Tag: Bible

The book of answers

You may have seen some books of puzzles, quizzes, and brain teasers; normally they have the explanations and answers at the end section of the book. Where is that final explanation of the whole puzzle of human existence? 

The Bible is an amazing book. Penned by about 40 authors over more than a millennium, who would have thought it could contain a unified message about the most abstruse issues imaginable? But that is what the Bible is and does. And it’s not just a boring book of religious theories; it is the most wonderful love story ever written, recounting the infinite love of God for the most undeserving of species – lost humankind. It’s story has a beginning in paradise, a drama of human rebellion, a development of divine love searching for unfaithful people, the revelation of the most superb person who ever lived, Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, his life and teaching, his unmerited condemnation to death and his astonishing resurrection, complete with explanations as to how his coming can bring us the forgiveness of our sins, a new life here and now, and an eternity in God’s glorious heaven.

This worldwide best-seller is God’s Book of Answers. All other attempts to write such a book pale in comparison with the Bible’s elevated tone and divine authority. No other book offers such beautiful truth, such elevated moral teaching balancing holiness with peace and self-denial with joy, and furnishing us with such satisfying answers to all of our deep existential questions.

“I the Lord speak the truth” God himself declares to his prophet (Isaiah 45.19). “I made the earth and created man on it… There is no other god beside me” (Isaiah 45.12, 21). Here we are at the very source of true information about all the big issues that concern us!

When the Gospel of John starts with the affirmation, “In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God… All things were made by him” (John 1.1, 3) this echoes the first lines of the Bible where God is revealed as the almighty Creator. But further on, John, an apostle of Jesus, continued: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth”. The eternal Word, the creator of all things, came to earth in Jesus, who said “I have come down from heaven” (John 6.38); “I speak what I have seen with my Father… the truth that I heard from God (John 8.38, 40).

Christmas celebrates God the Creator coming down among us – indeed, he was walking on this earth exactly 2,000 years ago, in Palestine, communicating eternal truths that are the answers to our profound questions. Is there a God? Yes, “I came from God and I am here”; it is “the Father who sent me” (John 8.42, 16). You know him? Yes, “I do know him and I keep his word” (John 8.55). Are you telling us the truth? Yes, “He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him” (John 8.26).

Apart from telling us truth, why else have you come? “I came that people might have life and have it abundantly” (John 10.10). “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life” (John 5.24).

Rightly did another apostle, Peter, exclaim: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed” (John 6.69).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Another paradigm shift

A paradigm is a model, a way of looking at things; it’s been likened to a grid or a pair of spectacles through which you see and understand the world. A paradigm shift means taking on a new perspective, undergoing a fundamental and important change in the way things are thought about. Such shifts occur quietly in the lives of ordinary people, as well as in branches of academia, in politics, in science, and in philosophy, for example.

The 20th century witnessed a paradigm shift away from an approach where it had been hoped that Reason would provide the answers we crave to our existential angst. Finally realising that Reason is, by the very nature of its functioning, unable to provide Absolute Truth, society has undergone a paradigm shift – away from trust in Reason. But instead of turning to God’s trusted Revelation, thinkers preferred atheism, which can provide no absolute answers. The result has been an increase in our general angst and hopelessness.

This conclusion, first grasped by intellectuals and philosophers, has slowly filtered down from the heights of academia, through education, the media, and general culture, to the common man and woman. As this new attitude affects young people today, they sink in an atmosphere of meaninglessness.

However, another paradigm shift is under way, promising a better story, a brighter future. As sociologists categorise the many evil fruits that the previous paradigm has brought on, a number of public intellectuals seeing the futility of the old, realise that a new approach altogether different is necessary. A better paradigm is needed in order to provide the reassuring answers our hearts crave to the many perplexing issues surrounding our human identity, meaning, and purpose.

These intellectual leaders turn in hope to seek a new paradigm, a “better story” that will enable us to properly understand ourselves, and to see how our human life ought to be – fulfilled rather than anguished. And they turn again, unashamedly, to the Word of God: as they quote the text that “God made man and woman in his image” (Genesis 1.27), they envisage again the necessity for belief in our Creator. They see the Bible’s foundational truths as able to furnish a more sure and hopeful comprehension of our human reality. They discern the uplifting power of the Word of God to teach us our true meaning and to establish moral values that have been tested through the centuries – not just the passing fads of our generation. They face up to the real possibility of adopting a fresh paradigm which puts God in his rightful place as the one who, in love and wisdom, reveals vital truth. This is to be welcomed as widely as possible.

When the Oxford University Christian Union held a mission to the students some twenty years ago, they chose as their theme “A paradigm shift”. The speakers proposed the need for rethinking the basis of all truth. The expression, in fact, describes what the Bible means by repentance: rethinking our lives in the light of God’s Truth and changing our ways in the light of his commandments. We are all called to think again, to turn around, to correct our views – of God, of mankind, of morals, of our need of a Saviour.

When that repentance is accompanied by sincere faith in Jesus, the Saviour we need, sent by God into the world, then that is described as “conversion”. And that is a personal paradigm shift of eternal importance, for “unless you are converted”, Jesus said, “you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18.3).

Clive Every-Clayton

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The west is changing

Human beings will never adapt to “post-truth”. Our inbred discernment recognises that Truth must exist. Truth is indispensable in human relationships as well as any serious reflection. No-one can live without the concept and the reality of Truth.

So now the West, at one time so insistent on the search for Truth, is at a crossroads. Having sought by human reason alone to find Truth and build a wise world-view, it has had to admit its failure. It has descended into post-modern hopelessness, unable to find meaning, value, or any balanced wisdom about human identity.

The West is confronted with increasing desperation because of this terrible inability of godless Reason to find valid and authentic answers to our fundamental questions about life and everything. But change is in the air: finally, public intellectuals in the West are coming to a surprising conclusion. They are looking again at Christianity and coming to realise that it alone lays the proper basis for any understanding of our human reality, dignity, and value. Only Christianity with its revealed Truth can meet both our intellectual and our heart needs for real meaning. If one leaves God’s revealed wisdom aside, the result can only ultimately be confusion.  Only the Maker’s revelation has the total wisdom to guide our paths into the way of real human fulfilment. Thinkers are now coming to envisage this source of Truth with positive hope.

This renewal in biblical truth is documented by Justin Brierley in his informative book, “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God”. He says that “the stories we have been telling ourselves in the last several decades have been growing increasingly thin and superficial.” But turning to Christianity, some “have found themselves drawn to a story that made sense of their deepest longings and desires”. This is the “better story” that the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, led by Jordan Peterson, is opening up to.

One who has discovered that story is Charlotte Gauthier. On reading some theological books from a previous era, she testified, “I found an intellectual Christianity that I could respect. In my arrogant atheist days, I assumed I’d come up with questions that had never satisfactorily been answered before. I was wrong”.

While the West is beginning to reawaken to Christianity’s Truth, the Majority world has been very wise in resisting the sea-change in lax morality that, having invaded the West, would overflow to pervert the rest of the world with its godless permissiveness. The Majority world should continue to reject the bankrupt influence that has only bred hopelessness in the West.

It is not perhaps surprising that missionaries now come from the vibrant communities in the Majority world to bring renewal to the West. They are welcome, for they can contribute to the revival of western church life. Their biblical faithfulness, their passion and enthusiasm, will help overcome the decadent influence that has been infiltrating some churches in recent years. They will help our western churches to return, humbled and contrite, to the former paths of righteousness, once well-trod by those gone before us. They can bring us back to the Biblical faith – which, ironically was brought to them by missionaries from the West when the church was vibrant in its vision for taking the Gospel to the whole world. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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The west is not the best

We live in a global village: news is broadcast to our phones as it occurs, wherever in the world it may be happening. The influence of Western thinking still touches the corners of the globe. But people in the majority world need to be informed by those of us in the West who see the bankruptcy of Western scientific philosophy, that the West, dominated by secularistic thinking that ignores the God of creation, is not the best. 

There is hope of an upturn in Western thinking, however, as the hopelessness of atheistic philosophy becomes more and more apparent, bringing in its train all kinds of moral, social, and mental ills. A better story is being sought, though the passing falsehoods of relativistic atheism still hang in the air we breathe and sadly infect lands further away. People in those lands should realise: the West is not the best. To those who look from afar thinking that the West is Christian, I would say that the general life-style of the masses in the west is godless, not Christian. True, there are many Christians in the West, and in past ages they have gone throughout the world proclaiming the Gospel; but as their influence in society waned in the West, vain and futile godless philosophies have risen to supplant the Christian consensus. 

This state of affairs is due to change, however; the West needs a revival of Christianity, and believers need to regain the confidence to proclaim afresh the life-enhancing truth of the Gospel. This Gospel message speaks of world history in four stages:

First, Creation. God made all that is, and he declared his creation “good”. There was no fault in his working: he made man and woman to reflect his own nature as they were made in his likeness. He made them in relationship with himself where they found deep joy and fulfilment.

Second, the first couple turned away from God’s will, expressed in his commandment. Thinking (as many still do today) that they knew better than God what was right and wrong, they chose to disobey, and in doing so their nature – human nature – became twisted, corrupted, sinful. Banished from enjoying close and friendly relationship with their Creator, they founded their social order independently of God, even antagonistic to his will. All the people of the world suffered from that original perversion; all are born sinners, out of fellowship with God – indeed, under his holy displeasure.

Third, God set in motion his major opus – the salvation of lost men and women. Beginning with revealing to Abraham promises that through his posterity all the world would one day be blessed, God spoke to men of old through the prophets until finally his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was born, an incarnate human revelation of God. Jesus grew up to teach God’s truth and ultimately to give his life for the redemption of humankind. Thanks to his atoning sacrifice, as the Gospel is proclaimed throughout the world, millions find, through faith in him, the forgiveness he promised and new life, eternal life, in renewed friendship with God.

The fourth stage is still to come, foretold by the prophets whose predictions of the first coming of Christ proved true. Jesus himself revealed that at the end of the age he would come in glory to judge the world in righteousness, ushering his believing flock into eternal life, and punishing the unrighteous with the just penalty that is their due.
Throughout the world, this Gospel message gains believers who escape that ultimate judgment. Will you be among them?

Clive Every-Clayton

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Reason and revelation

In the search for authentic answers to our existential questions, we can obtain understanding from two sources. The first – that we use every day – is the human faculty of reason. In his book “Miracles”, Oxford don C.S. Lewis wrote: “All knowledge depends on the validity of reasoning… Unless human reasoning is valid, no science can be true”. This seems obvious, when you think about it. You cannot argue against the value of reason; that would be using reason to deny reason. 

So we use our reasoning powers to try to understand what our life is all about. But then C.S. Lewis raises the question of where our human reason came from, and he asserts that the presence of human rationality in the world is a miracle. He was inspired by Professor Haldane who wrote, “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… and hence I have no reason for supposing that my brain be composed of atoms”.

Atheism crashes profoundly against this rational argument, for C.S. Lewis concludes, “we must believe that the consciousness of man is not a product of Nature” – not the result of a long chain of chance, aimless, material processes since the dawn of time. “Nature”, he repeats, “is quite powerless to produce rational thought”.

Yet we are rational beings. Andrew Marr ended his TV programme on evolution by saying, “Man is the truth-seeking primate”. We use our reason every day to test what we think is true. That is the way we are. And the only logical source of those reasoning powers is not impersonal matter, but the Supreme Intelligence of the personal and infinite Creator who made us “in his image”.

So our reasoning faculty itself points us to a reasonable, wise Creator. And God has come to our rescue as we vainly search for something solid on which to ground our search for true answers. He has revealed truth that we need to know. Truth about ourselves, and truth about God.

So as we seek answers to the big questions of life, our reasoning is valid, since it is given to us by our Creator and reflects the supreme Reason with which he acts. Yet our reason has its limits; it needs the enlightenment that can only come from God’s revelation. God’s truth has been revealed in the Bible. “The whole Christian theistic position,” wrote Cornelius van Til, is “the only system of thought that does not destroy human experience to something meaningless”. Atheistic philosophy leads to that meaninglessness; this is the woe of our supposedly post-Christian generation. 

It is reassuring to note, in our supposedly post-truth age, that thinkers are now returning to realise that God alone can furnish the basis for true understanding. Atheism is on the way out; a return to the God of revelation is on the up. And the key truth now more and more put in evidence as the only basis for a hope-filled vision of our human reality, is there on page 1 of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth… God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1.1, 27). 

As God made us and gifted us with reason and speech, so he is ultimate Reason, and he reveals his truth though speech: “In the beginning was the Word (the logos, Reason)”… The Word was God… The Word became flesh” in Jesus (John 1.1-14).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Ultimate human fulfilment

The fullness of human happiness – or blessedness, which means the same – is to be found only in a harmonious relationship with the Creator God and Saviour, who loves us with infinite tenderness, warmth, compassion, and wisdom. If you’re looking for an authentic answer to our human predicament – be forgiven and get into that relationship. That is to “know God”, which is how Jesus defines “eternal life” (John 17.3). It means hearing Jesus’ call to repent, deny our selfishness, and commit to following him. Having taught his disciples for three years, Jesus said to them, “If you know these things, happy/blessed are you if you do them” (John 13.17). The obedient disciple is the fulfilled human being; the holier you are, the happier you are.

As Jesus began to delight his hearers with his passionate proclamations, from the very start in his famous Sermon on the Mount (found in Matthew’s Gospel chapters 5 to 7), he cried out, “Blessed are those who…” followed by virtues to acquire. By these beatitudes which include being “pure in heart”, and “hungering and thirsting after righteousness”, he was indicating the way to true happiness. The word Jesus used in the Greek original for “blessed” means “most fortunate” – but not just because of good fortune or luck. Rather, this is the greatest human fulfilment that God himself grants to those who come into that intimate personal relationship with him, where we receive and follow his wisdom, spurn the sins that he hates, entrust our whole lives into his loving hands, share our joys, our sorrows and our worries with him, and seek to please him in all that we do. 

I can say that this is no mere theory; I have lived this way as best I could from my youth, and can testify that in the good days as in the bad days (like when I had cancer, when my daughter was long in hospital, and when my wife died) God’s goodness and love upheld me.

True, at the beginning I struggled to yield all of my life without reserve to do the will of God, because I thought my way was best; but the day I did surrender was one of the happiest days of my life. If you’re afraid of totally submitting your will to the will of God, so was I. What helped me was to realise just how much God’s love, shown in the total self-dedication of Christ on the cross, dying to save me from hell, was the same attitude of love God has to me all the time. And it is from that kind and loving heart that my Lord and Saviour in his wisdom would choose what he considered would be the very best path for me. So I trusted him, and gave him my all, without reserve, and have kept that attitude all my life.

My recent blog posts have spoken about heaven. Why is heaven a place of supreme happiness and blessedness? Because the will of God is done perfectly there! Jesus indicated this when he taught us to pray, “Father… your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. On earth, we see a lot of terrible things that sin and wickedness do, and that God allows, as he respects our freedom. The prayer asks God to prevent the worst and instead see his holy will accomplished, “as it is done in heaven”. In heaven there will be no sin or evil, that’s why it is a place of supreme happiness.  

Will you be there? 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Is there a hell?

When a well-known criminal monster, whom I will call Y____, much hated for his horrible and widely publicised wickedness, died in prison, the headline filling the front page of a tabloid shouted: “Burn in Hell, Y_____”. That not only expressed disgust at evil, it also revealed the positive human requirement of punishment for crimes committed. Hell would be the just penalty for sin.

Is there a hell? The question is rarely discussed openly; it may deeply perturb our hearts, as it did mine when I was a teenager. It deserves a clear answer, and as I have said before, only God knows the answer, so only he can tell us. When his Son Jesus came as his spokesman into the world, he left us in no doubt. He spoke of one sinner, who “died and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment…” complaining, “I am in anguish in this flame” (Luke 16.22-24). He taught that at the last judgment, the lost “will go away into eternal punishment” (Matthew 25.46). More than once he warned, “in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8.12, 13.50). He insists that “it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God, than… to be thrown into hell” (Mark 9.47). However you may wish to interpret these passages, you cannot escape the fact that Jesus taught there would be severe pain suffered after death by unrepentant sinners. This is a most solemn warning.

Would you rather I said, “It’s okay – we’ll all get to heaven”? From another context, the words of a political advisor are relevant: “If you want to help people, tell them the truth; if you want to help yourself, tell them what they want to hear”. If God has given us such a serious warning, preachers must faithfully teach the truth he has revealed, not alter it in the vain hope of helping people. 

What I can say, however, is that even if you’re the worst offender, you can escape hell and go to heaven if you receive forgiveness from God in this life. That is why I have written a lot in previous blog posts about forgiveness: everyone desperately needs it!

When the Son of God came to earth, he wept over the unrepentant masses and urgently warned us: “Unless you repent you will perish” (i.e. in hell – Luke 13.3). He so wanted to save us from hell that he suffered the most horrendous agony on the cross for us. On the cross he was bearing your hell and mine – the punishment that we deserve – in our place. He died for you because he loves you; he wants to save you from hell. His death made atonement for our sins so that God, in all justice, may forgive us. If there is no hell, we cannot understand why the Son of God should have suffered such an agonising death.

The cross is the supreme measure of Jesus’ love for you. As awful as was his suffering, so strong is his love, bearing it for you. So you can be forgiven, redeemed, transformed, and made ready to go to heaven – if you repent and turn in faith to Christ your Saviour. Ask Jesus to forgive and save you from hell – and he will! “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved” (Romans 10.13). 

But if you would spurn Christ’s love and reject God’s wondrously merciful offer to free you from hell and grant you heaven, what do you think you would deserve?

Clive Every-Clayton

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Hope of heaven

The deep reason why we all apprehend death is that we fear some kind of judgment in the next life. People of various religious or philosophical persuasions do all sorts of difficult things to try and free themselves from that fear. Both the anxiety and the religious or mental effort we expend on this issue testify to two essential truths.

First, we understand in our conscience that evil ought to be punished. This intuition comes – whether we realise it or not – from the fact that we humans were originally made in the likeness of a good and holy God. He endowed us with an understanding of good and its opposite, making us conscious that we are responsible to him for our behaviour.

The second essential fact that this fear communicates is the realisation that we have done reprehensible things. Our conscience is not clean; this should instruct us that we need forgiveness, and only God can forgive.

God did not create us with the total freedom to potentially commit all kinds of misdeeds without ever facing any kind of divine assessment with some corresponding sanction. This is built in to who we are: we are God’s creation, answerable to him for our lives. We are not chance by-products of a haphazard impersonal explosion of material substances; that kind of philosophy leads logically to moral chaos and is unliveable. Fortunately, God himself has told us, by sending his Son, Jesus, that “the Creator, at the beginning, made man and woman” (Matthew 19.4). The same Jesus informed us also that there would be a day of reckoning.

Now it is of the utmost importance to be ready for that Day of Judgment, because it determines our destiny for ever and ever. It will either be bliss or horror. There is no half-way house. The invention of “purgatory” was an erroneous idea of some early Christian thinkers, but it has no basis in the sacred Scriptures. On the contrary, Jesus taught that at the last Day, when all will be gathered for the final judgment, there will be only two camps – the saved who are “blessed” to enter into God’s glorious kingdom, and the lost who Jesus said “go away into eternal punishment”, describing it as “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25.46, 41). 

Those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour, in a decision of repentance and faith-commitment to follow him, may legitimately nourish the hope of “eternal life” because Jesus made that formal promise in the Gospels. Listen to his words and pause to take them in: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5.24). Did you get that? No judgment – that is, no punishment, no hell. Passed from death to eternal life. Wow! That’s worth having! How? By faith in Jesus and in the Father who sent him to be our Saviour.

Jesus says again, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3.16). That’s how to be sure of not perishing in eternal punishment – by entrusting yourself to Christ as Lord and Saviour, to believe in him, to follow him, and obey his teaching. Jesus added, that “whoever believes in him is not condemned” – there is that assurance again – no hell. Instead, “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Is there any hope?

Hope is the confidence that a positive outcome will occur. The reason many are hopeless today is that they see no reason to expect a good outcome in the world in which we live. I’m not going to list all the horrors that we may fear – I think we know them all too well. The question is rather, how can we have any hope that things in the future will be better than the present?

The difficulty is that human nature does not essentially change. We will always be that mixture of good and evil. If good people prevail in government, peace and prosperity might come; if evil people rule, we may suffer the opposite. And when you study history, you may well conclude that there is little hope that life will be peaceful and things will go better.

Some trust in the advances of science, and we must be thankful for every progress in the field of medicine, in particular, that will improve our well-being. But still we will all face death. Others look to Artificial intelligence (AI) with great expectations, while many fear what such “intelligence” may do. It all depends on who wields and guides that AI – for good or for evil. And as the very notions of good and evil are disputed and twisted, the future still looks bleak.  

These blog posts deal with “authentic hope”: how can hope be authentic? When we wonder who can tell what the future holds, the answer is – only one person: God. He is not bound by time, as we are: he is eternal. He sees the end already. He knows where everything is headed, and indeed, he has the almighty power necessary to ensure that his ultimate good purposes will be fulfilled. As he is Lord over all creation, he alone can give us authentic hope for the future (as well as true hope for answers to our existential questions). He, and he alone, knows the future. In fact he holds the future in his hands. 

The Bible speaks a lot about hope. There’s a text in the Bible that speaks of people “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2.12). If God alone can hold out hope for our future, then those without God are without any solidly grounded hope.

Not many people realise that God has unveiled the future of our human existence. The greatest element in the biblical hope is that the world will end with the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in power and glory. “He will come to judge the living and the dead”: that phrase of the Christian creed sums up what lies ultimately ahead of us all. No evil-doer can escape the final judgment of God. If there was no ultimate reckoning, then all justice is meaningless. But God has inscribed the presentiment of just judgment in the conscience of every human being. This serves to prevent many horrible crimes and atrocities, but those who bypass the restraints of conscience should realise that they will nevertheless face ultimate judgment.

Now this, of course, for all of us, is not exactly joyous hope! We would not like a God of absolute holiness to examine the details of our lives and administer justice according to our misdeeds. While that is not “good news”, there is wonderful good news in the message of the Gospel of Christ. Through faith in our Lord and Saviour, we may be absolutely delivered from the condemnation due to us on that judgment day. This good news gives real hope, as I will share further. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Be reconciled to God

For us to enter into the fullness of life that God desires for us – in harmonious relationship with him – we need to hear his call. This call comes to us through the biblical appeal: “be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5.20).

Friends who are already in agreement with each other do not need to be reconciled; it is enemies who need to be brought together! This call therefore takes as given that there is enmity between God and us, the human beings he calls. This is indeed the situation – whether our attitude towards God is one of quiet indifference to what he wants of us, or one of open rebellion against all he stands for. Either way, we are sinners in his eyes – and yet he calls us! He desires us to be reconciled to him.

It is true that on his side, there is displeasure as he views our life-style of careless disobedience. This means we cannot experience the warmth of his approval, but rather may rightly fear his ultimate judgment.

That’s why it is so wonderful that God, full of love, takes the initiative in reconciliation: He took a giant step towards us in sending his dear Son: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5.19). He thus showed his love – “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4.10). It was not that we were so good that God is pleased to welcome us; rather “it was while we were yet sinners” that “Christ died for us”. Only on that basis can we be forgiven and accepted into a warm relationship with God. So the first step towards reconciliation with God happened twenty centuries ago!

Now we are called to respond: “be reconciled to God”. This involves two things. First, we turn to God with gratitude that through the death of Christ all our sins and evil deeds may be totally wiped away, cleansed and forgiven, and God’s loving arms may embrace us. We thank Him for such mercy and pardon, purchased for us at the cost of the cross, where Christ’s love was shown as he gave himself in our place.

Secondly, to be reconciled to God, we have to give up our rebellion – be it tacit or open – and embrace our Saviour as the Lord who we will henceforth seek to please. It is this repentant submission to Christ as our Lord, and trust in him as our Saviour, that effectively reconciles us to God. And that is what introduces us into a good relationship with God.

This new relationship with a loving heavenly Father will develop as we grow in faith and obedience. To commit our lives to Christ is only the beginning; but there must be that first commitment – hence the call: “Be reconciled to God”.

Once you have made that commitment – to the risen Lord Jesus Christ himself, in prayer – you can share the believer’s faith expressed in Romans 5.10: “When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” – and “now having been reconciled, we shall be saved” – saved from the punishment that our sins deserved, through Christ having washed them all away. 

Then you can also take part in the believer’s mission: God “reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” … so “like ambassadors for Christ”, we call out to others: “Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5.18-20).

Clive Every-Clayton

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