Who You Are In Christ, The Believer is Reconciled
2 Corinthians; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; Colossians 1:20; Romans 5:10-11 · Randy Peterman · Jan 27, 2008
Who You Are in Christ, No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926051271506

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, well, last week you guys listened to Redeemed, and before that you had a whole slew of things about predestination and election. And this morning we're going to talk about reconciliation. I spent some time looking at the word reconcile in the English background, the English language and where it comes from.

We get our English word for reconcile, it actually comes from I don't speak French so I'm not even going to try to do that. Jessica always laughs at me when I try to say something in French. I can actually think of one phrase and it's naughty. I'll avoid speaking French for you. Don't share that. Yeah, absolutely not. That would not be edifying. But this morning we're going to talk about the believer being reconciled by God and the believer being reconciled to God or unto God, okay?

The Greek word is katalaso in its earliest passive, and it's usually used in four sentences to exchange or change, to reconcile, to return to favor with, or to receive one into favor. Okay, all of those are relatively similar except for the change and exchange. The actual very literal compound Greek word is to change or to exchange. However, it is used in the sense or context of reconciling.

Every once in a while, when I was a kid in a youth group, we had a youth group leader who would always go to the strongest concordance. He'd open it up and he'd say, it's a compound word. And he'd grab the first one, he'd grab the second one and say, it means this. Every time. Except for that, just like you've come to learn in English, sometimes just the literal compound word isn't exactly what the word means.

And this is one of those cases where in the Greek, even though it means literally to change. We're not just changed. Reconcile means something more deep in this context. It means to return to favor with or to receive one in favor. That's the context we're talking about. The definition that we want to focus on this morning.

In your own lives, do you experience reconciling with other human beings? I hope the answer to that would be no because you're never divided. But if you've ever been divided and you've ever had issues with other human beings, then the answer is probably yes. If you're married, then I am almost certain that you've experienced reconciling on some level. But this morning I actually want to draw a visual illustration on the chalkboard because it seemed like a very powerful illustration. Everybody can read that. I've had people tell me I wrote a little too small before. Alright. Alright.

Okay, we've got God on one side and us on the other side. There's a bit of a chasm there. It's a doorway in this case. But there's a gap. And we need to be reconciled to God. I'm not going to explain that gap yet because we're not to that part of the lesson, but I thought it was kind of fun to have two chalkboards at great distance. I'm easily amused I guess.

Now we see there's passive tense and so I've got a chart here. God executed an action in eternity past and it's got ongoing results. It's historical with ongoing results, and it's passive. It's done to us. God executed the action to have us be reconciled.

You're going to notice in this class, as we go through many of these terms, they're going to be aorist passive. If not all of them, most of them are aorist passive. Unfortunately, as human beings, you might have noticed, we can't do it. It's not all that unfortunate.

But God is able to do it. So God acted to reconcile us. And he did it in eternity past. He planned that. I have an earthly story of reconciliation. And you know what? It's stinky in comparison to the heavenly story of reconciliation. The short version is that I destroyed a friendship that I had since fourth grade in elementary school in junior high over a girl. Oh man.

And I destroyed that relationship and for several weeks my best friend that I had and I just we'd done everything together we played together we wrote the silliest weirdest sketches together and did practical jokes together everything together and there was a girl and I blew it and I screwed up And I destroyed that relationship with my friend. And the reconciliation was very painful.

And our relationship was never restored to the same level. We had a friendship again, but it was never restored to the same depth that it was prior to that. and that was earthly reconciliation and it's puny and wimpy in comparison to the heavenly reconciliation. Everything I tried to come up with fell short.

Oh, what's a great story of reconciliation and there just isn't one. We can think of some good ones, but this morning we're going to talk about the perfect and best story of reconciliation. Earthly stories lack the dynamic of the heavenly story of reconciliation. Before we get into that story a little deeper, let's ask a question. Why did we need reconciliation? The answer is, of course, on the board.

Are you familiar with the term federal headship? Everybody uses that. Nobody uses that all the time. You don't walk around talking about federal headship a lot. The term federal headship is used to describe the fact that Adam was the ancestor that had an impact on his descendants. What was that ancestral action that had the impact on our lives?

Sin. Alright. When he willingly and knowledgeably participated in the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and fell and disobeyed God, it impacted every single human being that would come after him. That federal headship, that role as the representative of all of humanity impacted every single human being. When we think about sin and the impact of sin on the world, that one sin has affected millions and billions and billions of people. That's pretty impressive.

If you ever think about having an impact on somebody, you don't ever think about it on that scale. Adam had that kind of impact. Let's take a quick look at Romans chapter 5 verses 12-19. If I could get somebody to read that out loud if you don't mind. If somebody gets there. 70 to 19? 12 through 19. Romans 5, 12 through 19. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed when there was no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is the type of him who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, so much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness the results of justification of life to all men.

Alright, that's a long passage there, but let's make sure that everybody's got the concept behind there. What Paul is writing here in this chapter in Romans, and if you're in the Romans class, this is old news, but what Paul is writing here is that Adam was representing, he was the figurehead, the federal head of all the human race. He would be the archetype from which we all were derived. Paul goes into the issue of, even though there wasn't law, people were still sinning, even if they weren't sinning in the ways that Adam was sinning.

The propensity to sin was there. They were driven to sin. They didn't have the Holy Spirit indwelling in them. They were driven to sin. And so what had to happen is we needed a new federal head. And that was Christ. Christ would come as the federal head. And the reconciliation required a new federal head. Being attached to the sin nature and the sinful ways of Adam was insufficient for us to be drawn to God. God's holiness needed to have a new federal head. And so that federal headship of Christ was important.

And when we were reconciled with God, it was because we were adopted and grafted into the line of Christ. He became our new federal head. So that when God sees us, he doesn't see us as the Adam type. He sees us as the Christ type. That's a pretty awesome thing. But when we talk about reconciliation, you need to have that in the context. We couldn't have been reconciled without Christ and his involvement in his work on the cross. Randy, a really neat thing about that is you ponder that truth in Romans 5.

It's something the world is just totally unwilling to accept that they've been in fact basically sinful, right? Because when you have a conversation with somebody who is not a believer, even some believers to be honest with you, is man basically good or is he basically true of this passage is that nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, right?

Yeah. I mean before any legal system were ever entered. So as you point out, that's a little headship. But most Greek mindsets, right? Yeah. This is foolishness to them, right? Yeah. When you talk about sin, most people say, well I don't believe that I have sin. Or many people will say, I don't believe I have sinned. They don't want to think that they're sinners that need redemption. They want to think differently. Well, I haven't done those horrible, I'm not a pedophile. I'm not one of those. They don't think pride and lust. They want to make sure that they pick the big sins because they haven't done them yet.

But we needed that change to a federal head that was perfect so that we could be reconciled. This was a requirement before we get to the reconciliation. You have to have somebody that's a new type. Adam isn't sufficient. It's a pretty powerful concept. Last night when I was talking with Kurt about it, that was one of the main things that we were discussing.

Hey, you've got this issue where people don't want to recognize that they're sinners. They don't want to recognize their federal headship in Christ. And yet we talked about other sin patterns that exist. Sometimes you'll see child abuse, or alcohol abuse, or drug abuse, or any of those things pass on from generation to generation. And they want to just say, oh well, alcoholism is a genetic thing, or this, that, or the other thing, and there may be some of those tendencies, but in the end, The sins of one generation can impact another generation, but when you say, we're sinful, then they want to, let's re-discuss this. I want to change my definition now. But we all understand the federal headship now, and we'll get into the next point here.

Okay, the first part is reconciled by God. We're going to take a look in a little bit on reconciled to God. Let's take a look at reconciled by God. God reconciles the believer. The passive nature of reconciliation, because remember it's aorist passive. It happened in the past and it happened to us and has ongoing results. The passive nature of reconciliation with God is critical to understanding the nature of God versus the nature of man.

On the left hand side on this chart I've got God is holy, just, omniscient, and omnipresent. That's a very short list of God's characteristics. On the right hand side, we've got man's characteristics. Because of our federal headship, we know that man is sinful. God is just. We're partial. We just mentioned the list of things.

I didn't murder. I'm not a pedophile. How many red lights have you run? What's the other thing that you've done that is against the law? We're partial. Well, it was okay because there were no other cars coming. We've just fudged a little bit. We're partial, we're self-justifying, and we're not just by our nature. God's omniscient and we're finite. One of the biggest arguments that I see philosophically for man needing to rely on a god is the fact that we are finite. It is a very bold statement to say, I know this is true of my own accord. As a human being, you know, for example, how many of you believe or don't, or let's ask first, how many of you don't believe in unicorns? Alright, got some hands. How many of you do believe in unicorns? Okay. Yay, we have a hand. Okay, here's the thing. We have to rely on some level of faith on the information we have right now. We operate by faith.

God's infinite and omniscient and omnipresent nature requires us to rely on him because he can be at all places at all times and say, listen, I didn't make a unicorn. Or he could say, I did make you an accord. Of course, scriptures don't reveal that. What we do or don't have is based on faith. God can say it absolutely because he's all-knowing and has been at all times and all places. We have to say it from a finite, this is what we know right now.

It's limited to that. So when God has to reconcile the believer, it's logical that he would do that and illogical that we could do it of our own accord. It's important that we understand the nature of God versus the nature of man in this. Let's take a look at 2 Corinthians 5, 18-19. I'm going to go ahead and read it out loud.

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. There's a lot of meat in this, and given the other verses I have to cover, we're going to have to just cover some of the high points, so I apologize, but if you've got questions, do feel free to interject one or two of them.

The reconciliation to God is through Christ. The work of Christ was required to do it, and it was through him. If you look at the text, I've got it italicized there, but it's through Christ. The work of Christ, he was the agent through which it took place. It was his intercession for us, his mediation for us that did it.

The word through there, again, is an indication of who was doing it, who was responsible, who was acting. You'll notice it wasn't through Randy. It wasn't through you or us. It wasn't through a human alone. It was through the God-man Christ. And that was required. It's not of ourselves.

We have a ministry of reconciliation now that was the next part of this passage, and this is the thing that How many of you have ever met somebody that says I feel called to ministry? All right, okay How many of you can raise your hands and say I feel called to ministry because this says that all of us can We have a ministry whether or not we feel like we do of reconciliation Paul says you or we have a ministry of reconciliation. Our job as believers is to preach the word of reconciliation.

He uses the phrase the word in this passage. It's not common for us to use that vocabulary or that phrase in our modern English. talk about the word of web development. I may do that for a living but I don't use that vocabulary. But the concept is the doctrine, the theology of reconciliation.

So when we preach the gospel we preach the reconciliation by God to himself. That's our ministry is to tell people about this reconciliation. The Holy Spirit will work out in our lives in many other ways. But our whole lives and the way that we communicate is oriented towards presenting this concept of reconciliation. At the end of this lesson I've got a few short discussion topics where we can walk this out and see how this would walk out in our lives. But we've been given this ministry.

The next thing that he's got in that passage is that Christ's reconciliatory work was effective for the whole world. Did you notice that he says the whole world in there? There's a common theological argument about did Christ die for the sins of the world or just the elect? You may be familiar with that argument, you may not. But in the end, there are various passages, and we're going to look at another one, that talk about Christ's death and his work being effective for the whole world.

If Christ is God, then the effectiveness of his work is universal. Now we know as believers that because we are believers there's an action that we take on as human beings to believe in him. If somebody does not believe in him, the effectiveness of that work on the cross is not applied into their lives.

Now that's difficult. It's tough to embrace that because you want everybody to go to heaven. But you look at belief, you believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ And you see that the effective work that Christ did on the cross applies to you. And you believe it. And you walk it out. But it was effective for the whole world.

And then he closes that passage with the work that causes the sin not to be counted against the believer. The trespasses are not counted against you. This reconciliation has some consequences. And that's that the sin doesn't count against you anymore.

The fall of Adam actually affected the whole world because it says in Romans that the world is groaning under that change. So the reconciliation would have the same reverse effect. Sure. And it would require that the reconciliation be that effective to cover the whole world.

And that's a really great point. Stan, right? I haven't had a chance to... I have another point. Sure. The federal headship then basically has to do with nature. not necessarily something that you can see or something that's actually physically changing the world or change the world. But it has to do with the inner nature of man, right? Yes. Well, there's a whole complexity that comes along with it. I've been trying, I was talking to Kurt about this last night, I've been trying to think of a visual illustration to describe all of what we're talking about in this class because I see it as an inner woven, almost like a sphere of inner woven threads that all work together and Kurt suggested a double helix.

This is our DNA as a believer. Our DNA has changed because of our federal headship and I think that's a legitimate way to describe it. It's obviously positional. God's changed the dominant It's a genetic term and I'm above my head already. So I don't... It's basically dealing with genetics. You know, short P, long P, right? Oh, okay. Dominant recessive genes. Anyway, well... Think about the immaculate conception, right? I mean, so Mary's DNA and God's DNA? Yeah. God's DNA is dominant. It's the dominant. To Christ, in fact, is pure. Yeah. So human nature. Yeah, absolutely. So physically. Sure.

But the concept with the federal headship and what that means for us holistically, I can't come up with a good graphical way to describe it, but the concept that I think is important is that all of these concepts are interwoven. being elect, being redeemed, being reconciled, all of them are there. And part of it is because it is of our nature. It changes the nature of who we are. So that's a very good point.

Colossians 1.20, we're going to keep going here.

And through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross. The reconciliation through Christ by God brought peace with God. Reconciliation has yet another consequence. We got a ministry, and now we've been given peace with God. Not only are we reconciled and put into favor, but we're reconciled and given peace with God.

I just want to make sure we don't miss 521. which is really the vehicle, right? He made Him who knew no sin on our behalf to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. Yeah, yeah, well there's more to it, definitely. I trimmed that out because I wanted to make sure I had enough time to cover everything. But I agree with you, that is the vehicle, it is the way that it works.

Again, that which was attributed to us on our account, imputed. Are you familiar with the term imputed? That was one of those vocabulary words that I didn't use a lot too or also when I was younger. But imputed means if you think of accounting, how many of you have ever done accounting? I took an accounting class in college for two classes and I dropped out because I said this is not my thing.

But some people are better at it than me and that's good. With the accounting there, the concept is that you've got a ledger of all the things, and every time you sin, it's marked. Okay, we've got another sin. It's on the books, it's on the books, it's on the books. The imputed righteousness is an accrediting to our account of Christ's righteousness, so that every time, and just like Bob was pointing out in 21, every time it would have been accounted to us as sin, it has been counted to us as Christ's righteousness. The reconciliation comes through the work of Christ. And every time your ledger would say, oh, we got a negative, that's another negative five trillion dollars. You know, like it's a federal budget or something. It's accounted to us as plus infinity Christ's righteousness. You know, that's pretty good. Every time. Every time.

I can remember people trying to think of reasons why, well, if you sin this bad, Surely God can't forgive that sin and then you'll lose your salvation. Now we'll have a discussion with various people. Not in this state. Verse 20 says that we are reconciled through Christ and 21 that is through the work of Christ that the sin, every sin is counted as righteousness. Can't pick one that doesn't get counted as righteousness.

And that's pretty powerful. Thanks for bringing that up. One of my favorite verses, he made him Powerful stuff. Yeah. Talk about identification. Yeah, that's identification in a big way. Actually, that's one of my favorite words in there. You know, actually, you know, get a mind. Oh, okay.

To come into a new state of being. I've pointed that out so many times. A state that we never existed before. Now we're in the state. We've come into a new state of being. Yeah. That state. It's that new nature. Yeah. It's our new nature. It's the new nature that we are given. Another point I wanted to bring out is that man cannot bring peace with God about of his own will. Man wants to be able to...

Genesis 1.26 says we're free in God's image. My dad went over some of the list of those things not so long ago in the main service. We talk about things that God has, that man has, and we look at those as being elements. Part of that is God has a will, and man has a will. We think, if God has a will and I've got a will, surely there's got to be a great similarity.

God has the creative force to speak into existence the universe. As human beings, I don't think we have that opportunity. You can't speak into existence a universe. I can speak into existence a fight with my wife. I'll have to say it's the wrong thing. Let me tell you, she knows a long list of things that I have done that have spoken into existence. Out of my own will, lots of arguments and stupid things I've done.

I don't have the ability to speak in my own will reconciliation with God. God had to do that. God had to initiate it and will it into place. Christ says, not my will but your will, Father, knowing that God's will had to be done for the reconciliation. It's pretty big stuff. Again, we want to contrast God's will and man's will and God's effort and man's effort as small as those may be.

The next section here, we're going to be reconciled to God. Last we were reconciled by God, and now we want to take a look at being reconciled to God. Romans 5, 10-11, and we read 12-19 a little earlier. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult or have joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation." So before it was by God and now Not only are we reconciled by God, we're reconciled to God. That distance is removed. That relationship is restored to a favorable relationship. This starts out with a pretty powerful concept.

We were enemies of God. How many of you feel like when you talk to the non-believer, they're stating a position of being an enemy? If they're atheists, they're a little bit more antagonistic often, but they don't want to say that God exists, so how can I be an enemy to Him? If they're agnostic, they're saying, I don't know. I'm not an enemy of God. I don't know if He exists. If I don't know He exists, how can I hate Him? The atheist says, well, if He was real, I'd hate Him, except for that He's not real, so I don't worry about it. But the Bible says you are taking on a position of being an enemy. If you're not a believer, you were an enemy.

It's not a neutral concept. The neutral has a similar sister word, neuter, and we spay and neuter our cats and dogs like Bob Barker always said. We neuter the argument. We try to take the argument away by just saying, well, I'm not an enemy of God. The pagan mind wants to try to negate or neutralize What scripture says is very absolute.

We talk about sin. Sin is an extreme thing. I don't sin. I don't hate God. I just want to do my own thing. Why can't you leave me alone? No. Scripture says we were enemies. However, the power of reconciliation is that it says that we are no longer enemies. We are no longer hating in despising God and His work. If you read Romans, it's full of all kinds of descriptions of the extreme, and this is one of them, of without Christ we are enemies, we suppressed God's truth, we reveled in doing fleshly things, and as believers we're no longer enemies. We teach God's truth, we share God's truth, and we rejoice or exult in God's glory.

The death of Christ was required. We've talked about that already, but Paul reiterates it, so I'm going to reiterate it too. The death of Christ on the cross was required to meet the demands of God's righteousness or God's righteous requirement. God's holiness could not tolerate the imputation of sin from Adam and instead required that we be imputed with Christ's righteousness. We just talked about that. We were imputed with the sin from the federal headship, the nature gave us the sin cycle over and over and over again and we had to have that imputation. We had to have Christ's righteousness accounted to us.

Christ's life brings us joy or exultation. I don't use the word exult very often, so I looked for a synonym and that's joy. The work of Christ should bring us joy. How many of you have sat and meditated on your salvation and been moved to joy and tears? I know that in my own life that's been the case. If you stop and you think of the work of Christ in your life, it's pretty impressive. That's a very powerful thing.

That's enough to bring smiles and joy and a feeling of hope and inspiration. We talked about the return of Christ in the first Thessalonians class and how we should have hope in that. We've been reconciled positionally and we're waiting for the condition to match the position and we're looking forward to it and it brings us great joy and great hope. Prior to this, sin caused us temporary moments of happiness but we could not have the joy that comes from his wellspring of life. Christ gave us life and we have joy.

One of my recollections as a kid is that there would be the present under the Christmas tree and I didn't know what was in there and every once in a while I was shaking and making various noises. I bet that's Legos because I love Legos. And I would open the package and it was never the big giant set. I was going with the $100 set that nobody's parents could afford. But I'd open it up and it was never the $100 set. I'd be like, oh, I'd be disappointed. I'm like, you just got Legos. You love Legos. And I was like, yeah, but it's not the ginormous set that builds a structure taller than the ceiling in my room.

The happiness that was there was always temporary. There are so many things that come and go. You have this cycle. But when your value and your life is in Christ, you can have joy in its long term. It's eternal. The joy of Christ is eternal. It starts when you were saved. And it keeps going all the way into eternity. That's a pretty powerful, dramatic, parallel, emotional state with a big dynamic difference. We talk about being happy. Happy is a short term thing. comes from the Lord and it's an eternal thing.

It's pretty powerful. When my car has some funky thing go wrong with it, my state of enjoying it dissipates. Oh no, I've got to spend hundreds of dollars more to get that thing repaired. I've got to get new tires on it. I've got to change the wiper blades. All these things. It's a wonderful car, but it's going to fail me. Hopefully not while I'm driving it on a long trip, but we won't go into that.

Reconciliation brings joy. And that's a powerful thing that is for us here on earth now, but again will be eternal. 2 Corinthians 5.20 says, Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were making an appeal through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. You're an ambassador. We said already you have a ministry of reconciliation. This is another passage talking about that.

We are ambassadors for Christ. How many of you have ever been an ambassador of anything for anyone anywhere ever? I have no ambassadors. One time I had to be an ambassador for my school when I was in elementary school. You're going to represent the school. I was super scared because I thought what if I screw up. And of course we have international ambassadors that do all kinds of things, but we won't go into that. As believers, we're ambassadors for Christ. Representing that reconciliation, that ministry of reconciliation that we have.

He says, as though God were making an appeal through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. the way that we are to be ambassadors. Begging people on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. Now when he says begging, obviously we've seen some pretty dramatic examples of begging, but the concept there is to request. To present the gospel to people. To say, hey, be reconciled to God. You get angry that God has said that you're an enemy to him, but he wants you to be reconciled to him. He's not saying, hey, salvation is really hard. You've got to do all this stuff. He's saying, believe. If you're an ambassador of reconciliation, it's not this ministry of going out there and beating people up. It's offering hope and love and unity with God. I can't think of a cooler thing than that.

When I've talked to people about that, a lot of them Once I finally, you know, we work past some of the silly arguments that come up and we get to this being united with God thing and then they're like, well, but then I'll have to leave all the fun stuff that I do. And of course the fun stuff is stuff that, you know, they wake up in the morning with a headache from or, you know, they can't remember the person's name or whatever it is that they thought was fun. And they want to hold on to that instead of having eternity with God who's going to give them joy and not temporary short-term happiness. That's our ministry as believers is to share that with the world. I believe that I already said all those things.

Now I wanted to have some practical discussion of this ministry of reconciliation. What are some of the areas that we can practically live out the doctrine of having a ministry of reconciliation? I've got three up here but before I put them up I would love to have people throw out some ideas if you can think of any. Any thoughts? Living out the ministry of reconciliation?

You make it sound like it's something you work on. No, no. It's the life of Christ working through you, but sometimes it helps to have an example so that you can identify that. Yeah. I was going to say one would be to help people recognize the reconciliation. My example is when Christ died on the cross, the weather changed, there was darkness, bodies came out of the graves, all kinds of things happened, but the centurion Yeah. Not recognizing that event that was taking place. Yet one centurion said, certainly this must be the Son of God.

Yeah. So until you recognize reconciliation, it's very difficult to practice or to accept. Yeah, to believe. Yeah, that's true. And that is, you know, with our ministry of preaching and begging people to be reconciled, we're going to draw people's attention to the fact that they can be reconciled. Honestly, I thought you were actually talking about believers who didn't understand they were reconciled. And you know what? There are a lot of believers that need to understand that they're reconciled.

I used to think that I had so many offenses that I'd done and I would go to church Sunday morning and hope that God would in any way have some kind of a relationship with me because I had screwed up during the week and I thought, well, I've just not been reconciled to God. I didn't recognize the absolute nature of the reconciliation. When in Hebrews it says, boldly going before the throne of God, I thought there's no way I could boldly go even near 500 million miles away from the throne of God, let alone boldly go to the throne of God. Because I didn't understand my reconciliation with God.

Reconciliation between a husband and a wife. I have seen this on multiple occasions where a husband and wife are separated and divided. Sometimes living in different homes, sometimes living in different places. And God brings about a ministry of reconciliation in their own lives through Christ. And people see that and they go, hey, that's different. I see a lot of divorces and separations. I don't see a lot of reconciliations.

And then people ask him and they get to say, hey, it was Christ. He reconciled us. You could be reconciled to God. Then they go, oh, usually. But sometimes the evangelism opportunity, because they see it in real life, through Christ, because again, it's not our own works, but through Christ, they see that happen and it becomes God's work in our lives becomes an evangelistic opportunity that we wouldn't have foreseen. We're just glad, hey, the marriage is back together. And then other things come out from that. Reconciliation that comes from even a reconciliation in a marriage. Reconciliation between believers.

How many of you have ever been through a church split or through some kind of incredibly intense division in a church? When that's happened, it's really cool to see reconciliation. Unfortunately, I haven't seen that in a lot of churches. Usually it does lead to a church split. Usually it does lead to more division. If we've been given administrative reconciliation, that's kind of contrary, isn't it?

But it can happen between believers. And I praise the Lord that it does happen. It probably happens more often than we know. But reconciliation between believers is a practical living out of the life of Christ in our lives and having unity that is there. Reconciliation preached to the lost. We talked about that already a little bit. But when you're out there and something comes up and you see the division or the hurt and the pain, then it's very easy, hey listen, you can be reconciled to God. He promises you joy. He promises you peace with Him. He promises you a relationship.

If you look at any other world religions, those kinds of things aren't offered. Some of them offer those vocabulary words, they just redefine them. So it's a pretty powerful thing. Any other thoughts on reconciliation? I drew this long line here. We talked about the division that existed before we were believers. But with the reconciliation, this line disappears. It's gone. We're united. There is no separation. The line is gone. The division is no longer there. I've seen other questions or comments. I have a question.

Would you classify reconciliation and atonement as synonyms or would you see a difference in those words? They're sometimes used interchangeably. There's obviously some variations in the implications of them. Reconciliation has to do more with relationship and atonement has to do more with propitiation or the dealing with the consequences. Sometimes they can be used interchangeably but I think there's a little distinction there. They're definitely complementary, and again, that's kind of why I see a sphere of interwoven concepts, because they're related.

I mean, atonement necessarily builds into the principle of reconciliation, but it's not the entire package, right? The atonement is the process. Reconciliation is the relationship. Remember, we're made righteous in Him. The atonement is the pathway. declaration of God is to be made righteous. Atonement was necessary but not sufficient to be. It was all of it together. The atonement really is the crucifixion to death. In a sense the reconciliations of righteousness. Maybe that's an oversimplification.

That's a good question because as we go through the 34 things or how many items we've got on this list here. There's going to be a lot of parallel concepts and things that are interrelated. And actually, the more we can fill in the gray, if you will, or the spaces that are in between these concepts and see how they interrelate, the more valuable this class is going to be. Meditate on that as we go through this series. How do these things interwork? How do they fit together? Because it's the fabric of who you are in Christ. And that's pretty cool. When we talk about being clothed in Christ, all of these are the concepts that are involved with that.

Let's close in prayer. I think the second bell is going to ring in just a few minutes here. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this time to study your work. Thank you for reconciling us to you, through you, and we just ask that you would continue to bring these things to our minds and help us to meditate on them and think about our relationship with you and all that you've done for us. We praise you and we thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.