Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

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The Bible says that before we were saved, we were enemies of God. All of our thoughts and actions were against God. How is our relationship with God different because of the cross?

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-21)

There were many results of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We were redeemed. We were justified. We were sanctified. There’s a much more relational result of the cross, and I would like to talk about it this morning: we were reconciled to God.

We should note that reconciliation with God was not our greatest need. Our greatest need was justification. God could have simply justified us through the cross. But He gave us even more. Reconciliation with God fulfills our greatest desire: to be loved (v. 18a).

To be reconciled to God means that the greatest Being in the universe is our Friend. We don’t have to worry about bullies. They can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Christ is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. In some families, that might not mean much. But Christ is with us every moment of every day, and He will always defend us. We don’t have to worry about the future, about what we will wear or eat. We don’t have to worry about our own lives. God will take care of us.

To be reconciled to God means that we are loved in the fullest sense. God shows some of His love to all people. But God shows all of His love to those who are in Christ, who are reconciled to Himself. God is love. Every example of love that we see in the world is a dim illustration of God.

To be reconciled to God means that we can have a relationship with Him. Our sin no longer gets in the way. We can read His Word and hear from God. We can talk to Him through prayer. But many who claim to be Christians ignore this relationship.

If you have been reconciled to God, He has given you a job to do (v. 18-19). We are to share the message which led us to be reconciled to God. And we should make no pretense that that’s exactly what we’re doing. Some evangelistic methods almost seem like your goal is to trick people into letting you tell them the gospel.

Reconciliation with God is only possible because of Christ’s work on the cross. Our sin disgusted God, and we fully deserved God’s wrath. But when Christ took our place on the cross, He bore the wrath of God, and we became His righteousness (v. 21). You truly have taken on His righteousness, but only if you are in Christ (v. 17). It’s not that you never ever sin again. But when God looks at your life, He sees the righteousness of Christ.

That’s the message of reconciliation that we’re to be sharing. We share it as Christ’s ambassadors. Not only do we have a message from God, but we represent Christ when we bring it. May we all be able to say with the apostle Paul what he wrote in v. 20. “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”