Reconciled To God

Introduction

Tom, I’m not offended that you’ve forgotten me. But I am slightly offended that when you remembered me, you didn’t say that it was an important part of the service. You said it was a terribly important part of the service. You know, words mean something. And we use words to communicate. That’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? Our primary means of communication is words, spoken or written. There are other means of communication, but the best. And the primary way that we communicate is through words. That’s the way we communicate with one another. It’s the way we communicate to God. That’s the way God has communicated Himself to us is through words. Words are important. Do you realize how many words there are? Have you ever thought about that? We communicate by words.

We use words all the time, but how many words are there? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, I don’t know how they calculated this, but they counted. The Oxford English Dictionary says there’s a hundred and seventy-one thousand one hundred and forty six words in use. That’s not counting the over 47,000 obsolete words that we don’t use anymore.

That sounds like a lot, do you realize it’s about 150 that we don’t use, 150,000 words that we don’t even use. There’s a lot of words. And you know a lot of words. And you use a lot of words, and probably one of the reasons there’s so many words is because there’s words that are redundant. In other words, there are a lot of words to describe the same thing. When we only really need one.

That’s true of biblical words, isn’t it? It’s rare when the Bible talks about a thing, a person or a relationship, that there’s just one word. The Bible usually uses a multiple of words to speak about different aspects of that. When we think about our status before God as Christians, our status before God, think about all the words the Bible uses to talk about that. Two of the most prominent words are probably salvation and conversion, isn’t it? We use those words predominantly to talk about our new relationship with God. We’re saved. We’ve been changed or converted. But there’s a lot of other words that describe that status. Some very deep and profound biblical words. We talked about two of them this morning, didn’t we? Sanctified. Justified. Talk about being made righteous.

Having been redeemed or forgiven. There’s all kinds of words that describe who we are and what we are now in relationship to God. Tom in our Bible reading used one of the most beautiful of those words, but maybe one of the most neglected of our words. Would you turn with me back to 2 Corinthians chapter 5? And I want to talk about the word that is used in that text. Maybe one of the less frequent words that we use about our status before God as a Christian. But in some sense, maybe the most or one of the most beautiful of those words is the word reconciled. Our reconciliation. You know what the word means. It speaks of a broken relationship, of an estranged relationship between two parties that’s now been repaired and restored.

They’ve been reconciled. They’ve been brought back together. And that’s the word that Paul uses in our text. And the word we want to talk about this morning is the idea of being reconciled to God. That’s what it’s all about. Justification, sanctification, being made righteous, being saved from our sins, being converted. All of it is about putting us back into a relationship with God. That’s so important because that’s what it’s again all about, and that’s what heaven is going to be all about. Don’t get so caught up in the imageries of heaven of a street of gold and of a gate of pearl, and don’t get so caught up in the idea of who else will be there, whether it be Abraham or David or Paul or Barnabas or Lydia.

Heaven is going to be heaven because God is there. And heaven will be heaven for you. Because you will be there with God. Because you’ve been reconciled to him. Let’s look at our text again. Second Corinthians chapter 5. I want to shorten the reading. Verses 18 through 21. Again, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 8-18 begins. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ’s behalf. Be reconciled to God.

1. Sin Had Separated Us From Our God

For he who made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Reconciliation. What a beautiful word. What a wonderful concept, especially when it relates to us and God. So let’s talk about what he says in this text this morning about the idea and the principle of being reconciled. Let’s talk about the necessity of a reconciliation is based upon the fact that there was an estrangement. There was something broken down in that relationship to God. We were separated from Him. That’s another biblical word that is used to describe, if you’re a Christian, that’s used to describe your past life. Notice what he says there in verse 19 again. That God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespass to them.

Verse 21 says, He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. You see, the problem in this relationship was sin. That’s why the reconciliation was necessary. You remember we won’t turn back there. You can probably quote it from memory. Isaiah chapter 59, verses 1 and 2, the Isaiah, the prophet, spoke of the problem then, that’s still the problem now, when he says, speaking of God, that his hand was not shortened, nor was his ear heavy that he could not hear. In other words, God was separate from Israel. But it wasn’t because God, first of all, because God lacked something to be able to reach them, nor was it because of just some capricious choice on God’s part. But he says, your sins and your iniquities have separated you from your God.

2. Reconciled Us Through Jesus Christ

That’s the problem still. Sin had separated us from our God. Paul says in the Roman letter that while we were his enemies, while we were without power, he sent his son. You see, sin was the problem. And reconciliation was the remedy. But the point of that reconciliation, the impetus of that reconciliation was Christ’s death. Notice what he says again. Look at our text in verse 18 this time. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to him, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. He is reconciled us through Jesus Christ. A price, God determined, a price had to be paid for this sin that separated man. That was the obstacle. That was the gulf between us.

And God said a price needs to be paid to remove that. And the high price that he set was the life and the blood of his own son. He is the means of our reconciliation. That’s why we stop as we did this morning and remember his death and remember his body and his blood because of the significance of what it does for us. It is the basis of that reconciliation. Hold your finger here in 2 Corinthians and go with me to the book of 1 Peter. Peter talks about this reconciliation and the means of that reconciliation. Look in 1 Peter chapter 3. 1 Peter chapter 3, and look with me at verse 18. For Christ, 1 Peter 3, 18, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.

3. The Ministry of Reconciliation

See, that’s the reconciliation. That he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the spirit. Sin had separated, had broken this relationship, and the only way, God said, to repair that, the only way for us to be brought back to him was Christ. And Christ’s death. Now, Paul will say in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, our text, that that was the whole purpose of the apostles. The whole work of the apostles was what he called to deliver the ministry of reconciliation. What a powerful way to return the gospel. The ministry of reconciliation. Look at that language there. Again in verse 18. Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us, that’s Paul and the other inspired writers, the ministry of reconciliation.

And he explains that in verse 19. That is that God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf. Be reconciled to God. Paul says that’s our work. Reconciliation. It’s a ministry of reconciliation. And we are delivering that, Paul says, so much so and so literally so that he says we are ambassadors for Christ. Now there’s a sense in which you and I can be an ambassador. But not in the sense in which Paul means it here. An ambassador is a very specific term. That means someone who was sent by someone else.

It’s very closely related to the word apostle, therefore, isn’t it? Someone who was sent by someone else, usually in an official capacity, such that that person sent what they said was the word of the king who sent them. We still use that word in that same sense, don’t we? An ambassador. We have ambassadors to countries all over. And when that ambassador speaks in their official capacity, if they do it right, they are conveying the stand and the message of the United States government. They’re not just saying, this is my opinion. This is what I want to say. They’re speaking as an ambassador. They’re saying what the government is saying. And so when Paul says, we, those inspired writers who were given this ministry of reconciliation, when we speak, we’re pleading on God’s behalf.

We’re ambassadors. Now that tells us two very, at least two very important things. Number one is this message matters. And so we better listen because this is the word of God. But secondly, it tells us that it is the word of God, not the word of the apostles. It is God’s word, it is Christ’s word. There is this dangerous fallacy among some.

That’s God speaking through me. That’s Christ. In fact, that was Christ’s promise in John chapter 14, 15 and 16, wasn’t it? I’m going away, but I’m going to send the Holy Spirit, and He’s going to convey unto you all things that I talk to you and remind you of other things, and so that when you speak, you will be, as Paul said here, my ambassadors. When they speak, when you read Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, all of these epistles, you’re not reading the word of Paul, Peter, James, and John. You’re reading God’s word. As if it was written in red. It’s the ministry of reconciliation. Those apostles delivered that message. The message that God was reconciling, as Paul said here in our text, reconciling the world to himself.

4. God Was Reconciling the World to Himself

Now, first of all, before we get to this next point, let’s just revel in the beauty of that concept. That God was reconciling the world to himself. Why would he want to? I don’t understand. I don’t understand why God would want me. Why God would want a relationship with me. Why he would want to spend eternity with me. Are you? But he does. I don’t have to understand and grasp the depth of God’s love. To be able to appreciate it. We get separated from people, don’t we? Sometimes it’s just geography and time. Sometimes it’s a choice. And sometimes we choose not to reconcile. I can do without that. We make that conscious decision, right or wrong. We make that decision sometimes, don’t we? If anybody ever could have made that decision, it could have been the high and holy God who sets upon his throne, who could have said, I don’t want you.

5. Repentance Is My Part of Reconciliation

Your sins and your iniquities have separated you from me. And let’s leave it that way. But he was reconciling the world to himself through the person of Jesus Christ. I don’t know why. But I’m so glad in the why. That he chose me. And he chose you. And he chose his only begotten son to die so that I might have that reconciliation. And so repentance becomes easier. Because that’s my choice and my part. Look at our text here, verses 15, back up to verse 15. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 says, and he, speaking obviously of Jesus, died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Verse 17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Repentance is my part of reconciliation. A change has to take place. We studied in our class this morning in the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, enlisting those sins, he says, who will not inherit the kingdom of God, but he says, such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. A change has to take place before this reconciliation can take place. And so I willingly and gladly give up my selfish desires, my sinful lust, and my sinful practices, so that I might be reconciled to my God.

Conclusion

I want to be sanctified and justified and made righteous. But most of all, I want to be reconciled to God through Christ Jesus. Would you make that your choice this morning? To be reconciled to Him. He’s reconciling Himself to you through Jesus Christ. He’s made that offer and paid that price if you’ll but come to Him for that salvation and to be restored in that relationship to Him and to enjoy that relationship for an eternity. Would you believe based upon what you’ve heard, the words that have been communicated by God to you? Would you confess, use your own words to confess your faith before man and to repent of those sins that are separating you and your God and to be baptized and wash away your sins and be reconciled to Him this morning.

If we can help you in that ministry of reconciliation, in that process and journey of reconciliation this morning, would you let it be known as together we stand and as we sing?