Untitled Sermon (14)

What is Reconciliation?

The practice of resolving differences or arguments. This pertains especially to mending broken social relationships.

Restoration of friendly relationships and of peace where before there had been hostility and alienation.

Ordinarily it also includes the removal of the offense which caused the disruption of peace and harmony. 

Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible Reconciliation

The point of the reconciliation is that God for Christ’s sake now feels toward sinners as though they had never offended him. The reconciliation is complete and perfect, covering mankind both extensively and intensively, that is, all sinners and all sin.

Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible Reconciliation

The initiative in reconciliation, moreover, is all on God’s side; through his Word, the gospel, God reveals to sinners that he is fully reconciled with them because of Christ.

This action of reconciliation is not based on the change of humanity. Christ sacrifice brought harmony.

Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible Reconciliation

The human predicament simply and precisely was the human inability to change or rectify in any way the broken, hostile relationship existing between humanity and God. Christ was the bridge. To carry out his substitutionary mission was the purpose of his incarnation. His sacrificial suffering and death, sealed by his triumphant resurrection, achieved mankind’s redemption (