Reconciled (Romans 5:10-11)

Different words are used in the Bible to describe the intention and effects of the death of Jesus on the cross. Each of them says something about us and our state before God, and also says something about God and his gracious plans for us, and what Jesus had to provide for us. 

For example, in the verses before our text, Paul says that Jesus died for the ungodly and for sinners, which mean that before conversion, a person is unrighteous and has fallen short of God’s standards and is under the wrath of God. On the cross, Jesus offered up his perfect life and paid the penalty for our sins. When we trust in Jesus, God the Father declares us righteous in his sight because he has reckoned to our account the perfect life of Jesus and he recognises that our penalty has been paid by Jesus. That is what Paul means by justification and it describes a permanent state before God. We are no longer in the place of condemnation and are safe from the wrath of God.

 

In verse 10, Paul does not say we are ungodly and sinners, although we are; he adds another word to describe us in our fallen state and the word is ‘enemies’. Nor does he focus on what justification provides, although he does not mean to imply that it is less important than from what follows. Instead, he reminds his readers of the richness of our salvation and uses another aspect of the work of Jesus on the cross and says that we need to be reconciled. He also mentions the consequence of reconciliation, which is that we will be saved by the life of Jesus, and that the provided salvation also ensures that we will rejoice in God.

 

So we can consider three points from this verse: (a) what does it mean to be an enemy of God; (b) how did God deal with this situation when Jesus went to the cross; (c) what are the benefits of reconciliation?

 

Enemies of God

We all know what an enemy is – a person or group who are opposed to us and wish us harm, and who will remove us from our place if they can. What can we say about the opposition we have to God? Here are five aspects of it. 

 

First, our opposition is unlimited. It is unlimited as far as numbers are concerned because they include every descendant of Adam and Eve. They were the first to oppose God, which they did in the garden of Eden. That was the commencement of hostilities, and the hostility to God is passed on to their descendants. Unlimited is not confined to the number of enemies, but also to the spread of the attitude and antagonism within each person. Each part of every person – their mind, emotions and choices – is opposed to God constantly, and increases the longer that they live. We cannot say that by nature we are unopposed to God anywhere within our personalities and practices.

 

Second, the opposition to God is unparalleled. There have been innumerable conflicts between humans. One war in Europe lasted for thirty years, and there may be others of a lot longer timespan. Yet eventually, wars in this world come to an end. It is very different with regard to the conflict against God. This conflict keeps on going and going, and it can be said with certainty that it will mark the future even as it did the past and does the present. Pick any year we wish, we can write over it these words – A year of conflict with and opposition to God. Any inventions that year will have been used to express opposition to God in one way or another. Decisions of leaders, no matter their motives, will turn out to be opposed to the ways of God. There is a simple way to examine this. All we need to do is ask if their actions are in line with the ten commandments.

 

Third, this opposition to God is unending unless the Lord does something about it. It is unending personally, which we can easily see by observing the way that people behave and participate in the interests that they have. The opposition does not decrease as people get older. It is unending even after life in this world is over. A person does not stop thinking when they die. Instead, they continue thinking in another location. If they opposed God while they lived and did so to the end, they will continue to oppose him when they enter the next world. Death is an enemy that enables unconverted sinners to continue in their opposition to God permanently. 

 

Fourth, the ones involved in this conflict are unequal in power. What happens when a lot of little countries combine against a global power? Defeat is the outcome for the little countries. So they may choose to desist from such an action. Sinners are not merely opposed to a more powerful opponent in God, they are confronting an invincible, omnipotent opponent. God in a moment could deal with all those who oppose him. No matter how strong they get, they are only creatures, whereas he is the almighty Creator. It is impossible to defeat him.

 

Fifth, we need to bear in mind that the opposition and hostilities is not only one way, that is of us against God. It is also the case that God is against us as we are by nature. A sample of Bible verses will show this to be the case. In one of the psalms we are told that God is angry with the wicked every day (Ps. 7:9). That is an Old Testament verse that says what Paul also says in Ephesians 2:3 when he reminds his readers that, before their conversions, they were children of wrath even as others are. Another verse that calls attention to the divine opposition is Romans 8:31, which says, ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ That is a comforting word for Christians, but they should think of the implications for others. God is against them, and if he is against them it does not matter who is for them.

 

Why is God opposed to sinners? The answer is that their sins are an assault on his glory. Their sins insult his wisdom because sinners say that their choices are better than his commandments. Their sins insult his holiness because their choices are an assault on his conception of beauty – they prefer what he knows is ugliness. Their sins are evidence of their dislike of all that he is. That opposition to him remains even when they think of the cross, where God revealed his great love. But sinners dismiss the cross as having no relevance. The fact is, we can take any of God’s attributes and observe how they are treated with contempt whenever someone sins. This is why God is so opposed to sin. Sinners would get rid of God if they could.

God’s move for peace

Although the Lord was fully aware of the determination of the opposition to him, he resolved to take the first steps and bring about reconciliation. Even although he was the One who had been sinned against, he arranged for a message of peace to be proclaimed to those who opposed him. His decision was not made because he discovered that here and there some wanted peace with him. Nobody among the human race, in all of history, ever had such a desire without God's activity in their hearts. Instead, the desire for peace with humans was found in the heart of God, and only found in his heart.

 

The response made by God was to send his Son to provide the payment for peace and the path to peace. Indeed, God announced beforehand that his desire for peace would be stated in one of the titles that his Son would be given, because in Isaiah 9 we are told that he would be called the Prince of peace. Moreover, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the angels celebrating his arrival sang about the peace that he was going to provide for sinners. 

 

We are familiar with delegates entrusted with making peace and we see them traveling to diverse places to speak about it before they gather in one important place to proclaim the arrival of peace. In a small way, that method illustrates the life and death of Jesus. During his life, he went to different places to speak about the peace that he intended to provide. In different ways, we can see how all kinds of people discovered from listening to Jesus that it was possible for them to experience peace with God. 

 

We can run our minds over various stories in the Gospels and note how Jesus brought peace into the lives of people. There is the way he brought peace to the demoniac in Gadara, to the woman who has a health problem for twelve years, to Jairus after his daughter had died, to the woman of Samaria who discovered that he could give her living water, to the criminal on the cross who found his way to the peace of Paradise after he spoke to Jesus. And there are many more such stories in the Bible to encourage us to go to Jesus for peace.

 

Even as there is a final location for delegates to say with energy, as they stare into TV cameras, that peace has been obtained, so there was a place for Jesus to announce very loudly and clearly that he had achieved the peace that his Father had sent him to provide. The place where Jesus made this announcement was Calvary, and he could make this announcement because there he had been treated as if he was the enemy of God as he made atonement for the sins of his people. There the One that he had served – his Father – dealt with him as if he had been the enemy when he took the place of his people and endured the punishment they deserved. It was a real test of endurance for Jesus, because he had to take every step into that location, before he could declare that he had achieved his aim, which was to make a way of peace. His death had to deal with every expression of hostility, made by those for whom he died, in order to reconcile them to God and to reconcile God to them.

 

We can see that Paul in our text connects the blessing of peace to the ongoing life of Jesus, that is the life that commenced at his resurrection. When we accept the offer of peace from God that is made to us in the gospel, we enter into a relationship in which Jesus does everything on the basis of what he achieved on the cross. Believing the gospel takes us across the line away from the place of hostilities and into the place of permanent peace with God. The good news for Christians is that Jesus lives to give to his people the blessings of peace.

 

What does Paul refer to when he speaks about the life of Jesus in verse 10? He refers to the activities of the living Christ, to what he has been doing since he ascended to heaven.  From heaven, he sends the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to convey his peace to his people. In heaven, Jesus functions as the prophet, priest and king of his people, and he performs those roles in order to provide them with the blessings connected to being reconciled with God. He teaches us about how to have peace through following his instructions, he prays that his people will have peace in all circumstances, and he rules over all things in order for his kingdom of peace to develop throughout the world.

 

When we think about the resurrection of Jesus, we are to remind ourselves that it is the evidence that his work on the cross was accepted by the Father and it is also the pledge from God that his Son will continue to fulfil in a loving way the consequences of his mighty victory. More than that, his resurrection is the guarantee that his people will also experience resurrection – he is the firstfruits of the great harvest that will take place when he returns and raises his people from the dead.

 

The experience of peace

The first point we can think about is that there is a message of peace, the gospel, the good news that Jesus declared himself, and which he sent out his servants and his people to share with those they come in contact with. That is what the gospel offers to each of us. God desires us to have it, even as Paul said to the Corinthians that he, in God’s stead, implored them to be reconciled with God. God offers peace, genuine lasting peace, to all sinners and tells them how to receive it. They receive it through trusting in Jesus.

 

In addition, there is a moment when peace comes to a person for the first time, when the truth of the gospel is perceived by them and they grasp that they have been reconciled to God. That moment may be sudden, or it may be the outcome of something that was gradual, yet it comes and brings with it something of the sweetness of heaven. They have peace with God through Jesus, and ahead of them lies the peace of God to have as his gift for eternity. We should ask ourselves if we have had this moment.

 

And there is also the manifestation of peace as it works its way through the people of God. They become peacemakers, as Jesus described them in the Beatitudes. One of the lovely features of the apostle Paul is how he begins his letters by reminding his readers of the availability of divine peace from the Father and the Son.  This world can know peace if they believe in Jesus, and one of the channels for conveying it are Christians. It is sobering to think that we are either channels or we are not.  

 

Paul reminds the Romans of his and their common experience which is that they all ‘rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.’ How can we do this? Paul’s words seem to say that the way to understand what God is like is to think of Jesus. We can do this with the divine attributes. We can describe God as omnipotent or we can think of Jesus calming the storm. We can describe God as love, or we can think of Jesus on the cross expressing his Father’s willingness to pardon the sinners who crucified him. We can think of God as pardoning sinners, or we can think of Jesus with the woman of Samaria or with the criminal of the cross. We can think of God living in heaven, but Jesus reveals to us that it is the Father’s house. Earlier in this chapter, Paul writes of rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, but Jesus prayed that we would see his glory, and in that way his people would experience the provision of God.

 

The way to approach God is through Jesus Christ. That is how the Christian life begins when we believe in his name and have peace with God. That is how the Christian life continues, when we come to God through Christ, whether it is in worship, or in prayer, or in service. We present our efforts only through the merits of Jesus and never based on our own. That is how the Christian life will end when Jesus, as he did with Stephen, will stand ready to welcome us into heaven. These are the benefits of the reconciliation that the Father sent the Son to obtain through his life and death, and which he now administers as he brings sinners into his kingdom, a kingdom that is marked by righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

 

So let us pursue what makes for peace (Rom. 14:19).