Behold, this is our God;
we have waited for Him,
that He might save us.
This is the LORD;
we have waited for Him;
let us be glad
and rejoice in His salvation.
Isaiah 25:9
•Reconciliation happens in the church
We were made to love (i.e., to be in positive relation to the other); sin is a form of rebellion because it rejects these good designs of our good Creator.
Sin is a problem; being human is not! Love, not escaping or overcoming one’s creaturely limits, is the goal of life. Sin undermines our true humanity, our true selves, because it distorts all of our relationships by disordering our loves.
You’re Only Human by Dr. Kelly Kapic
•Reconciliation is costly
Whoever seeks to keep his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life shall preserve it.
Luke 17:33
The Gospel gives us the freedom to be wronged, to be defrauded. Think of all the ways you have wronged God, that you’ve wronged your Savior. He has taken all of your wrongs as His own and forgiven you. He has forgiven you through the cross that He bore and suffered for your sin. If our Savior can take our sin as His own, why can’t we absorb the ways that others wrong us? Why can’t we absorb the ways that others defraud us? . . . God loves us and therefore we love Him. As a result, He makes us capable of loving one another. . . . Our behavior is to be dictated by what God thinks and what God says, not by how someone else responds to us, or how they act towards us. We’re to bear one another’s sins patiently.
morning sermon, 11-13-22, Reverend Tim Rackley
. . . let your passion be for another; submerge yourself in service and sacrifice for the beloved, and you will “in some incomprehensible way [know] that we have been created anew as another, new, better self.” You must be willing to lose your life to gain it. This new self is not discovered by fostering a pattern of isolation, but in a new connection to others that is fostered through sacrifice, service, and love.
You’re Only Human by Dr. Kelly Kapic
•Reconciliation takes proper focus
Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but your were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:9-11
For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Hebrews 6:10-12
. . . each Christian is most free, most true, and most empowered to fight sin when living in fellowship, when surrounded and strengthened by God’s people.
You’re Only Human by Dr. Kelly Kapic