Reconciled to God
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ amen. The sermon text for the fourth Sunday in Lent is the epistle reading 2 Corinthians 5. If you had to pick one word to describe the main message in the Bible what would it be? What word would you use to describe the revelation of God in Holy Scripture? There are many to choose from. One word that we could use to describe the Bible’s main message is love. Another good word would be grace. The word forgiveness would certainly describe what is most important in the Bible. The words love, grace and forgiveness could all be used. I am sure that you could think of others. But another word that would work quite well to describe the revelation of God in the Bible would be the word that Paul uses in our epistle reading for today - reconciliation. The word reconciliation does indeed describe what God reveals to us in His Word.
But why is reconciliation such a good word to use to describe what Christ as done for us on the cross? Reconciliation has to do with divisions that are healed and conflicts that are resolved. The emphasis of reconciliation is forgiveness, love, and unity in a relationship. Paul uses the word reconciliation to describe our relationship and communion with God. He also uses it to describe our relationship and connection with each other through Christ.
Paul tells us in our reading that God has reconciled us to Himself through Christ Jesus. This is important because sin has disconnected us from God, which is the relationship key to our existence as people. Adam and Eve were created to live in the garden in communion with God. This communion with God was broken by the fall into sin. Since our communion with God has been broken, we are born in need of reconciliation. Without it, we cannot ever be fully human, for the essence of humanity is communion with God. The overwhelming sense that things are not right in this world is a recognition that we have been disconnected from our life source. We understand that we ourselves are slowly withering away and that we are going to die because of the curse of sin. In order to be saved from sin and death we must be reconciled to God. But to be reconciled to God is impossible on our own. It is impossible because of our sin. We could never track down, let alone let alone correct, every error, every sin, we have ever committed in our dealings with God and with our neighbor.
The human race is alienated and cut off from God because of sin. That means it is impossible for sinful people to have a relationship with God unless God Himself does something about sin. God and only God can cause reconciliation to happen between you and Him. The way that God has reconciled you to Himself is through His Son, Jesus Christ. Let me read a portion of the text. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation”.
It is our Lord’s death on the cross that brings reconciliation to us. It was Jesus who took our place and faced the punishment for our sins. In other words the only way that we can be reconciled to God is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. It is the Lord’s blood that has cleansed us of our sins. The price that God had to pay to reconcile us to Himself was quite high. It took the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. But because of Jesus and His death and resurrection we have been reconciled to God. It is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that has restored our fellowship with God. We see a wonderful picture of this in the story that the Lord told in our Gospel reading when the father embraced the prodigal son. Our Father in heaven now embraces us for we have been reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ.
If you had to pick one word to describe the Biblical message, a good one to use would be reconciliation. Because we have been reconciled to God we have been made a new creation. God has restored us; He has made us new. As restored children of God we trust in the Lord. We trust that Jesus has forgiven our sins, brought us into fellowship with God, and given to us the gift of eternal life. We trust in the Lord, and we are moved by the Holy Spirit to live a life that is pleasing to Him.
Because we have been reconciled by God and have been made a new creation, we now look at the world in a very different way. We are moved by God’s grace to view our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ as God sees them. We view them as people who have also been reconciled to the Lord. That is what Paul is talking about in verse sixteen of our text. “From, now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh”. What he means is that we view others as people who are loved by God.
Often times we view people on how they benefit us or how they treat us. Many of us have an emotional bank account with others. If a person is nice to us, compliments us, sends us cards we see it as depositing good will in our emotional account. If a person is testy with us, impatient with us, or rude to us we see it as them withdrawing from our emotional account. If a person withdraws too much from us we don’t like them very much. But Paul reminds us that we should not view our brothers and sisters in Christ according to the flesh, but we should view them as children of God who are loved by Him.
We also realize that at times we are the ones who have been testy, impatient and rude. But we have been forgiven by God. We realize that we have been reconciled to God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We realize that we are a new creation made in the image of God. And so, we forgive others and rejoice that God loves the people around us as much as He loves us. We have been reconciled to God and to each other through Christ Jesus.
The Lord also gives us the desire to share this message of reconciliation with those outside the church. As recipients of God’s grace, the Lord has called all those who believe to be a witness of God’s gracious restoration to those who do not yet know Him. What a glorious message to share with those around us in our various callings. It is the message that God has reconciled the world to Himself through Christ Jesus the Lord.
What word would you use to describe the main message of the Bible? There are many that we could use. But there is one word that describes the message of Holy Scripture quite well. It is the word used by Paul in our reading. It is the word reconciliation. Indeed we have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who has shed His blood on the cross to cleanse us of our sins. He has given to us His righteousness and has restored our eternal fellowship with God. And so, we rejoice in our salvation and we rejoice in the salvation of others. Let me conclude with the words of our text. “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God”. Amen.