Reconciled?????

Have you heard anyone use the word "reconcile"? I hear it all over the place now. First, with Oprah and her New Age beliefs. She reconciled her idea of God with other ways of thinking (kinda old news there). I hear it from those who reconcile their faith in Christ with their homosexuality. These are not the only two instances of people or groups of people reconciling themselves with God. Those who abuse much of anything try to reconcile their actions with God. This goes beyond justification (being declared righteous). Their reconciling is saying that my acts or thoughts or beliefs are "OK" with God because we've worked out our differences.

Those who do such make it almost sound spiritual their act of reconciling. Yet, they are far from being truly reconciled to God.

Do they really know what reconciliation is? And who does the reconciling?

The dictionary definition and most common usage of reconciling is to: bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or balanced. For example, when you balance your check book to your bank account. When it is balanced then it is reconciled. There is no disagreement in either record.

At some point we've got the reconciliation process flipped. We've reconciled ourselves "with" God; rather than us being reconciled "to" God.

Here is what I mean...

In order for someone to be reconciled there must be something broken between the offended and the offender. When we look at scripture the roles that are played as mankind being the offender and God being the offended. The act of reconciliation must be initiated by the offended party.

For example, if I had offended my wife in some way that caused our relationship to be broken; no matter how much I apologized and sent sweet messages and all those types of things to her we would not be reconciled. I was the one in the wrong and therefore cannot bring harmony to the situation. Now if my wife comes to me and forgives me and starts the process of reconciliation then we will have our relationship restored.

2 Corinthians 5:18-19
"All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation."

The message that Christians should preach is the message of reconciliation that God will not hold the sins of mankind against them if they come to God through Christ. God wants to have mankind's relationship restored with Him. And that comes through being reconciled. We cannot do the divine act of reconciliation and believe that all things are peachy. If we want to be reconciled then we must come before God in the light of our actions and be forgiven. And keep in balance with God and that means the actions that cause us to be separated or in disagreement to Him should be abandoned.