Be Reconciled to God: Why the Finished Work of Christ Must Still Be Received

I. A Sentence That Changes Everything

There is a single sentence in the writings of Paul that, once a man truly grasps it, alters the way he reads the whole of the gospel. Paul says that God "hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

I want us to slow down here, because everything turns on how we hear that verse. This is not poetry. It is not a tender sentiment offered to comfort the troubled heart. It is judicial language. Paul is describing a legal transaction, a courtroom exchange, in which the One who had no sin of His own was made to stand in the place of those who had nothing to offer but sin. What belonged to Christ, His perfect righteousness, was reckoned to our account. What belonged to us, our guilt, was charged to His. This is what the older writers called imputation, and it is the very spine of the gospel.

Hold that word, judicial, for it governs everything that follows.

The same forensic note sounds all through Paul. In Romans he writes that we are "justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood" (Romans 3:24-25). Justification is a verdict. Propitiation is a satisfaction rendered to the offended justice of God. These are not the words of a poet describing a feeling. They are the words of an apostle describing a legal settlement. And what was settled at the cross was nothing less than the standing of sinners before the bar of a holy God.

II. The Witness of the Whole Counsel

Lest anyone think this judicial reading is Paul's invention, hear how it gathers up the testimony of the prophets before him. Isaiah, some seven hundred years before Christ, had already written, "the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6), and again, "for the transgression of my people was he stricken" (Isaiah 53:8). The verb is one of transfer. The iniquity that was ours was laid upon Another. Isaiah saw the same exchange Paul would later proclaim, that "he shall bear their iniquities" (Isaiah 53:11).

So when Paul says that the sinless One was made sin for us, he is not announcing a novelty. He is announcing the fulfillment of what the prophets had foreseen. The cross is the courtroom where the iniquity of us all, long ago laid upon the Servant in prophecy, was at last borne in fact.

III. Christ Worked First, and Worked Preemptively

Now mark the order of events, for it is everything. Paul says that "one died for all" (2 Corinthians 5:14), and he speaks of it as a thing already accomplished. Christ did not wait at the door of human history for an invitation to enter. He did not hold back until men acknowledged their need of Him. He went to the cross before we asked, before we repented, before we so much as understood what was being done on our behalf.

The work was preemptive. The sacrifice was laid down in advance of our consent.

Paul makes this explicit in Romans: "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). And he presses it further: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). And once more, that we may not miss it: "when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Romans 5:10).

Consider what those verses establish. We were without strength. We were yet sinners. We were enemies. In none of those conditions had we turned to God, and yet in precisely those conditions Christ died. He moved first. He acted on our behalf while we were still at enmity with Him. This is the heart of grace, and it is what divides the gospel from every religion of human striving. The debt was not paid because we earned a payment. The offering was not made because we presented ourselves as worthy. He did the work before we ever lifted a hand or bent a knee.

This is why Paul will say, when he comes to define salvation, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us" (Titus 3:5). The work originates in God, it is accomplished by Christ, and it is finished before we arrive.

IV. A Preemptive Work Creates an Obligation to Respond

But here is where careful thought is demanded, for a preemptive work creates an obligation of response. If a sacrifice has been laid before God on my behalf, judicially, then the question returns to me. God turns and asks, in effect, do you accept that this work was done for you? And because the matter is judicial, because it is a legal transaction and not a private feeling, the answer cannot be presumed. It must be given. I have to accept it.

This is the very reason I cannot read 2 Corinthians 5 as a blanket pardon spread over all mankind apart from their knowledge or their will. Paul does say that Christ died for all, and the provision is genuinely sufficient for all. But Paul nowhere says that all are therefore reconciled whether they will it or not. He says the opposite. Having described the finished work, he turns to living men and women and pleads, "we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Why plead for a thing that is supposedly already complete in every person? Why beseech men to receive what they are said to possess already? The plea itself proves the point. The work accomplished objectively at the cross must still be received personally by faith. God died for all. It yet remains upon us to accept it.

Paul reasons the same way about the offer of life: "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Romans 10:12-13). The provision is rich unto all. The benefit comes to those who call.

V. The Ministry Handed Down

Consider also what God did once the work was accomplished. Paul says that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:19). The reconciliation that God achieved in Christ He then entrusted to His apostles as an administration, a stewardship, a commission to carry to the world. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:20). Go, and tell the nations what has been done. Go, and announce that the way is open.

An ambassador does not invent the terms of peace. He carries them. He represents a sovereign who has already determined the conditions, and he delivers them faithfully to those who are estranged. That is precisely Paul's office. God reconciled the world in Christ, and then placed in Paul's hands the word of that reconciliation, that he might go and beseech men to receive it.

VI. The Way of Reconciliation: Grace Through Faith, Not Works of Law

And by what means did Paul say reconciliation comes to a man? Never by the works of the law. Paul is plain in Ephesians: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Weigh every clause. By grace, so its source is God's unmerited favor. Through faith, so its means is trust, not achievement. Not of yourselves, so its origin lies outside us altogether. It is the gift of God, so it cannot be purchased or earned. Not of works, lest any man should boast, so the door to human pride is shut entirely.

Paul guarded this truth as the very life of the gospel. To the Galatians he wrote, "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16). To the Romans, "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Romans 3:28). The hand that receives the gift is an empty hand. It brings nothing. It only takes hold of what Christ has already done.

So we must hold two truths together without letting go of either. The work is finished, and the work must be received. To deny the first is to make salvation a thing we accomplish. To deny the second is to make the gospel a pardon that saves men against their will. Paul will allow neither error.

VII. How Two Estranged Parties Are Reconciled

Let me now set the matter in plainer terms, because reconciliation is not a strange or distant word. We know what it means when two parties are at odds with one another. We know that the breach between them cannot simply be wished away.

Before there can be peace, the wrong that was done must be acknowledged. The party who committed the offense must not only admit it but accept responsibility for it. And the party who was wronged must be willing to move past the offense, willing to set the terms upon which the relationship may be restored. There is no reconciliation where one side pretends nothing happened and the other side demands that nothing change. Both must come to the table, and the offending party must accept the terms by which they are permitted to move forward.

This is exactly the picture Paul draws. God is the offended party. We are the offenders. We have transgressed against God and against His law, and the breach is real, not imagined. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10). The offense is genuine and the estrangement is total.

Yet Paul says that God was in Christ "reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" (2 Corinthians 5:19). There is the willingness of the offended party to move past the wrong. God has chosen, at infinite cost to Himself, not to hold our trespasses against us as the final word. He has made a way forward.

VIII. God Has Set the Terms

But notice carefully that God, the offended party, has also set the terms. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. The death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ stand as the appointed conditions by which the wrong may be put away justly. This is the gospel Paul says he received and delivered: "how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Here is the wonder of it. God did not lower the standard of His law in order to forgive. He satisfied it in Christ. He did not overlook the offense. He bore it Himself. This is why Paul can say that God is "just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). Justice was not set aside that mercy might triumph. Justice was satisfied that mercy might be just. The terms are not arbitrary. They are the only terms under which a holy God can righteously receive a guilty sinner, and they are terms God Himself provided at His own expense.

We do not, therefore, get to set our own conditions. We do not approach God on terms of our own choosing. We come through the provision He Himself established, or we do not come at all. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

IX. What Then Is Required of Us

So what remains for the offending party? The same thing that is required in any true reconciliation.

First, we must acknowledge our wrong against God and His law. We cannot come pretending we have no offense to confess. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). The publican who would not so much as lift his eyes, but smote upon his breast saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13), went down to his house justified. The man who acknowledges the breach is the man prepared to be reconciled.

Second, we must accept the terms by which God has made a way for us to move past that wrong, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ received as our own sacrifice. This is faith, the trust that lays hold of what Christ accomplished and rests upon it alone. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31).

And these two move together, for Paul preached "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21). Repentance is the acknowledgment of the wrong and the turning from it. Faith is the acceptance of God's appointed terms. We must repent and be willing to accept. We must accept and be willing to repent. You cannot separate the turning from the trusting, for the same heart that acknowledges its offense against God is the heart that casts itself upon the remedy God has provided.

Acknowledge the wrong. Accept the conditions. And then, and only then, can the breach be healed and the offense be put behind us forever. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1). That peace is real, but it is peace with terms, peace through a Mediator, peace on God's appointed ground.

X. The Gospel Is Announcement and Appeal in One Breath

This, then, is the whole of it.

Christ did the work, and He did it first, judicially, on our behalf, before we ever turned to Him. God offers reconciliation freely, by grace, through faith, apart from the works of the law. But the offer is not the same thing as the acceptance. The cross is sufficient for all, yet its benefit rests upon those who receive it. God has been willing to move past our offense and has set the terms at His own cost. The question that remains is whether we will acknowledge our wrong and accept those terms.

That is why Paul does not merely announce the cross and leave men to themselves. He implores them. He stands as an ambassador and beseeches them in Christ's stead. The gospel is therefore an announcement and an appeal in the same breath. It declares what Christ has done, and it pleads with men to receive it. The work is finished. The way is open. The terms are set.

And so the word still comes to every soul that hears it, the same word God committed to Paul and that Paul committed to us: be ye reconciled to God.