Reconciliation: Total Acceptance Through Jesus
#7 IN MY CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER JOURNEY THROUGH ROBERT MCGEE’S BEST-SELLING BOOK, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNIFICANCE.
Have you given up on experiencing God’s complete acceptance of you?
Can God accept a person who is unacceptable because of their sin, or does He have to make that person completely acceptable through salvation first?
Is Christ’s payment sufficient enough to keep you acceptable to God for the rest of your life and beyond?
Transformation
God’s solution to the fear of rejection is based on Christ’s sacrificial payment for our sins. Through this payment, we find forgiveness, reconciliation, and total acceptance through Christ. Reconciliation means that those who were enemies have become friends. Paul described our transformation in his letters to the Colossians:
“And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
Colossians 1:21-22
God doesn’t base His love and acceptance of us on our performance. If any sin is so filthy and vile that it makes us less acceptable to Him, then the cross is insufficient. If the cross isn’t sufficient for all sin, then the Bible is in error when it says that He forgave all our sins (see Colossians 2:13-15).
God Desires Relationship
Our unconditional acceptance in Christ is a profound, life-changing truth. Salvation is not simply a ticket to heaven. It is the beginning of a dynamic new relationship with God. Justification is the doctrine that explains the judicial facts of our forgiveness and righteousness in Christ. Reconciliation explains the relational aspect of salvation. The moment we receive Christ by faith, we enter into a personal relationship with Him. We are united with God in an eternal, inseparable bond (see Romans 8:38-39). We are bound in an indissoluble union with Him, as fellow hers with Christ. The Holy Spirit has sealed us in that relationship, and we are absolutely secure in Christ.
The point of the cross is that through Christ’s death and resurrection, we have become acceptable to God. This did not occur because God decided He could overlook our sin. It occurred because Christ forgave all of our sins so that He could present us to the Father as holy, blameless, and beyond reproach.
Tilted Toward The World’s Ways
When we are born again as spiritual beings in right standing with God, we are still tilted toward the world’s way of thinking. Because we have been conditioned by the world’s perspective and values, we find it hard to break away. Though born of the Spirit and equipped with all provisions in Christ, we must still develop into the complete, mature believers God intended us to be.
The desire for success and approval constitutes the basis of an addictive, worldly self-worth. Certainly withdrawal from this dependency may cause us some pain as we change the basis of our self-worth, yet we will begin to discover true freedom and maturity in Christ only when we understand that our lives mean much more than what success or the approval of others can bring!
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