How Can We Be Reconciled With God?

How Can We Be Reconciled With God? – by Desmond Ford

May 10, 2015 4428

This is a vital question for all of us. How can a person be reconciled to God? What is the cure for guilt’s alienation and sin’s compulsion?

The good news for today, my friends – the good news unlimited – is that the confession of the real problem can result in an immediate discovery of healing. Every needy person can be surprised by joy. The burden of the New Testament is that man’s Maker, aware of the human dilemma, has already intervened to solve it.

This is the meaning of the cross. The Scriptures declare to guilty men that He Who is both Lawgiver and Judge has lived their life, except for sinning, and died their death in order that by way of exchange we might be credited with His life and His righteousness.

William Tyndale, the translator of much of the King James Version (its basis) said that these truths about the cross constitute “the good, glad and merry tidings that make a man’s heart to sing and his feet to dance for joy.” The Scripture says One “has died for all, therefore, all have died. And if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation for the old has passed away and behold the new is come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself. For our sake, He (God) made Him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Cor 5:21. This verse answers the question, “Why the cross?”

It also answers the issue about guilt. For if One died for all, all died. We died. You and I died – at 3 o’clock that black Friday two thousand years ago. We were ruined ages before without our personal participation by the first Adam, our first representative. At Calvary, again without our personal participation, we were redeemed by the second Adam. As Adam represented the race in Eden, so Christ, the second Adam, represented humanity at the cross.

That was the judgment of the world. In Him all men have legally died and paid the price for their sins and now whosoever will may come. It sounds too good to be true, my friends, but it’s more true than anything else we know. “That all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men”, that God now, because of the cross, can be faithful and just to forgive us – you and me – our sins because the claims of the righteous eternal law have been met and we have died in our Substitute and Representative, Christ.

God won’t ask us to pay the price a second time if we abide in Him. He tells us we are “Ye are complete in Him”, “accepted in the Beloved;” and “there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Christ was made what He was not that you and I might be made what we are not.

Therefore despite a million sermons to the contrary, the Gospel is not good advice – we’ve had enough of that. It’s good news – good news unlimited.

Advice is about something I should do but news concerns something already done and done by Someone else. The gospel is the good news that in God’s sight sin – my sin, your sin – has been made an end of and everlasting righteousness has been brought in for you, for me. All that God requires of me for time and eternity has already been achieved by Himself in the person of His Son. That achievement is credited to anyone, howeyer vile, who believes the news and accepts it. Despite my sin and selfishness, there’s no need for me to try and reconcile with God. He’s already reconciled and He urges us “Be ye reconciled.”

God is offering something, not demanding something. You and I need not be anxious about what God thinks of us, but only of what God thinks of Christ, our Substitute. I must not blaspheme His grace by thinking that I must be free from sin before trusting His power to save. I must come to Him just as I am, sinful, helpless, dependent. The Divine plan involves our complete rescue from sin and guilt, sorrow and death. Our acceptance of Calvary brings freedom from sin’s guilt. Our dependence upon the living, interceding Christ, brings freedom from sin’s power, and His return will bring freedom from sin’s very presence. The work is His, though received by our simple trust. Objectively, Christ is all. Subjectively, faith is all.

The solution to your problem and mine is not obscure. It gives the answer to the reason for the cross of Christ. We need not climb up to heaven or down to hell to find the solution we need. We do not need some great I.Q..

The most well known words in the world contain all that we seek. Hear them again but not only hear – receive them and believe them. Though the news seems too good to be true, believe it, my friends – that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son”, so that you, by believing in Him should never perish but have everlasting

This is good news, it’s true news, and it’s for you.

– Des Ford. Rom 8:27–32 (Adapted from “Why the Cross?”)

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