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Day 4

Rest in Reconciliation

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

Oh! How beautiful is the work of Jesus Christ for us! Two things happen when we come to faith in Christ. Positional reconciliation and experiential reconciliation. “We who believe the gospel are now experiencing the beginning of salvation’s benefits, but we will not know the full blessings until our resurrection” (A Theology for the Church, Danny Akin).

Positional reconciliation occurs at salvation and experiential reconciliation is a life-long process. Ephesians 1:3 assures us that our salvation is a finished reality, and Philippians 2:12-13 emphasizes the ongoing work of reconciliation.

The struggles we now have are with the patterns of behavior that we had prior to salvation. Slowly the Lord increases His spotlight of faith. He digs deeper and deeper into our hearts to root out indwelling sin, so that we can enjoy Him more and more. We grow to love Him more and more as we continue to lay aside our desires, pick up His will for our lives, and accomplish the good works that He set out for us to do (Ephesians 2:10)!

My husband uses the analogy of a wedding to explain positional and relational reconciliation. After the bride and groom say their vows, they are married, but they don’t go home in different cars to different houses. They live together, growing more and more in love with one another as the years go by.

We should look at our salvation like a marriage. As we learn to trust, our faith will grow, and relationally, we grow closer to the Lord as we understand more about His nature, His character, and His acts. As we walk with God, “He transforms us into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). This transformation is the process of experiential reconciliation. The difficult truth to grapple with is that we must walk through many griefs, adversities, and troubles to experience the reality of God’s reconciliation. Our faith in what we know to be true often grows through the storms we endure rather than times of comfort.

This was true for Job. Only after he experienced the death of his children, loss of his wealth, the persecution by his friends’, and his many sicknesses did he proclaim, “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5).

Even though we may be frustrated or impatient because we experience troubles, temptations, and failures. We know for sure that our sins are forgiven. We rest in the reconciliation brought by salvation, but we must still journey through this broken world as a witness, being careful not rebel against the way that God has chosen to display His mercy in us to those who are

far away from Him.