Day 77: You Are Reconciled In Christ
We were once enemies of God. Now, In Christ through faith, we have peace with Father God – we have been reconciled. We were reconciled to God through Jesus’ death and we will be saved by His life.
WORDwork:
Romans 5:1-11
Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, …
… 6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 (For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die.) 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life? 11 Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
What is the result of our having “been declared righteous by faith” in verse 1?
When did Christ die for us according this passage? Why is this timing significant?
How does it display the reality of God’s love for us?
What is another benefit of being declared righteous in verse 9?
What does Paul say that we were to God before our salvation in verse 10?
According to verse 11, How should we respond to the reconciling work of Christ?
We were enemies of God.
When two people are enemies with one another, their relationship is one of hostility and discord. In Romans 5:10 Paul states clearly that we were once God’s enemies. Yet, God did not create us to live this way. The real problem is that each of us were hostile to God by nature and choice, despising His truth and goodness. We needed to have someone bring peace to this relationship, we needed someone to put an end to the hostility. Christ came to reconcile us to God our Father. Where there was once hostility and wrath, now there is peace and salvation.
We are now justified in Christ and this brings peace.
Christ has now reconciled us—put us on favorable and friendly terms—with God so that we are at peace with Him. Notice first of all that this blessing flows out of our justification. Earlier, we defined justification as being declared to be in right relationship with God on the basis of Christ’s faith/faithfulness transferred to our credit through our faith. So now that we have been declared righteous, we now have peace with God. We were born His enemies, but by the death of His Son, He is now able to call us His friends.
God loves us to the point of giving His Son for us.
When did Christ do this for us? When we were helpless, ungodly, sinners!!! Christ saved us when we were at our worst. Paul highlights this point by saying that it is rare for somebody to give their life for a righteous or even a good person, but for someone to die for a useless and wicked person is unheard of. But this is the only kind of people God saves—the corrupt and the wicked. God saves us when we were confirmed enemies, hostile to Him, dead in sin, lost in the darkness.
All of this should overwhelm us with how much God loves us. Christ died for us when we were all at our lowest, helpless and hopeless, enslaved to sin. Yet God saves us in our sin from our sins. The awesome reality of God’s gracious love is that He saves the very people that really deserve His wrath. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and saved us.
We Will Be Saved From God’s Future Wrath
Notice that being set right with God and reconciled to Him also results in our being saved from God’s present and future wrath in Christ. This speaks to the truths of propitiation and deliverance that we will discuss next week. God’s present wrath is the process in which He turns people over to their own corrupt desires which would ultimately lead to their self destruction. Christ has set us free from this process. We also have no fear of God’s future wrath because we now have peace with Him through Christ and in Christ. Because of this we can now rejoice! As Paul says, if God reconciled us through Jesus’ death while we were His enemies, then how much more will He save us by His life! Now that we are at peace with God, we can have hope that He will save us completely.
The Terms of Reconciliation
When we think about reconciliation, we need to understand that this speaks of bringing peace, harmony and fellowship back to a relationship in which one person has offended the other. In order to set the relationship right, terms for reconciliation need to be laid out. It is the offended person that gets to set the terms of reconciliation. When this happens in the context of human relationships, it is almost never the case that one party is completely right and the other party completely wrong. In fact, in most cases, both sides of the dispute have offended the other and both need forgiveness.
In the case of our relationship with God, we have sinned against God but He has been completely faithful to us. We were born in an alienated state, hostile to God. This being the case, it is God alone who gets to define the terms that will lead to reconciliation. What are the terms that God has set? – Trust in my Son Jesus!!!
*You can find a complete list of all the MilktoMeat readings here.
