Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a 19th century poet whose works not only were influential in her day, but still continue to be widely read today. She grew up with 10 siblings and had an apparently happy relationship with her father. Yet that relationship soured when she defied a life-long admonition from her father that she never marry.
Because of this disobedience (she was in her late 30s when she married Robert Browning), her father disowned and disinherited her, refusing all communication with her. When she wrote him to seek reconciliation, he never responded to her pleas. When she gave birth to their son, Robert wrote his father-in-law to declare the news, hopeful that a grandchild might affect a reconciliation.
It did not. Instead, he responded with an angry letter and at the same time also returned all the letters Elizabeth had written him over the previous five years — unopened. By her own account, the affectionate relationship that she had with her father was lost — never to be restored.
So it is with broken relationships. Too often they remain unreconciled — a testimony to the unrelenting nature of an unforgiving heart.
And so it would be in every believer’s relationship with God, unless he would initiate and produce the reconciliation. And — thanks be to God — He did!
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. 5:18-21)
Paul’s words to the Corinthians — no strangers to estranged relationships — are a gleaming testimony of the powerful and reconciling work of God. The reconciliation is not because of man’s initiation, for the hatred of man against God precludes an ability or desire to initiation such fellowship. God initiates the reconciliation (v. 18).
Further, when Scripture speaks of reconciliation between God and man, it is always man (sinner) who is reconciled to God (holy), not God to man. It is not God who needs reconciliation, for He has committed no sin or failure in His relationship with God, but it is man who is always the violator of fellowship and thus always the one in need of reconciliation. [In fact, Biblical texts are always very clear on this point — every time reconciliation is mentioned in the NT, it is always man who is reconciled to God, never God reconciled to man.]
And this reconciliation is always and only accomplished through the work of Christ — in Corinthians, Paul says it was through Christ (v. 18) and in Christ (v. 19). In Ephesians, he says it is through the cross. They are corollary statements. It is only through Christ’s work on the cross that our sin was imputed to Him and His righteousness was imputed to us. To reiterate a common theme in Ephesians 2, this work of reconciliation is wholly of grace and nothing else. As one writer notes, “The hostility between men and God was ended in the sacrifice of Christ.” In Christ and in the cross, the hostility between God and men is ended.
Yet perhaps the greatest part of this reconciliation is that God’s grants believers the privilege of proclaiming this reconciliation (v. 18, 19b, 20). Reconciliation is our gospel message. We are ambassadors and representatives of God to declare this most glorious truth. And perhaps our most authentic testimony of this reconciliation is to be reconciled to one another — a truth missed by Edward Barrett, but hopefully realized in forgiven and reconciled relationships throughout our own church family.
Words of Grace 