(We are going through a series on the Gospel in order to try to truly understand the whole Gospel and see how it counters prevalent false Gospels. See all the posts here.)
The Gospel part 1 showed us how amazing the Royal God of the universe is. Part 2 made it clear that it would be impossible for us to be in relationship with that God. If the Gospel ended there, it would be a depressing story (and would not be gospel at all). But, thankfully, the story keeps going.
The third, and central, part of the Gospel is reconcile. Our rebellion caused hostility between us and God. We were essentially enemies. Colossians 1:21 states that once we were "alienated from God and were enemies in [our] minds because of [our] evil behavior." After all, a Royal King cannot be with rebellious subjects; the president cannot hang out with those who have committed treason. But the wonderful and glorious truth of reconcile is that even though we were enemies with God, "He has reconciled [us] by Christ's physical body through death" (Col 1:22). How did this happen? There are two ways...
Jesus' work on the cross reconciles us to God by freeing us from the penalty of sin. Our rebellion and sin against God earned us the death penalty (Rom 3:23) in the same way that one who commits treason can be executed (18 U.S.C. § 2381). But what Jesus did on the cross was He took the punishment that we deserved. He stood in our place and, by the mercy of God, He went through what we should have suffered (1 Pet 2:24).
This incredible act of grace benefitted us in two amazing ways. First, it paid our debt. Our sins wrote a check that we could never cash. The law demands a perfect sacrifice for sin (Lev 1:3; 1:10; 3:1; 3:6; etc.) and endless sacrifices of bulls and goats would never cut it (Heb 10:4). Only the sacrifice of a perfect life could pay our debt, and Jesus paid that Himself.
Second, it satisfied God's wrath. God, because He is good, hates sin and evil with all of Himself. Every bit of who He is reels at our rebellion, and it incites Him to great anger. When Jesus died on the cross God was able to pour out all of His wrath on the perfect God-Man who was the only one able to handle it. "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood - to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." (Rom 3:25-26) This means that we no longer have to sit under the judgement of God wrath but instead can enjoy the riches of His kindness.
Jesus' work on the cross reconciles us to God by freeing us from the power of sin. But not only did the work of Christ save us from the punishment of our rebellion but it saves us from the rebellion itself. I think the church has often missed this part of our reconciliation. If Jesus takes our punishment and then we continue to sin what good is it (Heb 10:26)? (But do not misunderstand this - when Jesus took our punishment He took it for all of our sins - past, present and future.) Jesus' work on the cross actually changes who were are down to the very core so that the essence of who we are has changed. We are no longer slaves to sin but we have been set free so that we do not have to live in constant rebellion against God. (I've written more about this idea here.)
Praise God that He has reconciled us to Himself. This reconciliation will lead us to the next part of the Gospel - being in relationship with God Himself.
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