This article is about reconciliation and the ministry of the church in reconciliation. The author discusses the peace that God has worked, and the task of the church to plead for reconciliation with God. Church unity and peace and harmony in the church is also discussed.

Source: The Monthly Record, 1996. 5 pages.

Ministries of Reconciliation

The word 'reconciliation' has been used much in church circles in recent weeks. The estrangement of brethren from each other is not a cause for joy, but for concern. The attempt of the church's Finance, Law and Advisory Committee to bring about scriptural peace and ecclesiastical progress through a process of reconciliation ought to have the support of all who are concerned with the unity of the Church.

The concept of reconciliation, however, belongs not primarily to our ecclesiastical vocabu­lary; it is first an evangelical word: it is a gospel word before it is a church word. For, among the benefits of the salvation given us in Christ, is the great fact of reconciliation; in Christ, the God with whom we were at variance came and preached peace (Ephesians 2:17). The nature of Christ's work is understood by the New Testament to have a primary reference to the cessation of hostilities between God and man, and the removal of barriers which prevented the possibility of peace between them. So we read that Christ has reconciled us to God "in one body by the cross" (Ephesians 2:16); He, in whom all fulness dwells, has "made peace by the blood of his cross" and has reconciled those who were "sometime alienated and enemies" (Colossians 1:20-21).

The cross, therefore, scene of the arch-crime of history, stands before us on the pages of the New Testament as the great symbol and theatre of a specific act of peacemaking. Apart from that act there could be no Gospel. And because the divine peacemaker has completed the work neces­sary for the reconciling of men to God, God's blessing is upon the peacemakers, who will be called His children (Matthew 5:9).

There are three distinctive ministries of reconciliation outlined for us on the pages of the New Testament. First, God reconciles through the death of His Son. Secondly, the apostles beseech men to be reconciled to God. And thirdly, the people of God are to exercise a reconciling ministry among themselves.

The Heavenly Peacemaker🔗

God's ministry of reconciliation is explic­itly described in four main New Testament passages: Romans 5, 2 Corinthians 5, Ephesians 2 and Colossians 1. In Romans 5:10, the fact of reconciliation is stated in order that the inference, that being reconciled by Christ's death we shall be saved by His life, might be fully explored. The argument is from the greater to the lesser, or, as Lloyd-Jones has it, from the greatest to the lesser. Nothing is greater than this, than that we should be reconciled to God by Christ's death. For the concern of reconciliation is not with a change in our condition, but in our state before God; a change not of our attitude to God, but His attitude to us. Or, as Hodge puts it, "to be reconciled to God...does not mean to have our enmity to God removed, but his enmity to us taken out of the way, to have him rendered propi­tious, or his righteous justice satisfied". Only then can our personal enmity be dealt with.

This reconciliation, according to Paul, took place while we were enemies. Indeed, it could have no meaning any other way. Friends do not need to be reconciled. Only parties whose relationships with each other have been severed by hostility and enmity, require to be reconciled. C.H. Spurgeon was once asked, "Mr. Spurgeon, how can you reconcile divine sovereignty and human responsibility?" To which Spurgeon replied, "I never try to reconcile friends!"

Colossians 1:21 defines the enmity. We were 'alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works'. The enmity embraces first, the fact of alienation, of separation from God. There was no common ground. As sinners we found that around God was an exclu­sion zone, a barrier. We lived in two separate worlds and spheres. The turning of the flaming sword ensured that we could have no access to the tree of life. It was a God-ordained enmity, as it is a God-ordained reconciliation. For the curse upon the serpent finds its expression in the words 'I will put enmity between thee and the woman; and between thy seed and her seed'. The hostility between the holy, covenant seed, and the children of the devil mirrored the hostility that now existed between God and man.

The enmity, secondly, means that our whole inward disposition is by nature hostile to the God from whom we are alienated. Our minds are dark­ened. Our thoughts are all of self. And our enmity, thirdly reveals itself in 'wicked works'. Who would fancy, asks Thomas Guthrie, in his treatise on Colossians, describing a 'sweet, angel-like child', "as it twines its aims around a mother's neck, and kisses her, and sings itself asleep on her loving bosom, that the day can ever come when it will stab that bosom, and these little hands will plant wrongs sharper than a dagger in her bleeding heart?" Yet the glory of the Gospel is that it declares that while our hands were stained with sin and guilt, God reconciled us.

Again, in 2 Corinthians 5 Paul deals with the same theme. God, says Paul, was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:18). At the very moment when the Son of God was crying out 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?', God was in Him for a particular purpose - to reconcile sinners to Himself. As James Denney reminds us, the fact that the object of God's reconciling work is said to be the world, shows that the reconciliation is objective. Not all sinners have their estrangement dealt with finally and definitively. For all who reject the claims of Christ and His overtures of mercy, the estrangement will issue in eternal separation and damnation. The passage reminds us that God has dealt sovereignly and graciously with the sin that made peace impossible. The sin-bearer of Calvary finds Himself outside the bather of conscious fellowship with God, lingering for an infinite moment in the other world, the world of God's wrath and curse. Atonement must precede reconciliation. His death must occur before the estranged parties come together; this was the chastisement of our peace, and it was upon him (Isaiah 53:5).

The Pauline passages bearing on this theme differ in their use of the terms describ­ing the object of God's reconciling work. In Romans 5:10 it is we who are reconciled; in 2 Corinthians 5:19 it is the world which is reconciled; in Ephesians 2:11 it is both - that is, both Jews and Gentiles; while in Colossians 1:20 it is all things which are reconciled to God.  The Ephesians passage shows that the whole body of the redeemed, Jew and Gentile, were reconciled to God by Christ (and therefore, were brought into a new relationship with each other). By the world in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul probably means the class or the con­stituency in whose interests God acted at Calvary. As John puts it, Christ is the propi­tiation for the sins of the whole world; not in the sense that the whole world will be saved; or even in the sense that God loves all men indiscriminately; but in the sense that to­wards mankind, whose sins were the cause of the estrangement, God has shown himself to be propitious. It is in the world that the ministry of reconciliation is exercised; and it is to worldly men and women that the call of the Gospel is addressed.

What of the all things of Colossians 1:20? In what sense are all things reconciled to God? In the immediate context, the state­ment is qualified in the following verse by the words "And you ... he has reconciled". The you of verse 21 can only be reconciled be­cause the all things of verse 20 have been reconciled. There is a universal aspect to the atoning work. The universe labours in its present corruption (Romans 8:21-22), await­ing ultimate liberty. And the final creation of a new heaven and earth in which righteous­ness dwells can only be on the basis of the atoning work of Christ. While it is true, in Lightfoot's words, that "The whole universe of things, material as well as spiritual, shall be restored to harmony with God", we must never equate the reconciliation of all things with the salvation of all beings. The fact that all men and women will not be saved is not inconsistent with (and needs no reconciling with) the doctrine of the reconciliation of all things to God in Christ. Again, the stress is on the objectivity of the action.

In the New Testament reconciliation between God and sinners is always repre­sented as God's work. He is active; sinners are passive. The reconciliation is to Him, as surely as it is from Him. Indeed, says Thomas Goodwin, reconciliation was the Father's business from all eternity, "his chief busi­ness, that he hath plotted and been desirous to bring about... He and Jesus Christ, his only Son, have from all eternity laid their heads together (as we may speak with reverence) to end the quarrel" (Works, V., p. 482). He knows the thoughts that He thinks towards His people, "thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jer­emiah 29:11); He it is who says,

I the Lord have spoken; I will make a covenant of peace with them ... and they will dwell safely.Ezekiel 34:24

To go further, the New Testament never speaks of Christ reconciling God to us. Some have taken this to imply that reconcili­ation is one-sided, dealing with our sin as the sole issue of concern. But Reformed theolo­gians have not shrunk from declaring a two-sided reconciliation; and Louis Berkhof goes so far as to talk of "the fact that Christ reconciles God to the sinner..." issuing in "a reflex action on the sinner, in virtue of which the sinner may be said to be reconciled to God" (Systematic Theology, p.373). Geerhardus Vos, in his treatment of "The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation" (Re­demptive History and Biblical Interpretation, pp. 361-365) crystallises the concept by sum­marising thus: "the apostle means by reconciliation an objective transaction accomplished by God in Christ" and that "the exercise of justifying faith forms the subjec­tive reflex of the reconciliation", by which God and sinners become reconciled to each other.

Isaiah's great song of deliverance sum­marises for us his enjoyment and awareness of the divine act of reconciliation:

O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away and thou comfortest me. Isaiah 12:1

The anger of God against Isaiah the sinner was not turned into love; it did not become anything less than, or anything other than, divine anger; but it was turned onto the head of the God-man, who experienced it instead of comfort, that we might experience comfort instead of anger.

The Evangelical Peacemaker🔗

God, however, has done more than secure a basis for lasting peace. He has committed to the church, and committed the church to 'the ministry of reconciliation'. This ministry, says Thomas Goodwin (Works, VI, p.117), consists of two parts - the declara­tion of the "reconciliation wrought on God's part toward us" and "a reconciliation on our parts, enforced from what God and Christ had done". The Gospel ministry both de­clares the fact of reconciliation, the work done by God in Christ, and also pleads with men and women to enter into an act of reconcilia­tion - 'be ye reconciled to God' .

Paul uses strong language to enforce the nature of such ministry. We are ambassa­dors: representatives of the king and advocates of His policy. To deviate towards any other message is to come under His displeasure. He is the great evangelist, who came and preached peace. And His voice goes out to men and women in the Gospel call. Paul, indeed, says that to preach the Gospel of reconciliation is to do the very thing that Christ would do were He present in person - "we implore you on Christ's behalf…" he says at 2 Corinthians 5:20.

The appeal is to sinners 'to be recon­ciled to God'. Far from making reconciliation dependent on their response, Paul is urging men and women to close in with the provision God has made in Christ. The transaction of the atonement, with its counter-imputations of sin and righteousness is the basis alone upon which the Evangel can be heralded. It is not, as Hodge reminds us in his Commentary, 'Reconcile yourselves'; it is '…embrace the offer of reconciliation'. Hodge also quotes from Calvin, who suggests that the exhorta­tion is not directed exclusively to the unconverted: "The believer needs daily, and is allowed whenever he needs, to avail him­self of the offer of peace with God through Jesus Christ". Philip Hughes thinks that this is a mistaken interpretation; Paul is describ­ing here, he says, the "universal missionary entreaty", the "ministry that is to the world at large". But as Lloyd-Jones reminds us in his chapter on 'The Peace of God' from Spiritual Depression, the argument for believers is that "if God has done that supreme thing for us in the death of His Son upon the cross He cannot forsake us now".

Preaching is declaratory and exhorta­tory - it proclaims the reconciliation effected, and pleads with sinners to enter into it. It throws light on the great blessings secured by the Saviour, in whose days "the righteous shall flourish, And abundance of peace until the moon is no more" (Psalm 72:7). It declares that in Christ righteousness and peace have kissed each other (Psalm 85:10), and that of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end (Isaiah 9:7).

But there is more. The Gospel de­clares that as sin brought a time of war into man's religious life, this is a time for peace (Ecclesiastes 3:8). The feet of those who proclaim the message of reconciliation are beautiful: they proclaim peace and bring glad tidings of good things. They proclaim salva­tion, and say to Zion, 'Your God reigns' (Isaiah 52:7). On the other hand, there are false prophets who proclaim 'Peace' where there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11; Ezekiel 13:10); for there is no peace to the wicked (Isaiah 48:22; 57:21).

As John Stott explains: It is not enough to expound a thoroughly orthodox doctrine of reconciliation if we never beg people to come to Christ. Nor is it right for a sermon to consist of an interminable ap­peal, which has not been preceded by an exposition of the gospel. The rule should be 'no appeal without a proclamation, no proclamation without an appeal.' The Cross of Christ, p. 201.

So R.B. Kuiper asks, "What sort of person must the evangelist be in order to command the attention of his audience to the Gospel?" To which he answers: "He must have a passion for lost souls which compels him to beseech them as though God were beseeching and to pray them in Christ's stead: 'Be ye reconciled to God"' (God- Centred Evangelism, p. 217).

The sum of which surely is this: the future of evangelicalism in Great Britain hinges upon both a theologically articulate ministry, in which the doctrines of the faith find their expression in biblical precision and biblical proportion; and a ministry with heart, not cold and dull in its orthodoxy, but warm and appealing in its overtures. The loss of either of these - loss of truth or loss of warmth - will be disastrous for evangelicalism. Con­viction cannot be carried along on cold statements of doctrine: warmth, on the other hand, cannot fail to make its own appeal to the heart.

The Brotherly Peacemaker🔗

There is a reconciliation spoken of in the Bible which is horizontal, not vertical, but is the natural fruit of peace with God. The Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6:26 asked for peace for the people of God, and the apostolic benedictions of the New Testament beseech "grace, mercy and peace from God…" to be the portion of the church in the world. Too often, however, the lament of the psalmist is echoed in circles throughout the church:

My soul has dwelt too long with one who hates peace. I am for peace; But when I speak they are for war.Psalm 120:6-7

The church ought to be a community of love, joy and peace, but sometimes it seems as if the rider of the red horse of Revelation 6:4 has come early.

In a fallen world, shattered relation­ships are inevitable. The presence of sin means the absence of shalom. And the Gos­pel itself brings its own sword of division. The most intimate relationships of life can be threatened by the advent of grace as by the presence of sin.

It is in this context that Paul speaks of reconciliation in 1 Corinthians 7:11. A wife, especially a Christian wife, is not to depart from her husband. If she does, the two op­tions open to her are a) to remain unmarried; or b) to be reconciled to her husband. What­ever the cause of the conflict may have been, she is exhorted by the apostle to attempt reconciliation, which "contemplates ... the termination of the separation and re-en­trance upon proper and harmonious matrimonial relations" (John Murray, Re­demption Accomplished and Applied, p.37). In this context, as Murray points out, recon­ciliation envisages both the removal of the source of conflict, and the resumption of posi­tive and beneficial relations.

Interpersonal conflict within the be­lieving community is a reminder to us of the imperfection that will mar the church's testi­mony until the end of time. Neither this fact, nor even the fact that such conflicts arise on the pages of the Bible itself (as in the case of Paul and Mark (Acts 15:39) or Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:2)) can justify them. The sin arises not so much with the conflict as with our treatment of it.

A recent book on church membership (Life in the Father's House, Presbyterian and Reformed) deals with this subject under the heading 'Preserving unity in the Body'. The authors remind us that such conflict can be exacerbated through retaliation, inaction, or unwise confrontation. The moment we forget that we have a mutual responsibility to our brethren in the faith, we slip into a self-centered religion where our interpersonal relationships matter little. Francis Schaeffer reminisces at one point in his writings con­cerning the crisis in the Presbyterian Church of America in the 1920s and 1930s, which led eventually to the defrocking of Gresham Machen. A generation later Schaeffer writes: "We did not speak with love about those with whom we differed, and we have been paying a high price for it ever since" (The Church before the Watching World, p. 59).

Christ deals explicitly with this theme in the Sermon on the Mount. Our offerings, he says, are useless if we are at variance with our brother: "…if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:24-25). Je­sus, as Wayne Grudem points out, "does not allow us to wait for the other person to come to us" (Systematic Theology, p. 897). The initiative lies with the wronged party to effect the reconciliation, in the hope that he will gain his brother (Matthew 18:16). Only if this is unsuccessful in private can any kind of public discipline be entertained.

And how many such cases could be avoided if we followed through the words of Jesus! His way is not only better than any other; it is also the more demanding, the most costly, and the most selfless. Far easier to confront with hostility, to retaliate or to re­main inactive and feed the conflict in these ways, than kill it at the source. Sin is by its very nature divisive. It is the thief which steals, kills and destroys. And this thief finds a willing accomplice in our often cold and loveless attitudes. Yet how much is to be gained by following Christ's method!

As John F. Macarthur puts it, in commenting on Matthew 5:25, True worship is not en­hanced by better music, better prayers, better architecture, or even better preaching. True worship is enhanced by better relationships between those who come to worship.

We make a mockery of the biblical doctrine of reconciliation by imagining it to be other­wise.

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