RECONCILIATION
[p. 287] RECONCILIATION
Reconciliation is the contrast of the new covenant. The new covenant presents the disposition of God towards man, but reconciliation is what is for God. The High Priest’s ministry is God-ward, but the covenant is man-ward. Reconciliation is what is effected for God in the universe; Christ is the Beginning, He is the Firstborn from the dead, and the church is the first-fruits of reconciliation. Through the new covenant and its teaching God gets His place with us; but in reconciliation Christ gets His place with us.
There are three thoughts in the passage we have read: (1) the Head; (2) reconciliation; and (3) the body. “He is the head of the body, the church”; then “you ... hath he reconciled”; and lower down we get, “for his body’s sake, which is the church”. The effect of reconciliation is to bring Christ under the eye of God. It began when Christ was here; there was that in which God was complacent. The simple meaning of reconciliation is that there is complacency where there was distance; you could not imagine a greater change. When Christ was here His presence brought in complacency; it meant “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men”, Luke 2: 14. We see it more clearly still in the cross, and in resurrection. Where there was the utmost distance there is the greatest complacency. Distance could only be removed by the removal of the man. In principle reconciliation was effected in the death and resurrection of Christ, and the word of reconciliation is the testimony of what has been effected, and that is what is used to effect the reality of it in the saints. When Christ was here the eye of God rested upon Christ, not upon man; man was not under the eye of God, save that God was not imputing trespasses. When the second Man came in, man as in the flesh was not before God; in the death of Christ that [p. 288] man was removed to the glory of God.
The apostle exhorts the Corinthians to be reconciled to God; they had not really accepted it. Reconciliation is made good in us by new creation; we could not be holy and unblameable before God except in new creation. Man is an enemy in will and mind, and he cannot be altered. In the Old Testament God was dealing with man according to his responsibility, and therefore we get atonement; but in the New Testament God deals with man’s state; He goes to the bottom of the matter, and that brings in reconciliation. Atonement does not fully meet the case; reconciliation means the thing is removed in order that something else may take its place. There must be atonement, for in all gospel testimony God is dealing with man on the ground of responsibility, and therefore there is atonement and God offers forgiveness of sins. The actual word atonement is not found in the New Testament, and reconciliation is not found in the Old. Both atonement and reconciliation would apply to the millennium, but not quite in the same was as they do now. Everything will be taken up in Christ, and hence it is that where distance was there will be complacency.
To understand reconciliation, and that order of things, you must take up the idea of the Head. The Head is the First, it is not the same idea as the Lord. The Head is the Beginning, and He is pre-eminent in regard of everything. As Head Christ is on the side of man. He is the Head of every man; He is the Head of all principality and power; and He is the Head of the body. Headship is the same in principle in all three, but the body has a place in relation to Him which other things have not. He has not taken up yet the place of Head of all principality and power in display, but He is so in title. The very fact of the Son of the Father having become Man necessitates that He must be first of all men; but then no other could be with Him unless He died. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone”, John 12: 24. The Head is the first one in regard of God on the part of man; He is the first in regard of what He [p. 289] presents.
Reconciliation comes to pass in the full light of God; it is the pleasure of “the Fulness”. There is a figure of it in Luke 15; the Father comes fully out to the returning prodigal, and then there is the Father’s full complacency in the son when he is brought inside the house.
In 1 John 4 we get the new covenant, and in chapter 5 we get reconciliation. We must learn God’s disposition towards us before we can touch reconciliation; that is, that everything is to be for God. It is a great thing to come to that point in our souls. In Luke 15 we see first that all is perfect on the Father’s side, but all is not perfect as regards the son until he is seated at the table in the sense of complacency. It is a great thing to see that the divine things which are existing as present things are things of which we can have the consciousness now. We cannot be conscious of what is future, but the unseen things are not future. We get the consciousness of things by being in the nature which is suitable to them. There is an existing world of which we can say that God has perfect complacency in it. It is a world of eternal things, which are all of God. Everything down here has in itself the elements of decay; it passes away and the fashion thereof.
Presentation hangs on reconciliation; the prodigal was presented with a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, and the Father’s eye rested on the best robe, which is Christ. The prodigal was presented in new moral equipment, and that means another Man. We are to be presented holy and unblameable in His sight; it is for the eye of God we are reconciled. No soul enters into reconciliation until it is fully affected by the love of God; my own great defect has been failing to come under divine teaching. It is a great thing when a man is prepared to be content that all should be for God’s satisfaction and glory, and no one comes to this until his heart is instructed in the love of God. The knowledge of God’s love begets confidence in God, and then I am prepared that all shall be for God’s glory, and all for [p. 290] Him. Men have been set on getting their own glory, but reconciliation brings us to another side altogether.
The climax reached at the end of 1 John 5 is remarkable. We are free of the wicked one, and free of the world, and we have an understanding from the Son of God. Then the next step is, “we are in him that is true”; (verse 20), that is, we come to the circle of reconciliation. The acceptance of the truth of reconciliation brings about in a practical way that there is a body here in which Christ is. The body was formed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but that is another thought altogether. The force of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1: 27) is that there is a body practically here of which Christ is the animating Spirit. The idea of the body is that Christ is presented under the eye of God; the body is for God. Christ is the life of the body, and lives in the body before God. The body is the presentation of Christ in the saints under the eye of God, and therefore it is holy. We are holy for God; righteousness is for man, and that is connected with the new man. Our testimony here is connected with the new man, but the body is for God, “holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight” (verse 22). Whatever is for God must be holy. The fact of evil having come in has destroyed complacency; rebellion has occurred in heaven, and sin on earth, and everything has thereby been dislocated. So Christ takes up all in heaven and earth, that everything may be reconciled.
Reconciliation applies to the millennium, not to the new heavens and the new earth; it is brought to pass in the fact that all is set right in Christ. All has been brought into disorder by sin, and the kingdom will be the times of restitution. Mr. Darby said that everything depends upon the place that Christ has taken in incarnation. “The Word became flesh”, John 1: 14. He was the Beginning, a Man here upon whom the eye of God could rest with complacency; but there was more to be effected, otherwise He would have remained alone. Christ had to remove the man; the truth is the leper was [p. 291] cleansed by the leper being removed. If there is any allowance by the christian of the man that has been removed the rights of God are invaded, and it has to be judged unsparingly. In Deuteronomy everything is centralised in chapter 12; that is, the place is chosen where God places His Name. In christianity all is centralised in the Spirit. Then the second thing is the most unsparing judgment of all that interferes with the rights of God, and therefore if the wife of your bosom, or the friend who is even as your own soul, entice you to idolatry, you are to kill him. That is very unsparing.
As regards reconciliation, the Head is there, and the church is the first-fruits of reconciliation; then if we accept that all is to be for God, we come to the body which is for God. What is common in christendom is that God is recognised on the first day of the week, and then people expect that God will prosper them during the other six days. That is all wrong. They have not come to reconciliation, which is that all is for God. When we come together in assembly we have the sense of being in association with Christ outside of everything here, and if you had your choice you would not leave it. When the assembly is convened you leave the world, and join Christ on resurrection ground, and in spirit that position is to be maintained throughout the week. If we were in the sense of being in association with Christ on resurrection ground we should accept our baptism, and be in the fellowship of Christ’s death. It is a tremendous thing to me that Christ who came to this world will never be known to this world save as a Judge. If we were in the reality of this we should be in the fellowship of Christ’s death here.
The great idea of the assembly is that it is a sphere where divine affections, set in movement by the Head, work through the members. If Christ has His place as Head, He sets everything in movement; it is not a question of what we bring. In spirit we should not leave resurrection ground; we have to come back to the wilderness to fulfil our responsibility here, but when we [p. 292] meet Christ it is on resurrection ground. Resurrection brings you to the holiest, the holiest is connected with the calling. It is a great thing to apprehend the body and reconciliation.