Obedience and reconciliation
Our first relationship with God is with a Holy Father
who produced children. It is not that of a Creator, it is that of a Holy
Father who is our creator. The children he fathered are the offspring
of holy love. It is his holiness that makes his love true love and it is
his love that makes holiness truly holy. We can easily imagine love and
holiness to be distinct in humans but that isn't possible in God. We
can imagine a parent loving her child but not nurturing in her child
deeper level holiness. We can imagine a dedicated worshiper of God who
has become hard and loveless, someone who has lost her heart in her
holiness. This isn't possible with God. His holiness is gentled by love
and his love is kept upright by his holiness. His children are the
offspring of holy love. The relationship is not limited to our
biological and social makeup, it is first and foremost a moral and
spiritual relationship--our father is the Holy Father.
That kind of relationship is required not by conditions arbitrarily
imposed but by who and what God is--our Holy Father. We don't determine
the nature of the relationship, by how we feel about it or view it. We
may renounce it, say we don't like it, refuse to live in light of it but
we can't alter the truth of it; we exist as the offspring of our Holy
Father. We have estranged ourselves by our restructuring the
relationship and by refusing to accept the true nature of it but God has
never changed his view about it and seeks to bring us back into that
relationship as it is seen by him. The restructuring is the result of
sin so the work of restoration calls for atonement for sin--that is, the
satisfactory dealing with sin which has deformed the relationship.
However, precisely, that sin of rejecting the Holy Father is dealt with
we call it "making atonement" for sin. The sin must be dealt with if
reconciliation is to be accomplished.
It isn't simply that we've sinned and the criminal acts must be
punished. It's bigger than that. Punishment, which is an aspect of
retributive justice, is only a part of the larger picture. God doesn't
seek our punishment, he seeks our restoration. Where punishment for sins
enters into that whole purpose then punishment is administered but it
is a mistake to make that the complete picture.
Nor should we be satisfied with the objective aspect of the atonement
(that is, how it affects God who is "outside" us). God is not simply
maintaining his own holiness and proving that he isn't soft on sin. It's
bigger than that because he isn't simply holy--he's the Holy Father and
he doesn't want simply to satisfy himself. The Holy Father actually
wants us back in fellowship with himself. But because of who and what he
is, reconciliation with him must involve our realignment with him. The
objective nature and character of God determines the nature of the
atonement and it necessitates our subjective appropriation of the
atonement.
That subjective appropriation involves our renewal. We must "be born
again". The reign of God is the reign of a Holy Father and in order to
see it or enter it we must be reborn. Our relationship with God must be
reconfigured for us and we must be willing to receive it. However
atonement is worked out, unless we want the Holy Father as our Holy
Father there is no restoration. The prodigals father always loved the
wayward son but he saw him "lost" and "dead" while the son maintained
his choice to be cut off from the father. Essential to reconciliation
between the prodigal and his father is the willing return to the father.
The willing return is not merely a response to reconciliation that is
already accomplished, it is part of what reconciliation is and means
and without it reconciliation doesn't exist!
What was done on the cross completed the grounding of reconciliation
but the whole process of reconciliation includes the sinner's personal
appropriation of that finished work. That's why Paul, on the basis of
God's reconciling work in Christ, calls sinners to "get yourselves
reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:19-20).
We talk of the "finished" work of Christ with good reason. There was
something we couldn't do for ourselves and Christ stepped in and did it
for us. Without our aid and in fact, in the face of our opposition he
accomplished it. But while what Christ accomplished on the cross is the
ground and creative dynamic for all else that relates to reconciliation,
it is not the total picture. If it were, there would be no need for the
message or ministry of reconciliation with which Paul and the church as
a whole is commissioned. Without the cross there is no message of
reconciliation. Without the message of reconciliation there is no
hearing and without hearing there is no believing and without believing
there is salvation by faith in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:19-20;
Romans 10:13-17).
It makes no sense to say the whole reconciling enterprise was
completed at the cross when the scriptures forthrightly say otherwise.
In the matter of atonement and reconciliation "all things are of God" (2
Corinthians 5:18) but part of the "all things" is the message by which
people are reconciled to God and by which they are saved (1 Corinthians
1:21). To say, "We were saved the moment Christ died on the cross
without anything further being done" makes no sense at all because it
excludes the preached message of reconciliation. In our anxiety to deny
self-salvation by good works or an obedience that somehow merits
forgiveness we mustn't ignore plain biblical teaching. We don't make
less of Christ's cross-work by insisting that the whole saving and
reconciling work of God includes other truths and realities that rise
out of that cross-work. When we insist on that we are simply allowing
the scriptures to tell us the whole story.
Part of God's reconciling work is the proclamation of the message of
reconciliation. Part of God's reconciling work is his way of bringing
people to faith in Christ, by that message of reconciliation. Part of
God's reconciling work is the obedience of faith itself, by which a
person appropriates the cross-work of Christ. These realities and truths
are related to each other as cause and effect but they are
indispensable elements in God's reconciling and saving enterprise.
Our obedience of faith in Jesus Christ did not produce the cross--the
reverse is true, and it would be a profound error to be mistaken at
this point. But in God's saving and reconciling work one cannot exist
without the other. This is not true because God laid the obedience of
faith in Jesus Christ as an arbitrary condition on those who might wish
to be reconciled with him and therefore saved. It's true because of who
God is and who we are before him. The cross is there because of who God
is and who we are before him. The obedience of faith in Jesus Christ is
the embracing of the cross. The obedience of faith is not the embracing
of the obedience of faith otherwise it would not be the obedience of
faith in Jesus Christ.
To sever faith obedience from God's reconciling and saving enterprise
is to sever from it precisely what God is after and precisely what the
cross is designed to create. The cross is not simply to prove we are
godless and God is gracious--it is to redeem us from our willing service
to sin (see Romans 6:1-16; 2 Corinthians 5:15). It is to realign our
hearts with God so that his work of reconciliation is experienced in our
heart and lives as penitent faith obedience.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.