Christ Reconciled Us To Himself

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 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. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

 If you look up the word “reconcile” in a Greek lexicon, to see what the word in Greek meant to the original audience when the Bible was written, you’ll see that reconcile means “to change, exchange, as coins for others of equivalent value”, and also “to reconcile (those who are at variance), to return to favor with, to receive one into favor.” 

We needed to be reconciled to God. We were at odds with God.  

We have sinned against God, so we lost our holiness. There was a variance on the scales of holiness – on the one side, none. On the other side, the full weight of God’s holiness. There is only one thing of equal value to the full weight of God’s holiness, that will reconcile the account and cause it to balance and that is…the full weight of God’s holiness.  

 It’s needed on both sides. 

And believer, for our sake God the Father made Jesus to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him, we might stare down at our side of the balance in shocked and wonderful amazement, and see that we have become the righteousness of God! 

Jesus’s spiritual coin of equivalent value sits on your side, with God’s on the other, and you are returned into favor with, are received into favor with God. And nothing can change that! And no one can ever remove it. Let’s bask in that reality. 

Even as we bask, let’s do the jobs to which we were appointed – as ambassadors it’s our job and should be our joy to tell everyone what God has done for us. Let’s encourage others to look down at their balances. They too have fallen short of the glory of God and have no hope to manufacture the righteousness of God that needs to be put on their side of the scale.  

John 1:12 

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.