The Ministry of Reconciliation

THE burden of preaching may be ex pressed in various ways. It is the task of feeding the flock, of building up and edifying the saints, of clarifying and defending the faith, of expanding and extending the kingdom of God on earth, or one of many other very vital and meaningful functions. Eclipsing and yet encompassing all these reasons for preaching, however, is the philosophy encouched in the statement of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:19, where he succinctly types his labors as the ministry of reconciliation. To reconcile is to restore to harmony; to adjust; to cause to be friendly again. Thus, Paul sees the minis try as one grand attempt by men, especially chosen for the task, to bring man back into harmony, fellowship, and acceptance with God's will and favor. In fact, Wuest, in his translation of verse 19, says, "He has committed to us the message of restoration to favor." And Phillips says, "He has made us agents of the reconciliation." * Thus, both support the King James picture of an ambassador seeking to bring about under standing and peace between the government he represents and the people to whom he has been sent. Utilizing this view or philosophy of the preaching event we note the three necessary appeals to reason that must be constantly proclaimed by the agent or preacher if his labors are to be both relevant and effective.

The Need

The first appeal is that of man's need of reconciliation. Sin, like a tidal wave, has not only separated man from his God, breaking him loose from the moorings of God's love, but it has swept him far from the shore line of life; and the farther man goes from God, the more debased and debauched he becomes, the more intense the darkness. Compounding the dilemma is man's inability to find his way back to God. He cannot right himself. He sees his plight. He beholds his paradise lost. He senses his helplessness as he seeks to hide from the erupting forces of an angry nature, as he tries feverishly to fortify the dam of his crumbling society, as he battles frantically to stay alive and yet feels himself being ever pulled into the void of the insatiate grave. Every plan of human devising has failed to reverse, the trend. Mankind, stuck in the mud, cannot lift himself up by the bootstraps. The demands of rescue obviously require a power infinitely superior to those of mortal man himself, a victim of sin.

The Instrument

Such is man's plight. Such is man's deep and abiding need. And it is in the context of this need that we must introduce the second step of our preaching appeal acquainting man with God's instrument of reconciliation. Paul says in verse 18 of 2 Corinthians 5 that God has "reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." John discusses this instrument of restoration thus:

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men." "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-4, 14). Note that these verses give us several illuminating views of Christ. First of all, John calls Him the Word, or the "logos," of God. The term "logos" bespeaks of complete intermeshed identity, as one's words are a part or representation o£ oneself. And to further construct the image, John declares Christ's eternity "in ^the beginning"; His fellowship "was with God"; and His divine nature He was God. And it is here on the matter of Christ's nature that we wrestle with the real crux of the mystery of godliness. For the divine, pre-existent, eternal God became "flesh, and dwelt among us." Jesus had to be both all logos and all flesh in order to accomplish His mission. He had to be as human as Adam or He could not have been an example for the human race in the matters of obedience and suffering. He had to be logos, for only one who was intimately acquainted with the Father could vindicate His character and reveal His love and satisfy the claims of the law. The Lawmaker must die for the lawbreaker. Only then would unfallen worlds and angels understand. Only then would Satan and his forces be fully exposed. Only then would God be justified in forgiving man and granting him a second chance.

The Results

Having thus viewed the need of reconciliation and the instrument thereof, we have left one more important element of our dis charging of this responsibility. This is the consistent revelation of the results of reconciliation. The Amplified Version of the Scriptures reads: "He came into the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him did not know Him. He came to that which belonged to Him, to His own [do main, creation, things, world], and they who were His own did not receive Him and did not welcome Him. But to as many as did receive and welcome Him, He gave the authority [power, privilege, right] to become the children of God, that is, to those who believe in adhere to, trust in and rely on His name" (John l:10-12)†

The glorious work of reconciliation is that all believing, obedient followers of the Christ become adopted members of the heavenly family and thereby heirs and recipients of the benefits that naturally accrue to all God's children. These benefits are bestowed on two levels peace of mind and security in this present life and the joys of eternal life upon His return. Reconciliation transforms confusion into order, darkness into light, frustration into peace, and most of all it makes death but a sleep from which the righteous shall awaken to the beauties of Paradise restored. And this is what man needs to know.

Every culture and every era has manufactured its philosophical skiff in which man hopes to survive the rapids of death. Nations and generations have come and gone, leaving behind a labyrinth of myth and folklore which seeks to postulate about the future. Elaborate systems have been built by brilliant thinkers. Crusades and revolutions have been sparked and populaces inspired by men who have uttered glittering promises of life beyond. But Christianity and only Christianity can point to an open grave and resolutely declare a consistent, logical, and substantiated view of the hereafter; consistent because it has survived the ravages of the centuries; logical because it harmonizes with the entire Bible story of creation, fall, and redemption; and substantiated by the life-to-death-to-life cycles of nature in her seasons, her tides, her vegetation, and above all by the death and resurrection of Christ to the fulfilled prophecies of the Word.

A Story of Reconciliation

Every preacher should have at his disposal an arsenal of experiences whereby he can illustrate the reconciliation process. One of my favorites is that of two young people, married during the depression in the late 1920's but who were separated shortly thereafter because of some legal carelessness on the part of the young husband. A native of one of the British Isles in the Caribbean, he had been permitted to stay in America upon the terms (the very strict terms) of a student visa, which he violated. When it became necessary to work to take care of his wife and a son that was born during the first year of marriage, this couple was separated by law, having had less than two years of family life together. He was forced to return to his small island home and begin anew the processes of re-entry to America.

What was thought to be a temporary absence, however, turned into a real night mare of frustration and heartache as one legal maneuver after another fell through in a queer sequence of political and diplomatic circumstances. Months stretched into years, and after nearly a decade the flood of letters which they first exchanged trickled finally to a stop. Both parties sought happiness in subsequent marriages which, while they failed, seemed to indicate complete, final absolution of their union. However, the hope of reconciliation never completely died in the heart of the wife and mother, and with the aid of relatives in America, she re-established correspondence with the man whom she now had not seen for more than thirty years. Having established contact, she then sacrificed, and took a trip of many thou sands of miles to visit her ex-husband's is land home. There on the sandy shores of that isle these two individuals refueled the sparks of love they had once known, and when her ship sailed back to the United States, it was with the promise of reunion and reconciliation.

After several months of arranging legal and personal business, the husband did in fact return to the United States, and restoration of this union was effected. In a real storybook ending to what was a long and frustrating experience, these two people have now been able to start again and rebuild their happiness, their paradise lost. I know the story well, for these two people are my parents, and I have seen in their unusual case a clear picture of the reconciliation of lost humanity with its Creator.

The happiness of man and God was broken in the Garden of Eden by disobedience to the law, and humanity was isolated, estranged, restricted from the fellowship of God. What followed the Fall was century after century of frustration and sorrow and separation from which there was no legal recourse. However, God in His heart of love yearned for our reclamation, and after four thousand years of sin sent His Son His agent of reconciliation---to effect our restoration. "God was in Christ personally reconciling the world unto himself," says Phillips in 2 Corinthians 5:19.

"Absolute deity," says Wuest, "was working in the Son. When He came to our shores He discovered but a faint reflection of the image of the creatures He had made 4,000 years prior, but He infused us with love, and to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to be restored or to become the sons of God. He has now returned to His home to complete the legal processes, but soon there is to be the marriage of the Lamb, the final restoration."

What Will Happen?

And what will happen when preaching is geared to the rehearsing of these primary facets of the ministry of reconciliation?

1. We shall ever be safe from the pitfall of preaching views instead of news. The gospel is good news, but we can preach it as such only when we are overshadowed with the restoration-reconciliation concept of hope and purpose. Theological views, religious views, even denominational views, do not stir and shock men to the reality of their sins, but the gospel will.

2. We shall see new life in our preaching, not just animation born of telling something vital. This will also accrue, but more than that we shall see renewed quickening power the connecting, moving power of God. Again, relying upon the Amplified Version, we read in John 1:4 and 5, "In Him was Life and the Life was the Light of men. And the Light shines on in the darkness."

The wonders of Christ's life were called the kerugma by the early Greeks and Hellenistic Jews, and when they preached the kerugma they claimed to preach the mighty acts of God in Christ. Thus they perpetuated those events in their effects, and thus through God's agents of reconciliation today these works still continue. Yes, through us the light shines on.

This thought, that preaching claims to do again and again the very same works as did Jesus, Gene Bartlet rightfully calls "the audacity of preaching." But the emphasis here is not just a power or a quickening that will give us more members in the church, but one that will give us better members. We have enough legalistic, self-righteous, self-sufficient, self-opinionated, letter-serving, but Spirit-lacking members, people who pluck and nibble away at the leaves of righteousness, very sure of their seat in the kingdom but who have never really seen or accepted Christ's likeness and the elements of disposition and state of heart as the supreme essence of religion; people who won't wear feathers because the plucking thereof hurts the fowl, but who will eat the fowl; people whose dresses are long but whose patience is short; people who censor rings as evil but who foster social and political cliques or rings in our churches.

The ludicrous inconsistencies of smug legalism form perhaps the greatest challenge today to the gospel minister, and our only hope of reviving the flock to true logical, loving, self-sacrificing godliness is in the preaching of what we have often failed to preach, and yet what must be the supreme thrust of all our endeavors--the gospel ministry of reconciliation.