2005-05-18 - Reconciliation

Originally Published 2003-03-14

Lent is the season that we remember the sacrifice God made of His son. This devotional will talk about the topic of reconciliation. In the concordance I have, it is defined as -- return to friendship after a quarrel; human beings are 'reconciled' to God through Christ. I thought that was a cool way to define it.

In Matthew 5:23-24, it says, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother and something against you, leave your gift there in the front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift." That was Jesus talking, so if you don't like it, you have a problem. Jesus' words are the absolute truth, so deal with it. In this passage, Jesus tells us that we cannot go to God and spend time with Him until we have 'reconciled' ourselves with our brothers. We have to settle all of our disagreements before we can go to God and spend time with Him. This is the same way with entering the Kingdom of Heaven; we cannot enter Heaven and live with God until we have been 'reconciled' through Christ.

Romans 5:10-11 tells us the same thing, "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

This tells us that we would be God's enemies, but we are reconciled through the death of Jesus. Now that we have received this reconciliation, we should be glad and rejoice because we are saved, and we can now spend all of eternity with God in Heaven.

We are saved by Christ and reconciled to God by His death. It is a thing to rejoice about and be glad that He loves you so much. That's about it. God loves us, He knew we were lost and couldn't save ourselves, so He gave his son for us so that we would not have to spend the rest of eternity away from Him.

The Word of God, For the Children of God, "Thanks be to God."

God Bless.

Love you all,
Derek

Author Retired
http://www.cfdevotionals.org