‘Reconciling the world’ (2 Cor. 5:19)

Anonymous

‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them’ (2 Cor. 5:19). 

This statement describes the character in which God has drawn nigh to men in Christ. He was not here imputing sins but displaying grace. He came not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved. He did not come to introduce the day of vengeance, but to preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:19).[1] Christ’s presence in the world was evidence that there was no hatred in God’s heart towards men but that His whole desire was their reconciliation to Himself.

But the world was not reconciled by Christ’s presence here. It saw and hated both Him and His Father, yet the gospel, which is the ministry of reconciliation and which has been committed to God’s servants, is still here, and by it God is beseeching men to be reconciled to Him. This continuation of longsuffering, this day of salvation is based upon the fact that He ‘hath made [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him’ (2 Cor. 5:21). But it is only by and in Christ Jesus that any are reconciled. The mass continue in rebellion, yet God continues in marvellous longsuffering to beseech men to be reconciled to Him.

Author unknown[2]

[1] See how in quoting these words from Isaiah 61:1–2 the Lord did not complete the quotation. ‘The day of vengeance of our God’ belongs to His coming again (His appearing), not to that first coming in grace.

[2] From Scripture Truth (1917) vol. 9 p. 189. Courtesy of Scripture Truth Publications.

From: Truth and Testimony, 2023