Reconciliation

Last week we looked at the underlying problem of the person who needs to feel accepted, approved and affirmed by other people to feel emotionally okay within their Soul. We called them “approval addicts”, and we agreed that to one level or another we all exhibit this “people pleasing” tendency. The second big lie from the book was identified; can you remember what it is without looking it up?

I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

We talked extensively about the fact that the more we believed this lie the greater the power of the fear of rejection was in our lives. We looked at some of the root causes for the establishment of this false belief in our hearts. They were abandonment and/or abuse as a child, and how our parents and close family “trained us up”. We looked at two verses together that have great application here, let’s read them again, Pr 22:6 and Jn 14:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it. NASU

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. NASU

The idea here is that we ought to raise children up to look toward Jesus in all things, because He is the way, and this should include emotional needs like approval. Then when the child grows up they will be less likely to seek approval in the wrong way, from the wrong people and out of the wrong things.

We concluded our time with a look at one of the major results of believing the big lie and living in the fear of rejection; codependency. Now we come to the damning spiritual result of believing this lie and what God has done to solve it.

Let me begin our quest to understand what I mean by the “damning spiritual result” of believing this lie start by asking a simple question. Who do we seek approval, acceptance and affirmation from in our normal daily lives? Let us make a list:

· Parents.
· Children.
· Family.
· Friends.
· Co-workers.
· Acquaintances.
· People we don’t know.

The answer is basically everyone we know and anyone we come across. We even do our best to get approval from people who will have no significant impact on our emotional well-being. You know who I mean, the clerk in the store, the bank teller, the yardman, everybody! We want everybody to love us; we want the whole world to be our friend! (Discuss) I know that some of us are less inclined to be nice to some of the people on the list. If that is you, you must still admit you have a list of your own. The point here is that as much as we can, we try to make the whole world our friend. Interestingly the Bible has something to say about this, we ought to look up Jas 4:4:

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. NASU

Before we all get upset about the scripture saying “adulteresses”, it is an awkward thing to translate, the real meaning is well illuminated by the Amplified version.

You [are like] unfaithful wives [having illicit love affairs with the world and breaking your marriage vow to God]! Do you not know that being the world's friend is being God's enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God. AMP

We can now see that the end result of obsessively seeking approval from people is that we become an enemy of God. What happens to God’s enemies in the end? They go to Hell, and that is why I said this problem of approval seeking has a “spiritually damning result”.

The next big question out of our mouths ought to be, “Does that affect me”? The answer for a Christian is no! This is because God has provided the solution to the whole problem of being His enemy. He makes us His eternal friend by something called “reconciliation”.

Let’s see if we already have an idea of what reconciliation means by polling the class. (Discuss) If you look at a dictionary you will find that the verb to “reconcile” means to “restore to friendship or harmony”. This is called in grammar a “transitive” verb because it indicates a transition from one permanent state to another, in this case from “enmity” to “friendship”. The root word here in English is from the Latin word “conciliatus” meaning to have been united. The Apostle Paul uses the Greek word “katallage” in a couple of places, which we translate as reconciliation, and it carries the figurative meaning, “restoration of divine favor”.

We can see from all this wonderful grammatical analysis that “reconciliation” carries with is some powerful ideas. It tells us we are now God’s friend, when we were His enemy, it tells us we are restored in unity and harmony with Him, and it tells us that it was the result of His divine favor.

From a Scriptural perspective, reconciliation is therefore the divine act of grace that turns an enemy of God into a friend of God. We go from being condemned into eternal isolation to becoming fully accepted and approved by God. We go from relying on the conditional approval of people to the fully unconditional approval of God.

When and how does this happen? It happens the moment we accept Him, at the moment of salvation. Let’s see what the Scriptures say, take a look at Rom 5:8-11:

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. NASU

Paul uses the words “the reconciliation” as if it was an event, which is a good way of understanding that the death and resurrection of Jesus can also be thought of as the moment of reconciliation of the world.

Have anybody here been reconciled with somebody they thought was lost to them? How did it feel? (Discuss) I have a picture of how it might have been in Heaven the moment any of us accepted Christ. God the Father holds up His hand to quiet the worship and turns to His son, Jesus, and says, “Look son, we have a new friend”. Then Jesus shouts out to the angels saying, “Rejoice, one who was lost is now found, one who was dead is now alive, one who was an enemy is now my friend, strike up the band!” And all of Heaven celebrates just for us.

Do you believe that? Do you act as if you believe that in every moment of every day? Let’s look at the person in Scripture who was the first to be called “friend” by God. Turn to Jas 2:23:

And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS," and he was called the friend of God. NASU

The Greek word used for “friend” here is “philos” which is the Greek root word for “phileo” meaning to love in a deep and abiding way as a brother or sister. It is where we get the word “Philadelphia” from which is called the city of “brotherly love”. When God calls someone His friend he therefore means someone He has an intimate relationship with.

Our verse has James quoting Gen 15:6, where Abraham is said to have believed God, not just believed in God, which even His enemies do. What did Abraham believe, he believed that when God said, “You will have an heir, and you will be the father of many descendents”, that it was going to happen. This is the original mention of what is known as the “Abrahamic Covenant”, and that became formalized in Gen 17. Do you believe the new covenant God has made with you, that you are now His friend; that you need to turn only to Him for your approval and personal self-worth? What is stopping you from believing this?

Potential Barriers to belief that God is your friend.

There is only really one source of barriers; it is all your relationships!

When we pursue other relationships in front of our relationship with God, we relegate ourselves to acquaintances of God from friends of God. God desires all of you, every piece, your mind, your heart, and your will, and it takes all three to have an intimate relationship with Him. Jesus is very clear in this, what did He say was the greatest commandment? We can find it in Mt 22:37-38, where he quotes Dt 6:5:

And He said to him, 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' “This is the great and foremost commandment”. NASU

Our choice of other relationships ahead of our friendship with God is simply an act of disobedience, a sin. We state by our actions of seeking approval from other people that what God said is less important than what other people say.

I don’t want any person hearing or reading this to miss this next thing. Obedience to God in the matter of approval is this:

· Seek approval from God.
· Give approval to others. (Rom 15:7)

Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. NASU

Acceptance is the translation used here meaning approving of us the way we are, and this has no relationship with the way we act.

Let me leave you with an illustration of the degree of sin involved with this disobedience. If I do not willingly give my wife approval, and yet God does, what am I saying? I’m saying that I know better then God, and that is a prideful place to be. I’m saying that I don’t believe God, and that I’m putting myself ahead of Him.

That is all I’m going to say on this subject, except to answer any questions or to comment on any thoughts or observations that you want to raise.

The Ministry of Reconciliation

I wanted to conclude today on a subject that is not often covered when talking about being a friend of God. It is the ministry of reconciliation. Let us look at the defining passage on this, it is found in 2 Cor 5:16-21:

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. NASU

What message do you think that God is sending us here, first from the perspective of our lesson, and then in a general sense?

Applying this passage to our need for approval or fear of rejection theme we can see that Paul is telling us to choose to be reconciled to God, to become His friend, His loving intimate companion. God has done His part, and after that it is time to do our part. In here we have all started this process through the event of our moment of salvation, and we finish it when we love Him with our entire mind, heart and will. We will be unable to shake off the desire to receive good opinions from others until we fully hand our souls over to Christ. It is hard to do that and yet it will be so freeing, so rewarding. Even moving toward God in this will help us with the problem of wanting approval from others. Always remember it is progress not perfection we are after!

Not only does this piece of scripture call us to reconciliation with God, it also calls every believer to be part of the “ministry of reconciliation”. This is a worldwide ministry of working to make friends of all people in the name of Christ. The purpose is to show them Christ so that they might choose Him instead of the other path. Be careful to fully understand the following things about this ministry:

· We are to try to become friends with the people God puts in our life.
· We are not to become friends with the “world”, meaning its ways, its pleasures, it systems or its philosophies.
· We are to point others toward Jesus, we are called His “ambassadors”, and we represent Him here on earth.

To be sure that we understand what is going on here with this “ministry of reconciliation” I want to point out a few things about it that we ought to take into our understanding:

· God has forgiven us everything.
· God is calling us His friend.
· God is trusting us with His word.
· God has given us the power to carry this work out.
· God’s Spirit is with us to guide us in this work.

It is these things that we must consider when we talk to our non-believing social acquaintances, those are the people we usually call friends. When we absorb these things we are more confident and prepared to do what the Lord is asking us to in the work of reconciliation. It starts with being His friend!

In summary, we are to choose our relationship with God over all others if we are to overcome our misplaced need for approval. We are to give it all to Him, our mind, heart and will, which are all we have that has any eternal value. As a result of being God’s friend, we are to carry this word of reconciliation to others and point them to Jesus by doing it.

That is it for today; next week we will be covering the “blame game”.