Friday
Friday
Good News of Reconciliation
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:18
Of the four main New Testament models or metaphors of the atonement (propitiation, redemption, justification, and reconciliation), reconciliation is arguably the most popular, because it is the most personal. And of the four main New Testament passages about reconciliation, this one in 2 Corinthians 5 is the fullest and most striking. It depicts three actors in the drama.
Firstly, God is the author of the reconciliation. “All this is from God” (v. 18). There are eight main verbs in this paragraph, all of which have God as their subject. The whole initiative was his. So no account of the atonement is biblical that takes the initiative away from God and gives it to Christ or, indeed, to us.
Secondly, Christ is the agent of the reconciliation. “God the author, Christ the agent” is a satisfactory summary. Both verse 18 and verse 19 speak of God reconciling in or through Christ. As P. T. Forsyth put it, “‘God was in Christ reconciling,’ actually reconciling, finishing the work. It was not a tentative preliminary affair…. Reconciliation was finished in Christ’s death.” How did this happen? Negatively, God refused to count our sins against us (v. 19); positively, he made the sinless Christ to be sin instead (v. 21) in order that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God. As Richard Hooker expressed it, “Let it be counted folly or frenzy or whatsoever. It is our wisdom and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man has sinned and God has suffered; that God has made himself the sin of men and that men are made the righteousness of God.”
Thirdly, we are the ambassadors of the reconciliation. Both the ministry and the message of reconciliation have now been committed to us. In consequence, as we implore people to be reconciled to God, it is God himself who is making his appeal through us. Our task is first to expound what God has done at the cross and then to issue the appeal. It is a safe rule that there must be no appeal without an exposition and no exposition without an appeal.
For further reading: 2 Corinthians 5:11–21