From The Living Church:

So irreconcilable are the forces that alienate humanity from itself, that only God can finally remove barriers that divide men or divide nations, and that man needs to receive from within the heart of God “one new man in place of the two” (a truly new humanity). The wonder of such reconciliation is that it appears within the human heart only at God’s initiation, and often in the face of human hostility. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation” (Rom. 5:10f.).

When the NT talks about this human experience of godly reconciliation, whether in relationship with God himself, with fellow Christians, as God’s gift of social harmony, or as a gospel for struggling humanity, what is presupposed is that full reconciliation is possible only when the human heart is healed, or man is recreated into the image (likeness) of God. As Paul puts it in 2
Corinthians: “(We are a new creation) All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (5:18f.).

One thing that is very obvious when one looks seriously at scriptural terms which still enjoy usage in current culture is the depth differential that scriptural terminology has compared to its popular usage. This is particularly true of the term “reconciliation.” In no way can human notions of “accommodation” or “toleration” mine the depths of a serious Christian understanding of reconciliation.

To content oneself with the mere surface findings of human understanding is like a mining engineer in search of precious metal being content with findings at ground or surface level (with strip mining), as opposed to mining at depths that reach into the mother lode itself. “Reconciliation” properly mined from its scriptural depths brings truth that touches the very heart of human experience, whether material, emotional, mental or spiritual.

If reconciliation is what we truly want in our Christian experience, in our Christian fellowship, in our Communion, then it is down to those scriptural depths that we will need to dig for understanding.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Registered members must log in to comment.