Title: The Cross and Reconciliation
cross and crucifixion
“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10).
I. Text Commentary
Romans 4 presents the evidence of those who have been saved through faith and is justified before God through it, and chapter 5 describes the problem of man's practical peace with God. Among them, verse 10 teaches the doctrine of reconciliation between God and us humans through the cross in the Christian gospel of the cross.
II. meaning of the original language
A. ‘Reconciled’
This word is derived from the word "change". This reconciliation is passive, meaning that we have not been reconciled to God, but that Christ Jesus died for us. That is, we have become the beneficiaries of reconciliation.
B. ‘Enemies’
We enjoy reconciliation when we become enemies with God. It refers to an enemy with a grudge, an enemy, etc. This verse can be interpreted as saying that we ourselves have resisted God and acted like enemies, but that is not the true meaning. Let us consider the opposite meaning of ‘enemies’ in the relationship between God and man. To become a beloved child of God. We do not become loved children because we love God, but we become children of God because we receive God's love. Therefore, being hostile means that God has the hostile heart toward mankind because of human sin rather than because man opposes God.
This hostile heart, or hatred, is not hatred toward man itself, but a holy hatred that we have because of our sinful state. Therefore, “when we were enemies” is the righteous attribute that God seeks to keep His holiness from men by encroaching upon His holiness.
III. Consequences of Human Crime: Discord
When Adam sinned and his relationship with God was broken, the relationship between all humans and God was also broken. As a result of human crime, we have experienced discord. Rather than becoming discord because of my sin, human beings are born in a state of discord with God and have experienced this discord in real life. This discord introduced a profound change between God and man.
A. Active: antipathy and hostility
The first is the result of active discord. Animosity and hostility arose. This antipathy and adversary is first in God. This antipathy and hostility refers to hostility, both in God toward man and in man toward God. The existence of antipathy and opposition in God indicates that human beings have sinned and broken their reconciliation with God, and the descendants of Adam who are born afterward are born in a state of discord with God. Humans, by nature, hate God and have strong antipathy and opposition to God. As time goes by, these are concretely manifested and put into practice. All thoughts say there is no God, love the world more than God, sin, and live as members of sin.
The resentment and adversary in God are slightly different. Same in nature, but different in reason. There is no basis for human beings to have antagonism and antagonism due to discord toward God, but God’s antagonism and antagonism are just. Because of God's holy character. It is not human beings themselves, but the antipathy and opposition to human sin.
B. Passive: unfamiliarity and distance
Human transgression introduced a sense of alienation and distance between God and us. Unfamiliar means not familiar. When we preach the gospel, we can understand this well. God knows each of us very well. In the Bible, when God “knows” the saved, it is used to mean “love”. God is not like us humans.
Through Jesus Christ's death on the cross, this distance was resolved and reconciliation was actually achieved between God and us. First of all, God has dissolved this distance in your heart. That is why the Bible tells us that we have become close by the blood. When we are converted, unfamiliarity with God disappears and the sense of distance from God disappears. Even though he is a God he has never experienced before, he feels as if he has returned to his original home.
IV. cross and crucifixion
A. Reconciling God
This cross first reconciles God. God's hostility and distance caused by God's holy disposition were swept away by Christ Jesus' death on the cross. Through His death and the sacrifice that paid the price for our sins, we allayed the heart of God, who was angry with us, and healed the distance between God and us.
The result of reconciliation was to dispel hostility and distance. ‘Sacrifice’ presupposes that we are responsible for our sins, ‘economy’ presupposes God’s wrath, and ‘reconciliation’ presupposes hostility and distance between God and humans. By dying on the cross, Christ Jesus took away the guilt, set the wrath, and resolved the strife.
God's reconciliation to the people who are to be saved has already been accomplished, but the unsaved do not know this. Even before we actually believed in Jesus, a wonderful change had taken place in God's heart for the people who would be saved by Christ's death on the cross. The enmity was removed, the sense of distance was removed, and the discord between God and man was resolved. But we only realize this when we are first converted. Through this, we can feel the righteous disposition of God who is angry with sin, but on the contrary, it becomes the background to show how much God loves us. In that sense, it shows that the relationship of discord in God's heart has already disappeared when Christ died for us.
B. Reconciling Humans
This reconciliation is the reconciliation made in man, and this is the result. The crucifixion of Christ is not an event that moves us to return to God, but first relieves God's wrath and dispels the enmity and distance from God in God's heart to reconcile God and then allow humans to be reconciled to God. brought you back to the peace of
This is first of all reconciliation to God. When God's love for himself is accepted through the cross, the hate he had for God is fundamentally broken, and love for God springs up from within. This is conversion.
This reconciliation also manifests itself toward neighbors, and it opens up to all human beings and shows love for them. The moment we realize the reconciliation that you have toward us, we have the amazing experience of forgiving our unforgivable neighbor and loving our unlovable neighbor.
V. Conclusion: Our Pride, the Cross
So we come to the common fact of our pride, the cross. On the one hand, the discord between God and us could not be resolved because of His holy disposition and our unclean sins, but Christ died on the cross for us and bore the guilt and freed us from hostility and distance from God's heart. He restored the relationship between God and us through love and reconciliation. 2009-04-10