The Death of the Lord: Reconciling
You... .hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death. — Colossians i. 21, 22.
HE Cross and Resurrection of Jesus
completely altered His disciples ’ conception of Him. It is only necessary to read carefully the Gospel stories, and then immediately, and in contrast, the story contained in the Acts of the Apostles, to see that the attitude of these men toward their Master was entirely changed. I am not suggesting for a single moment that they did not love Him and believe in Him before the Cross; but I do most certainly affirm that they did not understand Him. A new conception of His Lordship came to them as a result of His Resurrection from among the dead. This resulted in a new conception of the Cross. The Cross had appeared to them as supreme
tragedy, by wMcb all their hopes were put out, all their expectations disappointed. The Cross became to them the supreme victory, the very way of the life which they had preached. Before the Cross, they had called Him Lord, Master, Teacher; but only in the sense of Teacher, Exemplar, Leader. After the Resurrection the title Lord meant infinitely more than before, for as its light flashed upon the Cross they came to know Christ as they came to know Christ as they had never known Him before. This new conception of the Lordship of Jesus is most clearly set forth in the writings of the Apostles; and nowhere more clearly than in the chapter from which the statement is taken which is the basis of our meditation.
We are now to consider the death of the Lord; and we use the word Lord, not in that earlier, simpler, and incomplete sense in which the disciples used it while Jesus was still with them; but in that larger, fuller, more wonderful sense in which they used it after Pentecost, when they looked back to the Cross through the fact of the Resurrection, in the light of the Spirit.
We have considered the death of Jesus of Nazareth as perfect Man, and declared it was unnatural. We have considered the death of Christ, and declared it to be supernatural, a death which cannot he measured by any other. Now we come to the consideration of the meaning of that death in the economy of God, as revealed to the holy Apostles and writers of the early Church; and we affirm that the death which was unnatural if you measure it by human standards, supernatural if you look upon the Person and glory of Christ, was a reconciling death when He is seen as Lord in the full meaning of the title.
Let us first examine the contextual teaching concerning the Lordship of Jesus.
In the earlier part of the chapter we find the Person to Whom the Apostle refers. An actual Person within human comprehension is certainly referred to, as the phrase “the body of His flesh” signifies. In the thirteenth verse these words occur, “Who delivered us out of the power of
darkness and translated ns into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” In the third verse we find these words, “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This then, is the selfsame Person concerning Whom we have been speaking in previous studies as Jesus of Nazareth, and the Christ. He Who was at once David’s Son and David’s Lord is now spoken of by the Apostle in all the full and gracious dignity of title, name, and office, as “the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is of this Person that the Apostle affirms, “You .... hath He reconciled in the body of His fiesh through death.”
Between these outstanding verses are statements which reveal what the Apostle meant by the Lordship of Christ. In them he declares what the relation of this Person is to God Himself; what the relation of this Person is to the whole creation; and, finally, what the relation of this Person is to the new creation, the Church. His relation to God is expressed in the words, “Who is the Image of the invisible God”; His relation to creation in the words, “In Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him, and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist”; His relation to the Church in the words, “He is the Head of the Body, the Church; Who is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.”
That is the ultimate teaching of the New Testament concerning the Lordship of Christ. First, He is Lord by the right of His relation to the Father. He is the Image, the Representation, the Unveiling, the Manifestation of the invisible God, Who has no manifestation save through Him. The declaration is not that He became the Image of God; hut that He is the Image of God; He is always the Image of God. Or, to use the tenses of human limitation in speaking of the abiding eternities, He was the Image of God long ere time began, ere creation came into being; He will he the Image of God in all the ages
yet to come; He is the One through Whom God is always manifest to created beings. Whether they be principalities or powers in the heavenly places; or things of time and sense; whoever they may be, and whenever they may exist, and wherever their habitation may be, God is revealed to them through this Person. That one fact sets Him at once in the place of Lordship over creation; He is indeed, therefore, ‘‘King of Kings, and Loud of Loeds,” absolute and supreme.
But He is Lord also by virtue of His immediate relation to the Creation. All created things exist through the act of this Person. The One Whom men called Jesus was infinitely more than a Man of His own age; He was indeed the Word through Whom creation came into being and He is the One Who upholds all things by the Word of His power; all things consist in Him.
Finally, He is Lord by the mystery of His relation to the Church; He is the Head of the Church. The two expressions which the Apostle uses here concerning this Person in His relation to the first creation. and to His Church, are full of meaning. When he speaks of the relation of Christ to the first creation he refers to Him as “The Firstborn of all creation.’’ When he speaks of His relation to the Church he describes Him as “The Firstborn from the dead,” a far more remarkable thing. “The Firstborn of all creation” suggests that all created things came in the power of His essential life. He commended and it was done. “The Firstborn from the dead” suggests a renewed life, won out of the mystery of death.
In the Roman letter this selfsame ‘Apostle declares, “Concerning His Son, Who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. Who was declared to he the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection of the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord.” This consciousness of the Lordship of Christ resulted from Resurrection and Pentecost.
This Lord Jesus Christ is the Image of God, the Manifestation of God; He is the originating Creator, and the sustaining might in the imiverse; He is the One Who
came back out of the experience of death, with a new light upon His brow, and new life in His gift. He is the Lord of all, and is declared to be so with power, by the Resurrection from among the dead.
Let ns now examine this word reconciled. The Greek word signifies, quite literally, an exchange — that is, in this use, a change in relationship, the bringing into fellowship of things which have been opposed. In our text we have a strengthened form of the word, which means to fully change, and therefore suggests complete reconciliation. Both that and the word commonly used suggest change back to an original intention. Reconciliation is return to true position and relationship.
Wherever this word is used in the New Testament in regard to man’s relation to God, it indicates a change in man, and not in God. “We were reconciled to God,” “God Who hath reconciled us to Himself,” “Reconciling the world unto Himself,” “Be ye reconciled to God,” “That He might reconcile both unto God,” “To reconcile all things unto Himself,” “You now hath He reconciled to present you before Him.” While that
grouping of Scriptures is incomplete, in that the context in every case is omitted, it does help us to see that the reconciliation of God and the sinner, of which the New Testament treats, is not God’s reconciliation to the sinner, but the sinner’s reconciliation to God. This is not a distinction without a difference. A clear understanding of it and determined adherence to that method of expression will throw much light upon this death of Christ, through which our reconciliation has been made possible. It is not that through the death of Christ, God may be turned back to the sinner; it is that through the death of Christ the sinner may be turned back to God. This is quite radical and quite important. It does recogize a change in the Divine attitude, from that which man had any right to expect; not an actual change, for God never turned His back upon the sinner. The only occasion in which we find anything approaching God’s forsaking man is in the mystery of the Cross. God never turned His face away from man. Sometimes, in moments
of anguish, men have been constrained to speak of themselves as God-forsaken. It is never true. Sometimes, in great consciousness of sin, men are constrained to think God has abandoned them. It is not so. God has never, never turned His hack upon a sinner.
But now let us carefully remember that He must have done so hut for this passion which the mystery of the Cross reveals. Yes, but then there is this mystery of the passion, and because of it God never turned His hack upon a sinner. Man has turned his back upon God. Man has set his face toward the far country. It is for him to turn his face toward God. It is man who needs reconciliation to God. By saying this I am not lowering the standard of Divine holiness. In this use of the word reconciliation the New Testament standard of Divine holiness is never lowered. Man cannot be reconciled to God in his sin. What is needed is not God’s reconciliation to man, but man’s reconciliation to God, and that is impossible while he is still living in sin.
This attitude of welcome and love is not the attitude man has any right to expect. If I have turned my hack upon my Father’s home, and have broken His heart, and destroyed His substance, and wronged His name, what right have I to expect that His face will still be toward me? I have a right to expect quite another attitude. We all talk much about our rights. Ho we imderstand that our only right is that of eternal banishment from God’s presence! We have none other, not only because we are of sinful nature, but because we are sinful actually. The right of every self-centred soul who has sinned against heaven is banishment from God. Yet God’s mightiest work. His greatest concern, is that men should he reconciled to Him.
The reconciliation of God was the result of His own action as revealed in Christ, and needed no persuasion. The reconciliation of man must be by persuasion. Yet there can be no reconciliation of holiness to guilt, to sin, to wrong, save by the way of the Cross, save by the way of that for which the Cross stands, and which the Cross reveals.
How is it that God never turned His back upon man? With His bolmess insulted, His righteousness denied, with that law upon which the safety of the universe depends violated, why did He not abandon man? The deepest answer to that question is to be found in the briefest statement, “God is love.” Yet if I said no more than that I should do violence to the whole of Scripture revelation. Love cannot deny light. Light is an integral part of love. We have never -understood the truth about God when we separate between His light and His love, between His righteousness and His mercy. God is the stern and unbending foe of sin because He is love. If you can persuade me to believe that God will excuse sin in any life, or under any circumstances, in that moment you persuade me that God is not love. It is the passion of His heart, the deep love of His nature which makes Him the sworn enemy of sin, and will never allow Him to sign a truce “with it in indmdual life, in society, in the nation, in the world, or in the universe.
Theologians have often told us that love is one of the attributes of God. Love is the sum total of the attributes. Love is to the attributes of God what character is to the characteristics of a man. Break up character, and you may speak of characistics. Break up the essence of God, and you may speak of attributes. Gather the whole of the characteristics, and know them in their true relationships, and you know character. Gather the attributes together, and the sum total is love. It is because of love that God never turned His hack upon man; hut that love is the sternest foe of sin.
Love is nevertheless mightier than sin. It suffers, and upon the basis of that suffering, is able to forgive, and in no other way. Love gathered into its own consciousness all the issue and outcome of man’s rebellion, and the only thing which love can never forgive by the way of its suffering is refusal to he forgiven by love through suffering. The only sin which is impardonable is the sin of rejecting the testimony of love in Jesus by the Holy Spirit. If I will not receive forgiveness based upon righteousness, which is the
outcome of the suffering of love, the very love and suffering of God Himself, then God Himself, for love of His universe, cannot receive me into fellowship with Himself. These are the essential facts. It is by the way of Calvary that we have learnt these truths. In the mystery of the dying of this Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, there was wrought out into visibility that infinite and eternal truth. Do not imagine for one single moment that by the dying of the Man Jesus of Nazareth, apart from the fact that He was other than Man, the race has been redeemed. Do not for a single moment imagine that by the dying of a man upon the Cross, God was persuaded to change His attitude toward man. That which we see in the Cross did not begin at the point of the material Cross. The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. In the moment in which man sinned against God, God gathered into His own heart of love the issue of that sin, and it is not by the death of a Man, but by the mystery of the passion of God, that He is able to keep His face turned in love toward wandering men, and welcome them as they turn back to Him. Had there been no passion in His heart, no love, no suffering of Deity, no man could ever have returned to Him. Had He been none other than holy and righteous, and had there been no emotion, no tenderness, then He might have vindicated His holiness by the annihilation of the race. To know what God is we listen to some of the verses of the Old Testament. Go back to the beginning of begmnings and hear the voice in the dark, “Adam, where art thou?” My beloved and revered friend. Dr. Henry Weston, said: “That is not the call of a policeman; it is the wail of a Father over a lost child.” Hosea, out of his own heart’s sorrow, expressed the feeling of God’s heart concerning the wandering, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?” That is God’s attitude toward all sinning men. He has gathered up into His own Being, not by mechanical effort, but by the very necessity of His nature, all the suffering which issues from sin.
Men did not know it, and could not understand it; and therefore God came into human form and human life, to the actual-THE DEATH OF THE LORD:
ity of huinan suffering, on the green Mil and upon the rugged Cross, working out into visibility all the underlying, eternal truth of the passion of His love, that men seeing it, might understand it, and put their trust in Him. Therefore by this actual historic and material death, the reconciliation of man is alone possible.
“You .... hath He” — the Image of God, the Creator of worlds, the Head of His Church — “reconciled in the body of His flesh through death.” Not that He conciled God to man, for he was God Himself; but that He through that death has made possible the reception to Himself of sinning men, and that through that death He makes His great appeal to man in his rebellion, calling him to turn back to God.
What is the need of man to-day? Why are men afraid of God? Those of you who are His own children fear the Lord and cling to Him. The man who does not know God is afraid that God will hurt him. Those who know Him are afraid lest they should hurt God. The difference is radical. One is slavish; the other is filial.
One drives us away from Him; the other keeps us close to Him.
Why is the man who slavishly fears God afraid? I will tell you. Go hack to the early Genesis story. At the end of the day the man is hiding. WTiy did he hide? Had God changed? No. Man hid because he had changed — he had sinned. That is why men are afraid of God. It is because of their sin. They are afraid of God, and the fear keeps them at a distance from Him, and the fear is born first of all of actual sin, and then of consciousness of paralysis and inability to please Him.
God answers that fear in the Cross, He declares by that Cross that sin is borne, carried, put away. He affirms by that Cross that, though men are afraid of Him, He loves them with such love as never can be expressed or measured in human words. He announces by that Cross, that at infinite cost, by the mystery of the passion which knows no human measurement, He gives pardon and new life.
Then there is nothing for me to do other than to look into the face of Jesus, Who
is Lord, and say, “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
Theory of Atonement? Nay, verily, but the great fact of Atonement. Explanation of the Cross? Nay, verily, but the great healing love that wins through suffering; and will receive us Just as we are, if we will turn our eyes from man to Him; and will blot out all our sin, and make us all He would have us to be.