Changed: Forgiveness vs Reconciliation, pt 3

Changed: Living a Christ-centered life in a self-centered world

Part Three: Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation

There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. And I’d like to share a story to illustrate the difference.

On January 8, 1956, in the jungles of Ecuador, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian were excitedly flying in to section of the jungle to continue establishing contact with Auca Indians.

As they made their way to clearing on the river they radioed back to their families that they saw group of men making their way to meet them. However, this meeting would have a tragic ending. The Auca’s were known to be a violent tribe, and they proved it on this day.

All five men were speared to death that day by the men they hoped to lead to Christ one day.

This was devastating news, a truly tragic situation. Immediately there were wives without husbands, children without fathers, and families who had left everything to take the gospel to a tribe that had just murdered their husbands and fathers.

If this story was only about forgiveness, then it would end with me telling you the testimony of how each of these families sought the Lord and with His help were able to forgive. But, this story is about illustrating the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.

You see: “Forgiveness is a solo, but reconciliation is a duet.”

The story doesn’t end with the funerals and forgiveness offered to those who never asked for it. No, this story ends with more than forgiveness, it ends with reconciliation.

Elisabeth Elliott, the wife of Jim, one of the men who was martyred went back to the tribe that had murdered her husband. She tells the story of about eleven years after Jim was murdered, sitting by the fire among the thatched huts of the Auca’s and listening to the men who killed her husband sing songs to the Lord.

Elisabeth Elliott and some of the other wives and their children went back to the same people who murdered their husbands. Not only did they go back to forgive them, they went back to see the Auca’s reconciled to God by faith in Christ, and through Christ to also be reconciled to them through repentance and forgiveness.

The difference between forgiveness and reconciliation is relationship. Forgiveness is one directional, but reconciliation requires relationship.

Stand with me in honor of the reading of God’s Word from 2 Corinthians 5:16-21.

[16] From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. [17] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. [18] All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; [19] that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. [20] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. [21] For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Changed: Living a Christ-centered life in a self-centered world

God changes you when He saves you.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

God changes your relationship with Him

God changes your relationship with sin

God changes your relationship with others.

We focused our attention on our relationship with others in our last sermon.

Earlier 2 Corinthians 5:15 it says, “and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

And living “for him who for their sake died and was raised” means living for Jesus. And living for Jesus means that we live according to His ways in all aspects of our lives.

Which is why Paul says in the next verse, verse 16, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.”

Last week we mentioned that…

Following Jesus begins with seeing Jesus as who He says He is.

No longer according to the flesh, but by the Spirit.

by the flesh is to judge Jesus by human standards. For instance, to consider him simply a good teacher or a major influencer, but not believe his claims of being the Son of God.

CS Lewis used an argument known as the Trilemma, the argument didn’t start with him, but he definitely popularized it in his book, “Mere Christianity.” He writes in the book:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (Mere Christianity, 55-56)

If Jesus is who He says He is, that truth changes everything.

Look with me at verse 18 when Paul says “all this is from God”

The new creation that Paul says has come, and the old that has gone, this is God’s work.

Like taking dirt and making it into a man, God makes us new in Christ and changing our relationship with Him and divinely changes our hearts.

Two things God doesn’t do:

God doesn’t forgive from a distance.

God doesn’t just wave his hand and declare someone forgiven from across the universe. God is real, He came here incarnate Christ, and he will forgive. God desires close intimacy with each one of us.

God doesn’t reconcile Himself to us.

The word reconcile is often used as if reconciliation always involved both parties apologizing. But reconciliation is really the work of the person who has been offended. Reconciliation requires forgiveness and then restored relationship, and reconciliation flows from the one doing the forgiveness to the one who is the offender in the relationship.

This may seem like digging too deep into the weeds of what the words mean, but this is a truth that completely changes the whole way you understand the gospel.

God is not estranged from humanity, God is good and has done nothing to deserve the estrangement and distance. However, the same cannot be said of us. We have sinned against God and as a result we need to be reconciled to Him.

I have been teaching on Wednesday nights a series of talks about culture and some of the things that have hanged and how we should consider their impact on our faith and the sharing of the gospel.

One of the things that has changed greatly in our world is the unhealthy way that people work out their differences, in particular, the way that people work out their relationship when it has become strained.

The unhealthy way that people work out their relationships is that if one person has something to apologize for, they want the other person to apologize to. And, there are probably times where that is necessary.

But the truth is that in the majority of relational conflicts there is an offender- the one who was offended against And then the one who offended. Reconciliation takes two people, but it doesn’t mean that both people need to repent of one another. (It can, but it doesn’t)

God forgives the offender after making it possible for him to be forgiven and then working to make the relationship work.

Three things God does:

God forgives us at great cost.

The cost of our forgiveness is the sacrificial death of Christ.

God reconciles us to Himself.

The cost of our forgiveness is Jesus, and the right relationship that we have is because God reconciled us to Himself. Like I mentioned, God doesn’t need to be reconciled to us, he hasn’t done anything to us that would require reconciliation.

Salvation doesn’t stop at forgiveness, it goes all the way to reconciled relationship.

You and I are the offenders. We are the ones who have wronged God and ruined our relationship with Him through sin. And yet, we cannot do anything that will make up for our sin.

There is no penance we can pay that will cover the cost of our sin.

God, the one who was sinned against does what it takes to forgive us, and then enters into a relationship with us. But, many people are simply living forgiven by God when God wants us to be reconciled to Him.

God sends us out to be Christ-centered by spreading the hope and gospel of Jesus Christ.

God saves sinners and then sends them out to spread the good news of the forgiveness and reconciliation that is found only in Jesus.

A self-centered life accepts forgiveness from God but doesn’t spread the gospel to others.

A Christ-centered life receives forgiveness and reconciliation and takes the message of the gospel to others, in honor of Jesus and what He has done for us.

6 Things you can do?

Humble yourself and draw near to God.

Pursue forgiveness from God.

Pursue reconciliation with God through repentance and faith in Christ.

Humble yourself and seek the glory of Christ in your relationships with others.

Be forgiving toward others even when they don’t ask for it.

Be reconciled with others through repentance because of your faith in Jesus, and for the sake of Jesus.

Back to Elisabeth Elliot and the story she tells of 11 years after the men from the tribe killed her husband. She didn’t just forgive, she reconciled. And the path to reconciliation required living for their sake and not her own. It meant not only having a relationship with them, it meant sharing the gospel and leading them to Christ and then helping them grow in their faith.

but reconciliation is a divine work of God when he saves us, and it’s still a supernatural work of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit when he saves us and when he works in our lives later.