“Reconciliation means sharing in all that the other is.”
In this one sentence Professor T. F. Torrance (“Reconciliation in Christ and in His Church,” Biblical Theology 11:2 (1961), p. 31) cuts through non-relational haze of extrinsic, detached legalities and directs our thoughts about reconciliation into the world of real relationship. The purpose of the incarnation was not simply to provide a spotless external sacrifice to cover our sinfulness, so that God could then accept us. The purpose of the incarnation was to reach us, to establish a real relationship with us as we are in our fallen and pitifully broken existence. Real reconciliation means incarnation. And real incarnation means reconciliation. For what does it mean that the Father’s Son himself has become what we are, if it does not mean that he has established a real relationship between us and His Father in the Holy Spirit? And what reconciliation could possibly be more personal and real and true than the Father’s Son meeting and embracing us in our pathological darkness, and bringing his Father and the Holy Spirit with him? Who wants a balanced ledger when we have been given a place in Jesus' relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit?
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2 comments:
I have heard and embraced no more beautiful truth about relationship than this truth revealed to us in the Person of Jesus Christ! For so long, I only knew and taught it from a legal, extrinsic way and experienced deadness, and a low form of living in Jesus.
I am now vitalized from the inside out with Him Who established relationship with me (us) right smack dab in the middle of that darkened deadness, and brought my new aliveness in His Life!
Thank you for being used to help me see more clearly who I have always been in Him!
Those are my thoughts and feelings as well! Just thought I'd send a note and let you know others are lurking around this blog!
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