 |
Printer Friendly Version“There’s a new world, beginning from tonight.”
There probably has never been a time when people have not dreamed that dream.
Poverty, disease, oppression and war have been the human loss too long for
the hope of a new world not to have survived. That was the ideal which inspired
Alexander the Great when he set out on his campaigns. He was less concerned
with military conquest than with uniting the known world into ‘one world’
– apparently one of his favorite expressions. The Americas very rapidly
came to be spoken of as “the new world.” In our own time institutions
such as the League of Nations and the United Nations have dedicated themselves
to the same vision.
Paul was evidently animated by the same idea. Indeed, he said
it was already happening. “If any one is in Christ,” he wrote, “there
is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become
new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Not only did he say it was already happening;
he also explained how it was happening. His very next words are: “All
this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ” (18).
In the remaining verses of the text, he explains how reconciliation to God
brings into being this new creation. What he says can be spelled out in four
simple statements.
First, reconciliation is needed. That may seem like a declaration
of the obvious in a world driven by hostility and enmity as this world is.
When people slaughter each other by the thousands in tribal warfare in ethnic
conflict, in ruthless terrorism, reconciliation is surely needed. There are
more polite forms of hostility which are hardly less destructive: backbiting
among associates, conflict within families, exclusion of the unwanted. What
is of special interest in Paul’s words is that his primary focus is on
the need for reconciliation between the sinner and God.
Recently, I preached in an old, inner-city church. I preached
on the assurance of the forgiveness of sins. “Who will bring any charge
against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?”
(Romans 8:33-4) Following the service the associate pastor who runs the Alpha
Group said to me: “Every week in the Alpha Group the question is raised
by someone: ‘How can I be sure that God will really forgive my sins?
How do I know that he will not dig them up again and use them to condemn me?’”
Appearances to the contrary, and, indeed, with some exceptions,
it remains true that people are worried about their sins. Their consciences
of past and present wrongs, their enslavement to sin make them afraid and
despairing. They know that reconciliation with God is needed.
The second simple truth written plainly in the text is that
reconciliation is God’s doing. The emphasis on reconciling as God’s
activity is unmistakable (verses 18, 19, 20). The main part of the gospel
is to announce that God has made peace with the world. If we cannot say that
God has made peace, we have no gospel. It is certainly beyond the power of
the sinner to make peace unless God has made it first. The sinner is alienated
from God by sin, and under condemnation for it. The operative factor in reconciliation
is not something sinners do for God, but something God does for them. Paul
tells us clearly what that is: He does not count their trespasses against
them (19). Reconciliation with God is not something we achieve; it is something
we receive. “We boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom
we have now received reconciliation” (Romans 5:10).
The third truth contained in these verses is that reconciliation
is costly. “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (21). Reconciliation
is always costly wherever it is morally real. Where friends have quarreled,
there will be reconciliation only when the offender is prepared to say: “I
am sorry, I was wrong.” The cost is paid in the coin of humility. In
cases of marital infidelity there is pain on both sides if there is true reconciliation:
the pain of the faithful partner over having been betrayed: and the pain of
the offender at confessing the depth of the wrong he or she has done. Reconciliation
can never be earned. It is always free, but it is never cheap.
The cost of the reconciliation of sinners to God is beyond computation. It involved the death of the sinless one as a sacrificial offering. This is the probable meaning of the phrase: “God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin”(21). The phrase “made him to be sin” in Hebrew idiom means “made him to be a sin-offering,” as in Romans 8:3 and Isaiah 53:6,10. In his death, the sinless one bore the condemnation of our sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
“Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned he stood,
Sealed my pardon with his blood,
Hallelujah! What a Savior!”
(Fanny Crosby)
The fourth simple element in Paul’s teaching about reconciliation
is that it must be accepted. It must be accepted, that is, if it is to have
effect for the sinner. Here Paul’s teaching in the passage links with
the wider context in which it is set, namely his ministry as a proclaimer
of reconciliation. He has been given “the ministry of reconciliation”
(18); entrusted with “the message of reconciliation” (19). “So
we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us,
we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (20). This
is really the central thrust of these verses: “Be reconciled.” God
has already acted in the death of Christ to remove all barriers to reconciliation.
But before it can be morally real, morally effected, spiritually realized,
it must be accepted by the sinner.
Across the years there have been reports of lone soldiers in remote islands and jungles, who have lived at war for forty years and more: in enmity, in fear, in solitude, on meager rations, because they had never heard that the Second World War ended in 1945. There are sinners who are still at war with God, because the truth has not got through to them that the war is over. He has made peace through the death of his son. All they need to do is accept it.