has to do with RELATIONSHIPS. If two people have a falling out and don’t talk to each other and don’t see each other, then the relationship is ENDED. There is hostility. There is estrangement. And so in order for these two to come together again, and for peace to be restored and hostilities to cease, there has to be a RECONCILIATION.
Now the Bible teaches us that there is hostility between God and man. There is a severed relationship. Why? Because SIN has come in and separated man from God. Sin is disobedience to God’s commands; and the Bible teaches us that man has rebelled, he has disobeyed, he has sinned. And so there is hostility between God and man. The relationship that once existed between God and man has been broken by man’s sin and disobedience. On man’s side there is unbelief and sin and fear; on God’s side there is wrath. God is holy, and because He is holy, His wrath is extended to mankind. In Romans 1:18 Paul says that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”
But there’s some wonderful news regarding this broken relationship with God. God has taken the first step—a huge step—God has taken the initiative in restoring this broken relationship. This is the marvel of the grace of God and the plan of salvation: God paid the price for mankind’s sin. God, through Christ’s death on the cross, took the RESPONSIBILITY for man’s sin. God was the one who had been sinned against; He had done nothing to break the relationship with man; and yet in His infinite love and mercy He sent His only begotten Son to earth for the express purpose of taking the responsibility for the breakup, for the sin, for the rebellion. “I’ll pay the price of your sin,” He says. “I’ll take responsibility for it. I’ll take the sin away. I’ll remove all the barriers. I’ll open the way for you to come back. I’ll make reconciliation.”
That’s exactly what God was doing when Jesus died on the cross. He was reconciling man to Himself. In verse 18 of the passage I read earlier it says, “And all things are of God, who HATH reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.” He HATH reconciled us. Past tense. This is something that God has done; not something that He wants to do at some future time, but HE HAS DONE IT. God HAS reconciled us to Himself. It’s a completed work—a FINISHED WORK. Verse 19 goes on to say, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” All this is in the past tense. It all happened when Christ died. The reconciliation was finished back there on the cross.
Verse 21 continues the theme: “For he hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin: that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Again notice that this is in the past tense—“For He HATH made him to be a sin (or a sin offering) for us.” It’s something that happened. It’s a FINISHED WORK.
But even though the reconciliation is a finished work, you and I must receive it by faith before it becomes effective. We have to accept it. The reconciliation that God completed when Christ came and died in our place will be of no consequence to us unless we receive it by faith. This passage in 2 Corinthians is a call to everyone—young and old, boy or girl, man or woman—to come to God and accept this wonderful reconciliation. The Apostle Paul, the writer of this passage, spent his whole ministry in calling men and women everywhere he went to accept what God has done and enter into peace with Him. In verse 20 Paul says, “ Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you buy us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, BE YE RECONCILED TO GOD.” This was the heart of Paul’s message, “Be ye reconciled to God”—come and receive the finished work of Christ. Come and have peace with God. And again in verse 18, “ God hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.”
I’ll finish with a true story. Hudson Taylor was the son of a Methodist local preacher in England over a century ago. Although raised in a Christian home, by the time he reach his teenage years, he had given up trying to live a religious life. . You see he had the mistaken notion that Christianity was a sort of balancing act between good deeds and bad deeds—that as long as your good deeds outweighed the bad, everything was all right between you and God. The trouble was, young Hudson knew that he had piled up far more bad deeds than good, and knew he was terribly in debt to God. He was bankrupt, and so he had abandoned the struggle to be good. One day when he was seventeen years old, and there was no-one else at home but him, he rummaged through a basket of Gospel Tracts that his father had out in the barn, thinking that he would just read the story and then ignore the invitation to accept Christ at the end. He sat down to read this tract with no concern about his soul, just wanting an interesting story. But one sentence suddenly struck him. He suddenly got a glimpse of the finished work of Christ–that Christ on the Cross had paid the debt of sins for him. And these are his own words: “And with this dawned the joyful conviction, as light was flashed into my soul by the Holy Spirit, that there was nothing in the world to be done but to fall down on one’s knees and accepting this Saviour and His Salvation, praise Him for evermore.” You see there the two aspects of Reconciliation. Christ’s finished work on Calvary, to which nothing can be added, and the acceptance of it by faith on the part of Hudson Taylor. He went on to be one of the most outstanding missionaries the Christian church has ever seen.
If you’re here tonight and haven’t yet received the reconciliation that God offers, I pray that you will do so very soon.
Thank you and the Lord bless you.
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