Reconciliation
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
Definition
Reconciliation is the restoration of peace between God and sinners through the death of Jesus Christ, ending an enmity that ran in both directions: God’s just displeasure against sin, and the sinner’s own hostility toward him. The initiative is God’s own: reconciliation was purposed in his own heart, settled in covenant, and carried into execution by Christ.1 Those reconciled were, before Christ’s death, “enemies in their minds by wicked works” (Col. 1:21) — enmity not merely felt but constitutional, since “the carnal mind… is not only an enemy, but ‘enmity’ itself, ‘against God’” (Rom. 8:7).1
Biblical Basis
Hodge locates the reconciliation Paul describes specifically in God’s side of the estrangement, not merely the sinner’s felt hostility. The Greek term Paul uses (katallassō) means “to exchange, or to change the relation of one person to another, from enmity to friendship,” and “when two parties are at enmity a reconciliation may be effected by a change in either or in both.” Three lines of evidence show which side changes in Rom. 5:10: the means of reconciliation is specifically “the death of his Son” — the language of expiatory sacrifice, not of persuading a hostile sinner to feel differently; “being reconciled by the death of his Son” stands parallel to “being justified by his blood” in the previous verse (Rom. 5:9), and justification is a change in legal standing, not “a subjective change in the sinner”; and those reconciled are called God’s enemies “in the passive sense” — people who are “the objects of God’s just displeasure,” not merely people who feel estranged. Christ’s death, satisfying that justice, “reconciles God to us” so that sinners “can be received into favour.”2 This is the same peace Paul says believers now enjoy: “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1), and the same commission he gives the church: “God… reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation… not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:18-19).
Related Doctrines
References
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John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book VI, chap. 6, “Of Propitiation, Atonement, and Reconciliation as Ascribed to Christ.” ↩ ↩2
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Charles Hodge, “Chapter VII. Satisfaction of Christ,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 512. ↩