Ministry of reconciliation
Day 612, Wednesday, April 15
2 Corinthians 5:11 – 6:2
Ironically, one of the few things people widely agree on is that we live in a badly divided world. Like children caught in a playground scuffle, most people just point fingers and say, “They started it.”
If I remember right from school, the usual teacher response to that claim was, “I don’t care who started it, I’m ending it.”
When I was in elementary school, the teacher’s approach to ending it usually involved a paddle. I suspect that today it involves less pain and more paperwork.
In 5:18-29 we read Paul’s response to conflict. “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 the people’s sins against them.”
God calls us to a ministry of reconciliation. Regardless of who started the conflict around us, our ministry is to end it—but it’s not as easy as a swat on the bottom or a trip to the principal’s office.
Real and lasting reconciliation, like real and lasting peace, can’t be brought by force or will. It requires nothing less than a new creation, and that comes when a person is reconciled to God.
Monday we talked about becoming the message of God to the world: becoming the captives, the aroma and the letter. To that Paul adds another way we become the message of God: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
It’s not enough to bemoan the divided state of the world. First, we need to stop adding to the division and become reconciled to God ourselves. Then we need to take that ministry of reconciliation forward to others.
Paul’s emphasis on reconciliation in 2 Corinthians isn’t just philosophical. It appears that not only has there been division within the Corinthian church that was the subject of 1 Corinthians, but that there has been division even among those who are proclaiming Jesus.
Here and there we see, as in verse 13, hints that Paul is responding to criticism, “If we are ‘out of our mind,’ as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.” We’ll see more of this as 2 Corinthians continues.
-Rev. Mark Fleming
Wednesday meditation
Psalms 109:1-15
My God, whom I praise, do not remain silent, for people who are wicked and deceitful have opened their mouths against me; they have spoken against me with lying tongues. With words of hatred they surround me; they attack me without cause. In return for my friendship they accuse me, but I am a man of prayer. They repay me evil for good, and hatred for my friendship.
Appoint someone evil to oppose my enemy; let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he is tried, let him be found guilty, and may his prayers condemn him. May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes. May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor. May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children. May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation. May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord; may the sin of his mother never be blotted out. May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may blot out their name from the earth.
Prayer focus
Reconcile us to you, Lord, so that we may bring reconciliation to our world.