- Restored the friendship between God and man broken by sin.
- Accomplished His work by the voluntary sacrifice of His life.
- Introduces harmony into a disrupted universe.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses 21, 22.
The Personal Blessings of Reconciliation.
Having shown the relation of Christ to God, to the whole creation, and to the Church, and His connection with all moral beings, the writer now proceeds to point out the relation of Christ to individual man in delivering him from the fetters of sin and opening up the way of reconciliation with an outraged but loving Deity. In this passage we have a description of the attitude of sinful man towards God and the method of his restoration. We learn that:—
I. Sin has placed man in antagonism to God.—1. Man is estranged from God. “And you that were sometime alienated” (ver. 21). Sin severs the soul from God. The principle of cohesion—the consciousness of rectitude which God implanted in man in his sinless state—is weakened, and the sinner, breaking away from the centre of all goodness, drifts into an ever-widening and ever-darkening wilderness of alienation and evil. Sin places man at an infinite distance from God, leads him to shun the Divine presence and disregard the Divine overtures. A state of alienation is a state of danger; it is a state of spiritual death; and yet it is painful to observe how few in this state are conscious of their awful peril.
2. Man is hostile to God.—“Enemies in your mind” (ver. 21). The enmity follows from the estrangement, and both have their seat in the mind—“in the original and inmost force of the mind which draws after it the other faculties.” The mind of man opposes the mind of God, sets up a rival kingdom, and organises an active rebellion against the Divine Ruler. “The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom. viii. 7). If the hostility is not always flagrantly open, it is in the mind; the fountain of all sin is there. To be a stranger to God is to be an enemy of God: “He that is not with Me is against Me.” The sinner is his own greatest enemy. It is a vain thing to fight against God; terrible will be the vengeance He will ere long wreak upon His enemies.
3. Man’s estrangement and hostility are evident in his actions.—“By wicked works” (ver. 21). Man is stimulated by his sinful mind to perpetrate the most outrageous acts of rebellion against God, and to indulge in the most fiendish cruelty towards his fellow-man. But there are “wicked works” that may not figure in the criminal columns of the newspapers, nor be detected by the most vigilant watcher. To cherish envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness is equally heinous in the sight of God, and an unmistakable evidence of hostility towards Him. Sin conceived in the mind will, sooner or later, manifest itself in action.
II. Man is reconciled to God in Christ.—1. The distinguished blessing. “Yet now hath He reconciled” (ver. 21). To effect this all that is necessary is to persuade the sinner to cease his rebellion and submit to God. In Christ God is reconciled to the sinner; there is no need to persuade Him. He is love; the sinner is enmity. He is light; the sinner is darkness. He is nigh unto the sinner, but the sinner is afar off. The great object is to destroy the sinner’s enmity, that he may have Divine love; bring him from darkness into Divine light; bring him from his evil works nigh unto God, and reconciliation is the result (Biblical Museum). The amity existing between the soul and God, and which sin had interrupted, is now restored. Dear as are the friendships of earth, none can equal friendship with God.
"The calls a worm His friend,
He calls Himself my God;
And He shall save me to the end
Through Jesu's blood."
The loftiest communion of the soul with God is renewed. In this the soul finds its strength, consolation, life, rapture. How much does that man lose whose heart is not reconciled to God?