The great reconciliation.
The world wants not only education, improvement, and development; it has a sorer need—the necessity of forgiveness, reconciliation to God, renewal, and restoration. It is the glory of the gospel that it recognizes this deep fact, too often ignored by philosophic schemes of life, and that it provides for it by offering the satisfaction of the world's great need in reconciliation through Christ and his atonement.
I. IT IS GOD WHO BRINGS ABOUT THE GREAT RECONCILIATION. Two errors in regard to this glorious truth are very prevalent.
1. The error of attempting to effect the reconciliation for ourselves. Costly sacrifices, hard penance, prayers, and almsgiving have been resorted to, but in vain. The work is God's, not man's. The first mistake is closely associated with another, viz.:
2. The error of supposing that God needs to be reconciled to us. It is commonly thought that the great work is to move God into a favourable consideration for us. But the first step in the reconciliation began with God. He desired it and prepared the way for it before men took any steps towards realizing it. For this reason he first of all sent his Son into the world (John 3:16), and is now sending ambassadors and beseeching us by them to be reconciled. We began the separation, for ours was the offence, but God begins the reconciliation. He does not need to be reconciled to us. He waits to be gracious. The necessary reconciliation is on our side. We need to be reconciled to God.
II. ALL THINGS IN EARTH AND HEAVEN ARE THE SUBJECTS OF THE GREAT RECONCILIATION.
1. The reconciliation is to be universal. It is God's good pleasure to reconcile all things. Nothing short of that complete restoration would satisfy him. If ninety and nine sheep are safe, the shepherd will not rest until he has found the hundredth. Nevertheless, though this universal restitution is God's desire, there is a dark and difficult question as to how far the imperious will of man may stand out against it.
2. The reconciliation begins with things on earth. Here is the great wrong. In this life we become reconciled to God. The full success of Christ will involve the creation of a new earth. Though the laws of nature may not be altered, yet to us the wilderness will become a garden when we become reconciled to the God of nature.
3. The reconciliation reaches up to t/tings in heaven. It unites earth to heaven. Through union with God all beings and all things become united among themselves. Thus peace is established on earth, heavenly mindedness becomes a sympathetic link between the toilers and sufferers in this world and the angels and spirits of the just in the higher world.
III. CHRIST AND HIS ATONEMENT ARE THE MEANS THROUGH WHICH THIS RECONCILIATION IS EFFECTED.
1. Christ is the Mediator in the quarrel between us and God, the Peacemaker (Ephesians 2:14), the "Daysman" who lays his hand on God and on us. The angel mediators of Colossian Gnosticism could not do this, being neither Divine nor human. Because all fulness of the Godhead dwells in Christ, he brings God to us in merciful loving kindness; and because he is also" very Man," he, as our Representative, brings us back to God.
2. The sacrifice made by Christ in his death is the atonement which accomplishes our reconciliation. "The blood of his cross" signifies, not merely the fact that Christ died on the cross, but also the peculiar value of his death in the shedding of his precious blood, i.e. in the giving up of his life for us with all its wealth of purity and love.—W.F.A.