January 18, 2016
Minister of
Reconciliation
Read:
2
Corinthians 5:16-21
While
we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son. — Romans 5:10
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached on a Sunday morning in
1957, he fought the temptation to retaliate against a society steeped in
racism.
“How do you go about loving your enemies?” he asked the Dexter
Avenue Baptist congregation in Montgomery, Alabama. “Begin with yourself. . . .
When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the
time which you must not do it.”
Quoting from the words of Jesus, King said: “Love your enemies,
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
which despitefully use you . . . ; that ye may be the children of your Father
which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:44-45 kjv).
As we consider those who harm us, we are wise to remember our
former status as enemies of God (see Rom. 5:10). But “[God] reconciled us to
himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,” wrote Paul
(2 Cor. 5:18). Now we have a holy obligation. “He has committed to us the
message of reconciliation” (v. 19). We are to take that message to the world.
Racial and political tensions are nothing new. But the business
of the church is never to feed divisiveness. We should not attack those unlike
us or those who hold different opinions or even those who seek our destruction.
Ours is a “ministry of reconciliation” that imitates the selfless servant-heart
of Jesus.
In Christ there is no east or west, in Him no south or north,
but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. John Oxenham
Hate destroys the hater as well as the hated. Martin Luther King Jr.
INSIGHT:
Our salvation changes everything about us.
Paul says that the old has gone and the new has come. This is not a future
event but a current state, for those who are in Christ are now a new creation.
Paul uses the word reconcile for being made new (vv. 18–20)—we are being
reconciled to God. To reconcile is to restore friendly relations, to erase
division and distance. The purpose of being made into a new creation is so that
we can help others become new creations too.
Source: Our Daily Bread 2016