08.02 Man - Not God - is Reconciled

8 - Reconciliation; Section 2 MAN - NOT GOD - IS RECONCILED! Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. He came to bring peace. Peace is alien to earth. When sin entered, peace fled. The moment that sin entered, peace fled, and Adam and Eve themselves were at strife with God and each other, so that their firstborn son had the spirit of the devil and was a murderer from the beginning. He slew his own brother. The second Man, the last Adam, was the Lord from heaven. When He was once rejected, in the days of His flesh, His disciples, with indignation, besought Him to command fire to come down from heaven and destroy these evil people. His answer comes down to us through the ages: "You know not what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them" (Luke 9:55-56). The firstborn son of Adam was a murderer, but the firstborn Son of God was a Saviour. One was the peace breaker shedding his brother’s blood, the other was the Peacemaker shedding His own blood that He might make peace with God. Yet the Christ had power to destroy men’s lives if He had the will. When He stood there with the cross in full view, He said to His persecutors that it was in His power to call twelve legions of angels. If that heavenly host which hovered about that Son could have once made itself manifest, oh how they would have swept that doomed city, that accursed conclave of false priests, and those wretched, blind and filthy-minded heathen soldiers! How the breath of these heavenly angels could have swept the life out of them and swept them down into hell and the grave. But that is not God’s way in redemption. That is not the mission of the Son of God nor of the Sons of God.

Now this leads to a point of immense importance. We often hear it said that "the death of Christ was necessary in order to reconcile God to man." This is a pious stupidity, arising from inattention to the language of the Holy Spirit, and indeed to the plain meaning of the word "reconcile." God never changed - never stepped out of His normal and true position. He abides faithful. There was, and could be, no derangement, no confusion, no alienation, so far as He was concerned; and hence there could be no need of reconciling Him to us. In fact, it was exactly the contrary. Man had gone astray; he was the enemy, and needed to be reconciled. Wherefore, then, as might be expected, the Scriptures never speak of reconciling God to man. There is no such expression to be found within the covers of the New Testament! "God was in Christ RECONCILING T-H-E W-O-R-L-D unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." And again, "All things are of God, who has reconciled US to Himself by Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). In a word, it is God, in His infinite mercy and grace, through the cross of Christ, bringing us back unto Himself.

We have seen from the ideas in the simple and compound verbs translated "reconcile" that "change" and "exchange" form the keynote. However it is not God who must undergo a change, nor is it His account which is in need of alteration even one single iota! There is no need for a change in the attitude of God toward man, for it has been Love from eternity. There is no equality of footing in this truth for it is the story of the Absolute One who is Infinite in Power condescending to act towards rebel man in perfect grace in the latter’s desperate need for reconciliation. It is the Lord Himself changing the accounts from "Sin’s Wages" to "God’s Gift," from "Legal Righteousness which condemns" to "Divine Righteousness which exalts." It is the Mediator exchanging the "Hostility of Man" for the "Peace of God." It is that which GOD DOES and which GOD GIVES which is at the heart of the cross whereby man is reconciled. Only God Omnipotent COULD ACCOMPLISH RECONCILIATION! The books are cleared. And God did it!

"Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ; whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of Him which believes in Jesus" (Romans 3:24-26). The following words penned by George Hawtin are true and graphic on this point: "The word propitiate means toappease, to soothe, to cause to be favorably disposed, and to conciliate. When Paul says, therefore, that God has set forth Christ to be a propitiation, the great question that must be answered is this: Whom is Christ propitiating? Whom is He appeasing? Whom is He soothing? Whom is He causing to be favorably disposed? Whom is He conciliating? Is this propitiation for His benefit? Or is it for the sinner’s benefit? Is God trying to conciliate Himself or is He conciliating the sinner? You know as well as I do that the Church system has always erroneously taught that it is God who must be propitiated, conciliated and soothed, but I want you to know that such teaching is utter rubbish and the brashest sort of nonsense. It springs from that Romish tradition that likens God the Father to a fearful and offended despot, spoiling for the blood of the offenders, and it makes Christ to be the one who pleads with God on behalf of the victim until the Father is consoled and conciliated.

"The Church all down through the ages, including all evangelicals of the past and present, have taught that Jesus came to propitiate God and to endeavor to dispose Him to be kind toward His fallen race. If you search in a thousand places, I doubt that you will find one man who does not make this incorrect assertion. How often I have listened to preachers describe Jesus Christ as a lawyer who stands up before God to plead our cause and beg for our lives on the grounds that He, being innocent, died for us and God is propitiated by Him and we are forgiven. This gross misunderstanding of the truth of propitiation is everywhere evident in sermons, in writing and in hymns. Notice how this error is brought out in the words of the following hymn:

Five bleeding wounds He bears, Received on Calvary. They pour effectual prayers; They strongly plead for me. Forgive him, O forgive, they cry, Nor let the ransomed sinner die! The Father hears Him pray, His dear anointed One; He cannot turn away The presence of His Son. My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear.

"This is Church tradition, but it is not the truth. Nowhere in all Scripture are we ever taught that God has to be reconciled to the world or to man. God never ever became an enemy of man nor does He need to be reconciled to man. The opposite is the truth and always the teaching of Scripture. Man is an enemy of God and man must be reconciled to God. Oh that sinners would be told that it was God the Father who gave His Son, not to appease or reconcile Himself, but to appease and reconcile man! Therefore the Scripture loudly proclaims, ’We beseech you in Christ’s stead, be reconciled to God’ (2 Corinthians 5:20).

This is the message that I bring, A message angels feign would sing: Be ye reconciled! Thus says my Lord and King, O be ye reconciled to God.

"Oh, the wonder of it all just to know that God the Father has sent Christ to be His propitiation toward us and that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them (2 Corinthians 5:19), and has committed unto us the word of reconciliation! So then, when the great apostle says that God has sent Christ as a propitiation, he means that He sent Christ to propitiate US and dispose US to kindness and repentance before God and to reconcile US to Himself. The Father did not send Christ to appease Himself, though that is the way the Church has always erroneously taught propitiation. The idea that God would send forth His Son to propitiate and appease Himself is exceedingly absurd. The truth is that Christ came to propitiate you and me that we might repent of our rebellion and iniquity against Him, believe and be reconciled to God, who has always loved us and been our friend and not our enemy. We might also take notice that in referring to the Scripture, ’There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,’ the preachers have also turned this backwards and made Christ to be our mediator with the Father, but that is not what Paul said. He said that the mediator was between God and man, not between man and God. So Christ was sent as a propitiation, a propitiator, or one sent by God the Father to dispose man to repentance and kindness, love and faith toward God" - end quote.

"For if, WHEN WE WERE ENEMIES, we WERE RECONCILED to God BY THE DEATH OF HIS SON, much more, being reconciled, we SHALL BE SAVED by His life" (Romans 5:10). What wonder there is in these few words! We were ENEMIES, yet reconciled to God, and that reconciliation came through the death of the Son of God. We were not converted people when we began to be reconciled. We were not saved people at that reconciliation. If we had been saved or converted or righteous at the time of reconciliation, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO NEED FOR A RECONCILIATION. A reconciliation is for the purpose of bringing people of opposing ideals and desires together.

Two things many Christians have not known. One is that when we were reconciled we did not even know that we were enemies of God; the second is that we did not know it until the knowledge of it was brought to us. In fact, at the time of the reconciliation, we had absolutely no knowledge of it at all. No one is reconciled at any altar, or anywhere else, except at THE DEATH OF THE SON OF GOD. The joy and the happiness comes to the sinner, not because he has just been reconciled, but because he has discovered that in actuality he was reconciled to God a long time ago. Preachers and people are quick to say that we are not healed NOW, but that in all actuality we WERE healed by His stripes two thousand years ago. In like manner, in God’s estimation, we, WHEN WE WERE ENEMIES, WERE RECONCILED to God BY THE DEATH OF HIS SON. When Jesus the Christ died on the cross, excepting the very few disciples who stood there, HE DID NOT HAVE ONE SINGLE FRIEND. ALL were His enemies! In Acts 4:27-28 we read, "For of a truth against Your holy child Jesus, whom You have anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together for to do whatsoever Your hand and Your counsel determined before to be done." This people had no choice in this matter. GOD gathered them together on that fateful day! Why was this so? In order that all of them together with the whole world might come to know the wonderful love of God that would save mankind, even against its will, so that God might fulfill HIS WILL for the entire race. All this was in the will and purpose of God and nothing was amiss or out of order, or in opposition to the will of God. The wondrous and gracious words of Jesus confirm this when, as He was dying, He cried, "Father, forgive them, THEY KNOW NOT what they do." What was it that made this manifested love of God so gloriously known? It was the opposing character in all the multitude that crucified the Christ. Had the nation of Israel and the empire of Rome supported Jesus and His teachings, no such manifestation of the LOVE OF GOD would ever have been revealed. The hatred and violence of the mob actually illuminated God’s love and made it known.

Every soul has been at war with God; in order for reconciliation to take place, there must be a cessation of the warfare, the hostilities, which exist between the individual and the Creator. The question that must be answered, therefore, is: How is the warfare that exists between the soul and God to come to an end? The first part of the answer is that we must realize that the war exists and confess the fact. A man who tries to insist that there is nothing wrong between him and God is dodging the truth. There is warfare between every man and God by the very nature of man’s ego, his self-seeking, sinful heart. God says that the warfare exists, and we have to admit it. Paul expresses the matter with finality: "For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:5-8). Phillips graphically translates these verses: "The carnal attitude sees no further than natural things; but the spiritual attitude reaches out after the things of the Spirit. The former attitude means, bluntly, death; but the latter means life and inward peace. And this is only to be expected for the carnal attitude is inevitably opposed to the purpose of God, and neither can nor will follow His laws. Men who hold this attitude cannot possibly please God."

Let us examine how a war between two nations comes to an end. A French statesman once pointed out that there were only two types of peace that ever followed a war: A peace imposed upon the defeated by a conqueror; or a peace accepted by the defeated through surrender. There is a vast difference between the peace which is imposed or the peace which one accepts. It should be evident that if there is to be peace between a man and God, the terms must be imposed by God Himself. God, the eternal God, omniscient and omnipotent, must have His way; it is the only right way in the universe. Every other way is the self-will of the creature, the way of earth, the way of limitation, blindness, finiteness. Men who will not submit their wills to the Creator go their horrible way into judgment.

Yet in spite of the fact that our position and our condition are defenseless, there have been those who have talked about "making their peace with God," as if they had a right to set the terms. The phrase has long been in use to describe settling differences between men. Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, has one of his characters say, "I will make your peace with him, if I can." Thomas Fuller seems to have been the first man who ever spoke of making one’s peace with God. But the phrase is incorrect and an absurdity in such a connection. If you are to know the joys of what God has for you, you must get that idea out of your mind. You must realize that GOD HAS ALREADY MADE THE PEACE and that you are simply to accept it! And when you come to God, the wonderful thing is that you find Him merciful toward you. The man who flings himself upon the promises of God finds that God is the loving Saviour. God has already made peace and is ready to receive that soul with all grace and tenderness. In the epistle to the Colossians, we read of the Lord Jesus Christ that "it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell; and HAVING MADE PEACE through the blood of His cross, by Him to RECONCILE ALL THINGS unto Himself " (Colossians 1:19-20).

Note especially the tense of the verb: Having made peace. This is of paramount importance: God has made peace! There is no other peace that can be made except that which God has made. A man who talks about making his peace with God is ignorant and denies the peace which God has already made. God will have no other peace with man than that which He made at the cross. God established the terms for this peace. He set these terms BY THE DEATH OF HIS SON. He declared that only by the death of man’s ways, the death of man’s will, the death of man’s attitude and hostility, could there be peace. In all this God does not change at all. But God works a mighty work upon man, placing him in the Christ upon the cross, crucifying all that he is and all that he does, and bringing him forth out of that death into the resurrection of a new creation in Christ Jesus. Oh the wonder of it! And now, if you will come with an absolute capitulation and unconditional surrender, you will find that God is all peace toward you. It is then that you can go on to find that FULLNESS OF PURPOSE which God fulfills in all who surrender to Him.

What a hideous affront it is to the God of our salvation to wickedly accuse Him of needing to give His own Son as a propitiation TO APPEASE HIS OWN WRATH, though this is the inexcusable lie we hear continually from the pulpit and over the air waves! God is portrayed by the preachers as so mad at sin and sinners, so violently angry and beside Himself that He is metaphorically foaming at the mouth with uncontrollable rage which can only be appeased by looking upon the bloody sweat and cruel, ugly death of His Son upon a Roman cross. All sermons and songs that picture God as a God of rage who must be "appeased" and "soothed" by blood are heathenish and should be piled on a bonfire and burned. The Old Testament sacrifices serve as a beautiful revelation of God’s love towards us, in His reconciliation. Whatever Israel brought to God was brought at HIS COMMAND and was an expression of their dependence upon Him. Sacrifice was not intended to make God gracious; it was brought in recognition of a grace which He Himself had assured. Every sacrifice was offered from this point of view, and free from any thought of appeasing an angry and hostile God. The idea of man being able through the death of a victim, or through some act of self-immolation, to appease the anger of an offended deity or to change His mind toward the worshipper, has clung persistently to most pagan religions. How alien it was to the Israelitish conception of the relation between God and man is clear from the statement in Leviticus 17:11, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU UPON THE ALTAR TO MAKE AN ATONEMENT FOR Y-O-U-R S-O-U-L-S." Ah, God gave the sacrifice, and not to change His attitude toward man, but to CHANGE SOMETHING ABOUT MAN! How could the blood of the sacrifice appease the wrath of God and make Him merciful toward man? It was the gracious, loving character of God that gave the sacrifice! "I have given it to you upon the altar." How clear that the blood of the sacrifice was not God-ward, it did not avail to make God gracious, for HE AGAINST WHOM THE OFFENCE HAD BEEN COMMITTED HAS HIMSELF PROVIDED THE MEANS OF RECONCILIATION!

Never was holiness more vindicated than at the cross, when Jesus "suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). Never was love more lavishly outpoured than when "God SO LOVED the world that HE GAVE His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have the life of the ages" (John 3:16). Notice, dear reader, it does not say that God was so mad at the world, or so offended by the world, or so angry with the world, or so vengeful toward the world, or so caught in a dilemma because of His justice - but GOD SO LOVED the world that HE GAVE. Hallelujah! We stand in awe before this fulfillment of Genesis 22:8, when by the Spirit Abraham prophesied to Isaac, "GOD WILL PROVIDE HIMSELF a lamb for a burnt offering." As one has pointed out: "And that is just what He did, He provided HIMSELF! Stripping Himself of His glory, He who was in the form of God, took upon Himself the form of man, and offered that form in that great sacrifice, yea, POURED OUT THE LIFE CONTAINED IN THAT FORM, which life was freely given to reconcile all things back into Himself. Never was grace more majestic in its operation, than when ’He made Him to be sin (Greek, literally, A SIN-OFFERING) for us, Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Corinthians 5:21)." How inspired the words of John the Baptist when he declared of Jesus, "Behold the LAMB OF GOD, which takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Ah, this Lamb was no sacrifice to appease - it was the perfect and purposeful embodiment of God’s grace and mercy and love and life to reconcile a hostile world unto Himself!

Appeasement is the basis of the offerings and sacrifices in all pagan religions. J. A. Dowie once wrote: "The religions of the world are worldly, are sensual, and are devilish for the most part. No one will doubt that is true in China. No one will doubt it, notwithstanding the clever philosophies and moral axioms of the Chinese Analects, or the works of Mencius or Confucius or the commentators upon these. No one will doubt that the worship of the Chinese is essentially a Devil Worship. I remember once going into a very fine Chinese joss-house (temple), in Australia, where offerings of the costliest kind hung upon the walls, where many interesting things were to be found. I was talking with the chief priest, and said to him: ’Tell me how you worship,’ and he told me. ’Why,’ I said, after I had heard attentively, ’My dear fellow, it seems to me that you are worshipping bad divinities.’ ’Oh,’ he said, ’Of course we do. The good ones we do not need to worship. They will do us no harm. To protect ourselves we have to get right with the bad ones, so we make it right with the devils.’ I thought to myself that there were some other people like that in America and Europe, who are not Chinese’ " - end quote. Can we not see by this that the Christians have copied the heathen and have made a fiendish devil of their God, and have then used the sacrifice of Jesus to "appease" this God who is more like a malicious devil than a loving and gracious Creator and Redeemer? Most Christians know, by hearing at least, that "God is Love," but the sense of condemnation from His Presence beclouds the vision of the heart, so that The Face which He has revealed in Christ Jesus cannot be seen. Often that is because of the continual preaching which describes God as a destroyer, a vindictive punisher. Even as a child many were taught to think of Him as an avenger of every little thing they did wrong. Parents have said, "Now don’t you do that because GOD will punish you! He will punish you!" And even much stronger things are told to little children. It is one thing to describe God as a LOVING Father, and all the relations of the little child to a LOVING Father who corrects in order to bless. It is quite another thing to darken the heart of a little child with threats of the certain vengeance of a Being who is a constant terror over the life. It is a false and terrible thing to leave upon the heart of a little child, as their first impression of God, that He is always waiting, lurking around, to punish them.

Think of it! That little child whose whole being is susceptible to LOVE; who is always looking for and wanting LOVE; who is capable of the purest and fullest simplicity of response to LOVE - think of it! marked and stamped with the impression that "God" is one to be constantly scared of. As though He is waiting everywhere with a punishing whip of large dimensions! Such impressions remain through a whole lifetime as an actual foundation of belief and action. That Wonderful Father! That Gracious Redeemer! That most Loving of all Beings! Oh, how I LOVE Him! He turned my heart back again and restored me into His life. God, the Father, the Most High, sent Jesus - the very fullness of His own heart - sent Him into the world to die on Calvary’s cross. But the real grasp of what that love and mercy actually IS, may often be nearly destroyed by the impression of WRATH deeply ingrained in the mind. If our basic understanding of "God" is that He is a Destroyer, that impression can discolor and influence our thought and our prayer life and our faith so that we can with great difficulty SEE HIM AS HE IS. How wonderfully He changes that when we come to Him repenting and believing in His loving Word. We cry out with an almost inexpressible joy that we LOVE Him. It is love, HIS LOVE, which does it! He flows into our lives in WHAT HE IS, and we no longer think of Him as a great force out there somewhere or a great destroyer, but as the LIFE GIVER.