18-19 The Reconcilation of Man by God
2 Corinthians 5:18-19 · Roger Henderson · May 8, 2022
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 106
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261926533552

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

Well, good morning. It's nice to see a lot more people here. I think back to the last couple years and Mike and I would get up here and there would be sometimes only two or three, but we did have Zoom and I'm very thankful for that. Okay, so today we're going to talk about God's reconciliation of man. I'd like to go back and pick up a little bit in what Mike covered last week and Then kind of show how it kind of fits into these these verses these two actually in 1819 and the first part of chapter 6 are A good part of scripture that talks about this wonderful Thing that God has accomplished in our behalf reconciliation of man and actually we kind of know that fact that But we don't always call it reconciliation. It's kind of like one of those, you know, redemption, reconciliation, all these big theological words that we don't often use.

So with that in mind, let's look at this outline, which I've used the last couple times I've taught. So this is actually, I'll just put it all up here. This is actually chapter 6 kind of outlined, you know, we talked about early on about this building from God. We talked about the Spirit as a pledge and our ambition.

Then we talked, we spent two weeks on talking about the Bema, the judgment seat of Christ. And then Mike, last two weeks, last three weeks covered, actually only had two weeks. So he had, he had, he did Resurrection Sunday. So he had two weeks, he covered the love of Christ, motivates us, and then the new creation. So we're going to spend two weeks on these four verses here. 18 and 19 today and then 20 and 21 next week. So let's just look at the verses again. I'll just read them again.

It says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things passed away. Behold, new things have come. 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 okay so let's look at the last week Mike did a great job because he spent most of the whole entire part on being that every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is a new creature or made more precisely a new creation. God has done a marvelous work on every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's now a new creation. So I'm not going to cover that. I'm going to look at the last part of that verse here.

He talks about these old things and new things. So he says, first of all, he says, old things have passed away. So what is he talking about here? So old things, this word in scripture talks about the fact they're old in relation to what is new. And it speaks about the time previous to conversion. So this is describing what the believer was like in the Lord Jesus Christ prior to becoming a believer. He was an unbeliever and what was true of him in that time. Scripture is calling it the old things.

And it says that the old things metaphorically have passed away. They perished. So it's the things that were true of him that no longer are true of him. So that's an important thing, and it's a passpoint fact. These are no longer true to the believer. And that's what was wonderful last week. Mike went through this. We're a new creation in Christ. All these marvelous things have happened to the believer. And the thing is, many people don't realize what they have. They don't realize there's, quote, spiritual resume. What does a believer have as being a child of God? What does God say that's true about him?

So we're going to talk a lot about that today. So what are the old things? I think to try to sum it up in a couple of words would be all that we were in Adam. And I like what our brother Hal had to say, that's which we were enslaved to because of our union in Adam. Since every believer, every person on this planet is a son of Adam or daughter of Adam, they have his characteristics, they have his sin nature, they have all that's true of Adam. So that's what the old things are talking about. So then the last part of the verse says, Behold, new things have come. And it's kind of an emphatic thing.

I hadn't realized it. I looked back and I had some notes on this. It actually could be translated, lo and behold. It's to kind of catch your attention. Lo and behold, new things have come. It serves to call attention. And it's new in quality, kynos in the Greek. Things have come. It's this wonderful Greek word. It's one of my favorites, ginome or ginomai.

It's to come into a new state of being. So these new things are things that have come into the believer's life that are totally new. He never had them before. And it's in this tense called the perfect tense, which is the idea. It's a past completed action with abiding results, up into the present, on into the future. The things, these new things are permanently true of the believer. Whether he knows them, whether he understands them, whether he realizes them, he has these new things. And it can be translated, all things have become new. So same question, what are the new things?

So we had on the old things, it was all that we were in Adam. So what do you think this is going to be? Oops, I went too fast. all that we are in Christ, right? All that we're in Adam, all that we are in Christ. And that's a wonderful transition. We've gone from Adam, from the Adamic nature, to the Christ-like nature. And that's what all these wonderful words are talking about.

So that's kind of the precursor to verse 18. Actually, I found a chart from about 20 years ago, a little bit less than 20 years ago. This actually is by Jim Poole. And actually he did a comparison, comparing the old things and the new things. I thought it was very helpful. He had actually multiple charts and I kind of condensed it down to one chart. I just used one of his charts basically. Okay, so we have the old things and the new things. So let's start off from the basics.

We were dead in trespasses and sins, right? But now we're dead to sin. We're dead in relationship to the sin nature. We no longer have to serve that sin nature. We were in spiritual death, now we're in spiritual life. We were lost, now we're saved. We were condemned in trespasses and sins, now there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. We were slaves to sin, we had no choice but to sin. We may have thought those sins were good, but we were enslaved to our sin nature. Now we're slaves or we're better bond slaves to the Lord Jesus Christ. We were under law, now we're under grace. We were a child of Satan.

Once again, most people don't realize who's calling the shots. Some do. Actually, I found somebody that said, you know, this hullabaloo about the Supreme Court. They actually said, and this is a conservative website, of course, it said, I think this is demonically inspired. Duh. For if you're a Christian, you think, duh. Anyway, now we're a child of God. unrighteousness versus righteousness.

Actually what's interesting, this is a wonderful list, but the list I like is the one that we often refer to at Holly Hills. It's the riches of God's grace, and there's some debate over whether it's 33 or 34, whatever the count is. I'm going to give you a smattering of the 33. Here's some really wonderful ones.

Redeemed we've been redeemed. We've been reconciled. We'll talk about that today forgiven all trespasses Justified made near Delivered from the power of darkness Translated into the kingdom of the son of his love on the rock Christ Jesus a gift from God the Father to Christ glorified complete in him If this list interests you, it's actually on our website. You can go and look on our website. Click on Positional Truths. If you're old school and you like a paper copy, come and see me. I actually have one we can reproduce, and we have many versions of this one. But this is a wonderful list that talks about these new things that every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has, without exception, even ones that don't realize they got them.

Okay, so now, what does reconcile mean in the Bible? So in a modern world, reconcile is the idea to restore friendship to harmony. If there's a dispute, let's say there's a dispute between, let's say, your company and the workers. Sometimes they'll have an arbitrator who'll come in. He'll arbitrate between the employees and the management. And so the idea, they'll try to they'll try to reconcile the differences, right? They'll try to say, okay, the employees have this issue, management has this issue, management gives a little bit, the employees say, oh, we'll give a little bit, and they come to an agreement.

They are reconciled to one another. Well, as you might guess, in Scripture, the word reconcile is used in quite a significant different way. And it's all one direction. So the Bible uses, this is from Chafer, Reconciliation means that someone or something is thoroughly changed and adjusted to something which is a standard, God's standard.

So God has undertaken on man's behalf to totally change him. And you know how he did that, you already know that. And we just celebrated that on Resurrection Sunday. Since the position of the world, every single man, woman, and child before God has completely changed through the death of Christ, God's own attitude toward man can no longer stay the same.

And this wasn't a last-minute decision on God's part. It wasn't like, oh, let's see, we've got to reconcile those people out there. They need to be reconciled, no? This was decided in the eternity past. He knew man was going to have a problem and his son agreed to lay down his life on behalf of men. He, God, is prepared to deal with souls, all living souls, now in the light of what Christ has accomplished. So, like I said, reconciliation, the concept of Christ dying on our behalf and paying for our sins, we already understand. We just haven't attached this word reconciliation to it and you think, well, it sounds kind of You know, I don't want to sound too hoity-toity. I've been reconciled.

Well, that's true. You have been. So what does that mean? So let's find out what that means. These verses are going to tell us that. Okay. Now all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Now all these things. So all these things, the word now is an emphatic point, he wants to make an emphatic point. Now, all these things, all the things, the question is what are all these things? We'll answer that shortly.

Not excluded, ek, or out from God is the source. Ek is the Greek word out, out from. And we have another verse in Corinthians earlier. All things originate from God. So what thing in the context is he referring to? So I think this is a linkage. This little phrase in the first part of 18 links it back to the previous verse. It links back to the new things. And I always like to use, if Karen's on the line, I always like to use Wiest. He translated the New Testament. He expanded the message. And so this is his translation of this passage, the first part of this passage.

But the aforementioned all things are from God as a source. So it links it back, it says, so Paul's saying, what I told you about being a new creation in Christ, all those things are what I'm talking about to you now. And now I'm going to talk to you about a particular one of those. That's what he's coming across here with. The aforementioned things are all from God as a source. So now, who reconciled us to himself.

Notice here, I tried to highlight us. We're going to see in 18, the last part of 18, we're going to see the word us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he's going to move to the world. He's going to go from us, believers, to the entire world. All the unsaved world. He's going to talk about us first of all, then the unsaved world.

So he starts off, the one having, this is the inner linear translation, the one having reconciled us to himself through Christ. for the one is God the Father. So Paul will, if you look carefully through all the commas, it's not a real long sentence, but you start after the comma, who reconciled us to himself, you'll see there are five aspects he talks about. The first aspect, having reconciled us, katalaso, it's a past point fact, and it's true of every single believer. Just kind of abbreviated definition again of reconcile to reconcile to change from enmity to friendship With regard to the relationship between God and man Catalaso shows primarily that reconciliation is God's accomplishment.

You don't see man. God's not asking man interesting He's not asking man to change one bit. He doesn't ask any unbeliever to to change one single thing about his life. What he asked him to do, though, he asked him to believe that he died and was buried and rose in the third day. He asked him to believe him. He said, don't change a thing. Just believe what I've done. That's what he's talking about. Believing what he's done.

So God accomplished reconciliation, which is closely aligned with all that Christ has done. assumed to be true. We were enemies. We were enemies. We were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Another important fact is that many times we think, especially unbelievers, they think, well, I've got to get my act together.

If God's going to accept me, I've got to do something. I've got to show Him that I'm really sincere about this. I'm going to change my ways. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. They're all the I'm going to do. God doesn't like I'm going to do. He says, remember what I've done. It needs to be flipped around. So it says right here, we were enemies. Many verses talk about how man outside of Jesus Christ is an enemy. In Colossians 121 it says, we were alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds.

God's not waiting for us to change again. He's waiting for us to believe, to trust what He said. So again, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. So that verse goes on in 510b, much rather, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in His life, or Darby has, in the power of His life.

I really like that. I think it kind of speaks about the resurrection. Okay, so it says reconcile us to Himself. And this is a very personal part, I think, of this. If you're not familiar with what I'm doing, I'm kind of chopping you saying, Roger, you're going through each verse, each letter. This is going to be boring. I'm going to fall asleep by the time you get finished with this. Each word from God's Word is important.

And he says, reconciled to himself. Boy, that speaks really of God's desire and his great love. He's just not saying, okay world, you're reconciled. You're all reconciled. Boom. He says, you're reconciled individually. Mike Doyle, so and so. You're reconciled to me. It's a personal thing. It's a personal deal.

And here's some verses that talk about that. He's predestined us to the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will. In Acts it says, for the promise is for all who are far off, being separated from God, being an unbeliever, as many as the Lord will call, just in general, call to himself. That very personal thing. Only God could do this on man's behalf. This is God's great love for man.

And it comes across in so many different Aspects of what scripture says and this is coming across in Reconciliation Okay, and how is it done? It's done through Christ or by means of Christ So McCauley I like this little statement God God the father is the author of Reconciliation and God the son Lord Jesus Christ is a mediator of Reconciliation We're going to see that they're both As with almost all doctrines of Scripture, the Father, Son, and even the Holy Spirit are all involved in what's going on with man. They're all working, one God and three persons, they're all working together. So you'll see Scripture talk about that Christ does this and the Father does this, but in essence they're all working together for one cause, for one goal. God has accomplished this.

So here's two things that through Christ it kind of fleshes out the details and we know the story well here in Ephesians 2.16 it says and might reconcile them both Jew and Gentile into one body through the cross so the mechanism of reconciliation is through the cross by it having put to death enmity between Jew and Gentile so it's through the cross and then next in Colossians 1.20 Through him, Christ, to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross. Through him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. More detail here, it was through his cross, but now it's through the blood of his cross. It took his blood to accomplish this.

It took that to accomplish reconciliation. And so we've gone down to the last phrase in 18, and gave us a ministry of reconciliation. I like the interlinear just a bit better because of the phraseology. And God having given to us, notice us believers, the ministry of reconciliation. Now I often think people will say, it's true of the topic of spiritual gifts too, they'll say, well what's my spiritual gift?

What's my ministry in the church? Well, you don't have to go any farther than this verse. Does God say, well, it's only for the people to get up and talk and get up on the podium here? Mike and I are the only ones that have the ministry of reconciliation. It says us, all believers, have this ministry. Maybe you don't understand it. Maybe you say, well, I can't minister reconciliation.

Were you saved? Do you know about Christ? Do you know what he did? That's what he's asking us to do. So this is the second point. Having given us, this is a past point fact, to us believers, the ministry of reconciliation, this is out from God's grace, and so actually Constable kind of, this is what I was saying. However, all believers clearly share this ministry. Since God has reconciled all of us, since he's reconciled all believers, the word of reconciliation What is it? Is Christ died? He was buried? He rose again? Well, I know that message. That's the gospel message, the good news.

There's actually nothing new here, except the word reconciliation, maybe. But actually, God uses this word, so we need to understand it. So the next verse, which will be verse 19, will explain this. Well now, just in case you didn't get what I covered in verse 18, I'm going to give you a one-slide review of 18. Okay, here we go. So this is God's reconciliation work, verse 18. God is the author of reconciliation.

First point was, having reconciled us, believers, to himself through Christ. Two aspects of that, two details of that. Well, first of all, it's a past point fact. It's true of every believer, whether you believe it or not. It's true. First of all, it took the death of his son Second of all, He had to make peace, make peace through the blood of His cross.

And then lastly, having given us a ministry of reconciliation. So hopefully if you were kind of nodding off the first part, you got this part here. Okay. Alright, so now, verse 19. Namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against Him, He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. So there's a change in focus here.

But first of all, he's going to introduce this interesting phrase. Namely, or you could say equal. I saw some people had an equal sign. They had an equal sign from 18 to 19. So here's the equal part coming up. God was in Christ. Kind of an interesting phraseology. God was in Christ. Well, you say, wait a minute. Christ is God. So why does he say God was in Christ?

I think it's for emphasis. Was is this neat word, ami, the state in which something continuously exists. It's a permanent condition. And then the word in is a primary preposition of fixed position or fixed state. So God is permanently in Christ Jesus. It's an affirmation, if you will, of his deity.

So we see this in John 8.38b. It says, So that you may know and understand that the Father is in me. There we go right there. Rather than saying God was in me, the Father is in me. But he follows that with the reciprocal of that. And I am the Father. So they're one. They're one in essence. God is one in essence with three personalities. Don't ask me to explain that, but it's what scripture says. This speaks to the unity of the Father and the Son. And then here's a kind of corollary verse. For in Him, in Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

Okay? Alright, so now let's get down to the kind of change in focus here. So the third point is, Reconciling the world to himself. So he talked about how he reconciled us as believers. Now he's going to switch focus here and talk about reconciling the world. So reconcile here again, just for completeness, is a complete change.

So we have a word here, the word world. It's the word Cosmos. You know, we heard like the cosmonauts, right? Cosmos. And actually in scripture, it's used in three ways. This is used, I'll do it shortly, but the first way it's used is just of the material world. We see this world around us. And then it's used, like here, the inhabitants of the world.

These are the ones whom Christ loved and for whom Christ died for, like in John 3.16, for God so loved the world. And then it's used in a sense where it talks about this, the institution.

This is where I was kind of having a, made an allusion to the fact that, about our world system. But it's true, our world system is not neutral. It's not like we have a neutral world system. is under the control of Satan. Some don't want to believe that, but scripture tells us that. So that's the other sense it's used in. Cosmos is used as the institutions and philosophies of men as set up and independent of God and headed by Satan.

In a verse we studied just in Sunday School recently, it says, the Apostle John says, do not love the world or the things in the world. Well, I should love the world. The world is this definition right here. Well, it's a different definition. It's used differently.

When he says, don't love the world, he says, don't love the world headed up by the prince and power of the air. Don't love that world, but love men in the world because God loves those men. So you have to be careful. Look carefully at how world is used. Maybe a bit of a rabbit trail, but hopefully not.

So he says, he reconciled the world to himself, the cosmos, So actually kind of a phrase to keep in your mind Reconciliation is toward men. That's how that's that's how we see things Propitiation is God word and we see that in first John 2 2 and he himself is the propitiation for our sins and And not for ours only, but for those of the whole world. So it took propitiation to satisfy God about our sins. And God is reconciling us. So reconciliation is toward men, and propitiation is toward God.

Okay. So the fourth point, not counting their trespasses against them. So here's how God is able. God didn't just say, well, okay, gracious God I'm just gonna I'm gonna have the I can't think of a good word I'm just gonna say all your sins are forgiven I'm gonna wave my wand all your sins are forgiven sins forgiven in the whole world we know he didn't do that he didn't count their trespasses against him well how could he do that how can you not count our trespasses against us so counting here is that to reckon to put to somebody's account means to reckon something, it's a legal term to put to his ledger, like at the bank, you put credits and debits to your account. So he's not putting to our account, is the idea. Trespasses. Trespasses are basically sins. They're false steps, blunders, and that's what separates us from God. So he's not going to count these trespasses. He's not going to put them to our account.

Pretty great, wonderful deal, right? Well, who did God reckon our trespasses to? I think you all know the answer. The answer, He put them all on His Son. He put the sins of the entire world on His Son. All our trespasses were put on Him, so they wouldn't be put on us. So that's how God is able to reconcile us, by not counting our trespasses against Him.

We're speaking of the world now, the unsaved world. And the last phrase is, He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Very familiar to the previous verse, but there's some other interesting points here. So now we're back talking about us again. He's committed to us the word of reconciliation. Has committed us to lay or to set or put down. Having placed or deposited in us.

It's kind of cool. It's like, think about yourself. This message has been deposited in you. You may not realize you have this message, but Scripture says this message is a past point fact. This message has been deposited in us, believers. The Word of Reconciliation. The word actually can be translated message. It's Logos. It can be translated the message of reconciliation. And I like Weiss's translation here. And lodged in us the story of reconciliation. How about the song we sing? I love to tell the story. That just really spoke to me.

He lodged in us this story of reconciliation We have the message that men need men and women need we have that message of God's love for us and how he paid for us Now, I know you're all waiting for their the one chart review of this verse, right? I'm not gonna do this every week But this time I did okay verse 19 one chart God was in Christ. That's a phraseology a little bit different than many verses God was in Christ and to himself present tense that's what he's about in this world you know God's God's not God's not unaware it's got unaware that that Satan's it's a prince of power of the air and he's doing all kinds of evil things in this world no this world is a wreck is God is it that upset God He knew it from the beginning. He knew that was going to happen. And he has allowed Satan to do that. And God has a plan for Satan. Satan doesn't have a good outcome, as we know if we've read our Bibles. But God is reconciling the world to himself.

Present tense. And who's the world about here? It's the world of the one that God so loved the world and he died for. That's the world in this context. He's not reckoning to unbelievers their trespasses. Present tense. Once again, unbeliever, don't change one thing about your life. Just believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. That's what he's telling them. And then lastly, this is the cool part, having put in us the message of reconciliation. Once again, if you're looking for a ministry, you already got it. It's already deposited in you. And he wants you to tell others about it.

Two final thought charts. I get some grief here, because I used to only have one final thought chart. A little background, I used to only have one chart of final thoughts. Well, then my thoughts expanded, and I got two, three. One time I had four charts of final thoughts, and they said, Roger, what are you doing here? Four charts of final thoughts? Well, today I only got two, so I'm sorry about that.

OK, here we go. OK, and this comes from Constable, Thomas Constable. If you have it, it's a commentary. The basis of this total change of being a new creation. If you think about it, this is all about... Mike talked about the new creation a lot. This is all the details. This is all the wonderful details of being a new creation in Christ. We get to have this deposit of this reconciliation message. That's all about that.

God's gracious provision of reconciliation in sending His Son to die for us. He has brought people to himself by dealing with our sins in Christ. God is a reconciler. He has reconciled everyone to himself. He has brought everyone into a savable relationship to himself by sending a son who paid the penalty for our sins and separated that separates people from God. So I like that. We are now, every man, woman, and child is now savable. You may think some are unsavable. You may think that person is unsavable. Think of the worst person you can think of in the world. He is savable.

That's what God says. And because Christ has reconciled him. The fact that God has reconciled everyone does not mean that everyone is justified or probably better is saved, obviously. people still need to respond to the offer of salvation by believing the gospel to receive justification. Reconciliation removes a barrier of our salvation, but it does not by itself accomplish salvation. We still must believe. We want to realize what reconciliation is, but we need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So hopefully this has been helpful. Come back next week. We have part two. We have verses 20 and 21. OK, so let's close with a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for your marvelous grace, for your marvelous reconciliation that has brought us to a place that we can tell others about your wonderful Son who died on our behalf, who rose again, who's living evermore. We thank you that we've proclaimed this wonderful message. In Christ's name, amen.