RESTORATION AND RECONCILIATION

God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself — 2 Cor. 5:19

Even if it may be cumbersome, the word reconciliation is a beautiful one, and pregnant with meaning. Despite the efforts of modern versions to use a simpler term, it is doubtful if any other word will do as well in representing the idea in Greek. Even The Living Bible’s “restoring the world to Himself” doesn’t seem to say it as well as the old term reconciliation, even though it does help to point up the meaning of katallage. The classical writers used the term to refer to an exchange between persons, such as in a business deal, or the exchange of things of equivalent value. This original two-sided implication in the term is important to the scriptural meaning, which is that God is giving something, as well as man, in making reconciliation possible.

In the scriptures reconciliation is always between persons, never things. To be reconciled means “to be made friendly again” or even “to settle a quarrel” between persons. The idea of “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” is that through Jesus God is restoring friendship between himself and man. Because of sin God has a quarrel with mankind. The Christ, standing between man’s sin and God’s wrath, is the means whereby the quarrel is settled. It is clear enough that without Jesus there can be no restoration of friendship. This truth is important to us in understanding restoration, for its shows that restoration is God-initiated. It is God’s work in us through Christ.

Restoration is not, therefore, a reclamation of things, ordinances and doctrines from the distant past, however useful these things may be in the divine initiation. Restoration is rather the work of grace in our lives. God is restoring friendship by an act of his love. What Jesus did for us is God’s way of saying “I love you, just as you are I love you.” This is the ground of the divine friendship. This is the gospel: that God loves us even in our sin and that He makes all things new for us in Jesus.

Like Isaiah, who could not see the holiness of God until he saw the full measure of his own uncleanness, we will not see the meaning of reconciliation until we see man as a rebel against God. It is not simply that man has erred or that he is inadequate, nor is it a question of a misunderstanding. It is a case of mutiny — a rebellion far more serious than ever exists on the human level. The essence of mutiny is that it is an attempted take-over of the power of the constituted authority, and this is what man has done in reference to God. Even though God is his creator, man wants to take over and run his life to suit himself. He doesn’t want God to get in his way. Sin is not only mutiny against God’s constituted authority over him, but also a rebellion against his own nature as a creature of heaven. Down deep inside himself man longs for God and reality. He is religious by nature, and he longs to be disciplined by that power he recognizes to be greater than himself. But he rebels against all this because of his pride. His desire to be the center of the universe and the controller of his own destiny is at the heart of the mutiny.

Even God has but one force that can pierce such gross rebellion. This is love. God reaches out through Jesus to tell man that He is his friend and that He wants the intended friendship to be restored. This is reconciliation, and so Paul can say in Rom. 5:11: “We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation.” This means that any of us, like faithful Abraham, can be called “the friend of God.” What a glorious relationship, to be a friend of God! Abraham was God’s friend because he believed God. Simple trusting faith is in every generation a rare commodity. Do we really believe what God promises? If so, we are his friends.

The alienation between God and man is initiated by man’s rebellion, but it is consummated by God’s wrath. The enmity between God and man is thus man’s mutiny on the one hand and God’s anger on the other. But God’s wrath does not contradict His love. He could not leave man in his rebellion and thereby allow the world to degenerate into a graveyard of corruption and violence. His love demanded that He act. He could not allow His purpose for creating man to be frustrated forever. The beauty of all this is that God’s love and grace more than matches man’s sin and rebellion. It is this that makes reconciliation possible. It is not a foot race that God barely wins. Paul could say “The grace of our Lord overflowed for me,” while Peter could speak of the “great mercy” that gives us a living hope.

And so we have those great words “God was in Christ . . .” God did something at the Cross that makes man’s friendship with God possible. He too suffered, for He gave His own Son. This is what gives moral content to Jesus’ death on the Cross. It is not an exhibition of cruelty and injustice, but the sublime act of God’s love. “God was in Christ” means that God became flesh, that He personally suffered as a man for man. God’s love and sorrow were somehow mingled. Isaac Watts saw this great truth in these lines from his “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. “

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down;

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown.

Since God made possible man’s reconciliation through Jesus, the way of friendship with God is now open, and so we his servants have the ministry of reconciliation. This is the message of unity, that men can be friends again, with each other and with God, because of what God has done in Christ. “If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” Rom. 5:10.

Notice the universality of the reconciliation: “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespass, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” He is not referring only to the “elect” or only to one nation of whatever color or creed, but to all men however depressed they may be. Since Paul uses cosmos here — “reconciling the cosmos unto himself” — one could conclude that he is referring to all of nature, to all of His creation. In Rom. 8:20-25 Paul is saying that all of God’s creation is subject to futility and that nature itself is in need of redemption, and that this deliverance will one day come. So even nature is included in the reconciliation in that it too will be restored to God in glory.

But we cannot make this mean instant salvation for all men, but that reconciliation is possible for any man who wants to be a friend of God. Just as God responded to the dilemma of sin by His presence in Christ, so we must respond to Christ as the only way there is to friendship. Even God cannot and will not become a friend to one who does not want to be His friend. This is where the Lord’s disciples come in. We have this glorious ministry of reconciliation, and it is up to us to accept this ministry with a sense of urgency and thus motivate men to want God.

We believe that the Lord made immersion in water the means of responding in faith to what God has done in order that man would have something he could do to express his acceptance of what God has done for him. Since baptism had long been meaningful in Jewish religion, it was an appropriate act for Jesus to select, especially since it so well symbolizes what Jesus did for man in the death, burial and resurrection. This is why it is right for us restorationists to seek to restore immersion as that “cultivation of grace,” to use Campbell’s description of baptism, whereby man responds to the gospel.

This gives more meaning to Peter’s words in Acts 2. It was the urgency of the message of reconciliation that led him to speak of Jesus as the answer to the human predicament: “Let all the house of Israel know with assurance that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” When they responded with “Men and brothers, what shall we do?,” it was a request for something they could do to show their acceptance of God in Christ. And so Peter says to them: “Repent and be immersed, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Immersion is therefore the penitent believer’s way of demonstrating to God that he has accepted the proffered reconciliation.

We have said that restoration is not merely a reclamation of ordinances from the distant past, but it is a recapturing of the meaning of God’s grace in our lives. This has to apply to immersion too. Our ministry is not to preach baptism, nor is it to set the world straight on baptism. It is rather to show what God has done in Christ because of His love for man. It is the ministry of reconciliation that is ours. But the fact remains that man is to make a faithful response to God’s concern for him, and Jesus taught us that response is immersion. Once we get the means of reconciliation straight in our minds, we should have no difficulty understanding the response that the Lord ordained.

In thinking of our task of restoration we should be aware of the sense of urgency with which the apostle speaks of the work of reconciliation. Basic to the restoration plea is that disciples of Jesus are to be brothers and are to treat each other as such. To be reconciled to God surely means to be reconciled to each other. One cannot be a friend with God again without being a friend again with his brothers in Christ. Here must be our call for urgency. How can we continue to be a divided people when we have been given the very ministry that makes men one with God and with each other? — the Editor