Greetings in the name of the Lord! I would like to extend a warm welcome to the new Methodist pastor in town, the Rev. Dr. Adam Sowder and his lovely wife Sandy. I hope you will have an opportunity to meet them. They own the property up on 42 called High Clere where our community celebrated the June 14 Flag Day and 250th Birthday of Virginia celebration.
Today, I just wanted to share a little bit of something the Lord put on my heart, in regards to in regards to the ministry that God has called all of us to. It is the ministry of reconciliation.
That is what salvation is. In other words, we were once lost but now we’re saved! That’s only by the grace of God and by his love for us. We love him because he first loved us.
That’s what I want to zone in on this morning, in the times we are living in right now there’s a lot of hate and separation that’s going on in the United States. You have the right and the left, the Democrats and Republicans, and it’s easy to push the blame on one area of people. The Lord has been speaking to me about that – we need as Christian people, a stance that is a loving towards everyone. Everyone, except the devil.
The Vertical Relationship
Before we can talk about our broken relationships with each other, we have to talk about the original broken relationship. The one that started everything. Paul is writing this letter to a church in Corinth that is, honestly, a mess. I mean that in the most loving way possible. They are divided. They are arguing. They are taking each other to court. They have turned the Lord’s Supper into a competition about who gets to eat first. Sound familiar? And right in the middle of all this chaos, Paul writes something that is one of the most theologically rich and practically beautiful passages in the entire New Testament. Let me read it to you.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So, we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!’ For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”
Did you catch that? Look at verse 18 again. “All of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ.” Notice who made the first move. God did. We didn’t climb our way back to God. We didn’t clean ourselves up, show up at His door, and knock politely hoping He’d answer. We were separated from Him — dead in our sin, spiritually bankrupt, with no way to close the gap ourselves.
God came to us through Jesus. He closed the distance that we never could have closed on our own. That word “reconciliation” comes from the Greek word katallage — it means the restoration of a broken relationship. The bringing together of two parties who were at odds. And Paul says this is exactly what God did for us. He took every sin, every failure, every promise we ever broke — and He absorbed all of it into Christ on the cross so that the gap between us and God could be permanently closed.
And then look at verse 21. This might be the most staggering verse in this whole passage: “God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” The sinless one became sin, so the sinful ones could become righteous.
Jesus, who had no gap to close, stepped into ours. That is the vertical reconciliation. That is the God who closed the gap. Here’s why this matters so much for everything we’re about to talk about.
Horizontal Relationships
We cannot fully understand the horizontal — our relationships with the people around you — without first standing in awe of the vertical. We cannot receive what God did for you and then shrug your shoulders at the broken relationships in your own life. Because what He did for you changes everything. Including how we treat each other.
God has convicted me not to be condemning of other people just because they look different, live differently or have a different opinion. But that does not mean we approve of sin in their lives. If that sin becomes a hindrance to the church or to people in the church, it takes on a different circumstance.
I am not talking about just disagreeing with someone. We should not be condemning them just because we don’t agree with them, simply because of their political, religious, or lifestyle beliefs. If that is the case, we need to pray for them. We are not to judge others, that is up to God.
We have the power of God to love them. It is the power of God that showed us, because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And we have the power to pray for them. That’s the power of God‘s love – I was a sinner and doing wrong and Jesus came into my life and you loved me anyway.
Church Protection
Well let’s make a clarification here. God never said we have to LIKE people! If a person comes into a church to do harm to others, whether it is physical, mental, spiritual or other, we absolutely must step in. This is not about revenge or justice. God will take care of any justice, revenge, or need for repentance in their lives. We step back, and continue to show love through prayer.
Church Discipline
The Bible says that when we sin, God cannot be in our presence. God hates sin, though He loves the sinner. That’s quite a conundrum! If God is unable or unwilling to be in the presence of sin, we should also stay away from it.
If we condone active sin in a person, we are participating in that sin. If the sin is being carried out openly by a church member, then we look to Matthew 18:15-17. There is a method within the scripture for dealing with this.
1. The first step is to deal with a person privately, usually the Pastor will do this. Encourage the person to repent and give up their sin, and if they do nothing more comes of it.
2. The second steps comes if they are refusing to listen to the pastor, elder, or leader. At that point the scripture says to take two or three as witnesses and discuss the matter again with them.
3. The third step then involves the congregation. If the sinful behavior continues, the matter should be brought to the congregation, as the local body of Christ. Prayer should be offered for the sinner, but also a plan of action should be agreed on.
4. The final step comes again when the sinner refuses to repent. If they reject the church’s counsel, we are to treat them as an outsider to mark the break in fellowship. Paul commands us to “remove the wicked man from among yourselves” in I Corinthians 5:1-13.
That does not mean that the person cannot repent later and ask to renew fellowship within the church. But first he or she must show, from their repented lifestyle, that they have changed.
It is better for us to step away from sin, let God deal with it, then step back in when we can to show God’s love. We can love those people from a distance, by still praying for them.
Here is a good example: In Lancaster County PA, October 2006 Charles Roberts entered an Amish one room schoolhouse, sent the boys out, shot 10 Amish girls, killing 5 of them, and then killed himself. The families of the injured and killed girls forgave the shooter, attended his private funeral service, shielded the family from reporters, came and offered condolences and offered friendship to various members of the shooter’s family. The Amish community and individual families grieved over the loss of these girls, over the trauma all of the students experienced and for some of the students – continue to experience. But these Amish families reached out immediately to the shooter’s family in love, in forgiveness, and in friendship, in the midst of their grief, and they continue today.
They showed love to the family, but they did not like what happened.
That’s what brings people to God; We show them love in spite of their sin. This is because of what Jesus Christ has done for me – I’m giving that to you. He loved me when I was a sinner and I can do no less for you. We can’t do that in and of ourselves, it’s not works of righteousness – it’s by his grace! We need the Holy Spirit power and the Word of God in our lives to love people – and that’s what brings people to God. They need to see the love of God in our lives.
We Are God’s Ambassadors
Paul calls us Ambassadors for Christ, and as such we are to give the world around us the message of reconciliation. God offers us forgiveness; He asks us to forgive others. “If it is possible, as far as it depends on us, live at peace with everyone,” Romans 12:18. I remember how amazed the news reporters were at how the Amish families were so compassionate and caring toward the Roberts family. I am sure each of them had hearts full of grief, and hurt, but they were able to look beyond their own pain to see another family who also lost a son, a father, a husband that day. God has forgiven each of us, a great deal, we need to look beyond our own hurt, our own fears so that we can show compassion and love to others.
A Final Analogy
The story was told about two men walking down a Mexican beach, talking with one another. They could see a man in the distance throwing something into the ocean. As they got closer, they saw that he was bending over, picking something up and throwing it into the ocean. The closer they got they noticed that he was one of the natives.
There were starfish on the beach which were left by the outgoing tide. The native was throwing them out where they could swim away. One of the two men asked, “What are you doing?” The man replied, “I am throwing the starfish back out to sea. If they don’t get back into the deeper water, they will die.” The other man replied, “I understand that part, but look at this beach. It is covered with starfish. There must be thousands stranded out here. How do you feel that this will make a difference?”
The native bent over, picked up another starfish, hurled him out to sea, and with a smile on his face said, “Made a difference to that one!”
There are thousands who need the Lord and need the care of Christians. Each one of us can “make a difference” to someone.
Our FOOD PANTRY is available to everyone – there is no financial pre-qualification. Come by the church office on Monday, Wednesday or Friday from 9-12 for a free bag of food!
Craig Valley Baptist Church, next to Bibo’s at 171 Salem Ave in New Castle, welcomes you to visit and share in the love of God we have experienced. We meet Sundays at 11AM, with an upbeat service of music, sharing and preaching. You don’t need to dress up, and you won’t be asked to speak, so just come and hang out and meet new and old friends! Questions? Call 540-864-5667 or email pastor@cv-bc.com.
-Pastor Scott Gabriel
