Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:17-20 NIV).
Martin Luther didn't intend to split the church when he nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door 507 years ago. Luther struggled a lot. He was aware of his sin, God's holiness, and his complete inability to earn God's favor. He had also served as a priest, made pilgrimages to Rome and Israel, taught Bible at a university, and tried everything he could think of to move closer to God. Then one night when he was studying, a phrase in Romans 1:17 stood out to him. It said, “the righteous shall live by faith.” He began to speak out against corruption in the church, the selling of indulgences or “get out of purgatory free” cards. He invited debate, believing that the church would be transformed if they only knew what he had discovered about God. We have summed up the core of Luther's teaching as the five solas:
Sola gratia – grace alone
Sola fide – faith alone
Sola Christus – Christ alone
Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone
Soli Deo gloria – the glory of God alone
When Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door, which served as a bulletin board for the community—it's easy to picture him slamming his fist to the door of the church with ninety-five condemnations, but that's not what this was—instead of getting the debate he’d hoped for, he was instead charged with heresy. It's been supposed that he actually expected the Pope to agree with him but was instead excommunicated and tried for his beliefs. A book called The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History says this about Martin Luther:
It appears that the events of the reformation owe a great deal to Luther's unique personality. Without his brooding self-doubt, he might never have mined the truths of Scripture, as he did. Without his zeal for righteousness, he might never have posted his protest. Without his boisterousness, he might not have attracted a sizable following. He lived in a time ripe for change, and he was ideally suited to bring it about.[1]
But it was never his intention to split the church.
Martin Luther is such a fascinating historical figure. He reminds me of what Paul wrote about in 2 Corinthians 5:17, that “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” Luther believed that people could come directly to God, they could know the scriptures, they could let God change them. And he was changed when he encountered God. He also faced much greater difficulties after he encountered God. His hopes to reform the church led to one of the biggest church divides in history. His attempts to reconcile the church to God led to one of the biggest divides among Christians in history.
The Bible has a lot to say about reconciliation, but before we break down the passage, what is reconciliation anyway? When I was in Bible college, they had us get this tiny book called The Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms. It's basically a dictionary of all the big words used to talk about the Bible, and so I looked up reconciliation. It defines it like this: a change in relationship or attitude from enmity to peace; the cessation of hostility and attitude or action.”[2] It breaks the word down further, talking about God's role in the process and how we can't be reconciled to God without God doing the work of reconciliation for us, but I found that first summary explanation very helpful. Reconciliation means a change in the relationship from enmity to peace. Another book calls reconciliation “God's language for a broken world.”[3] Isn't that beautiful?
Reconciliation is God's heart for the world, that we would be in right relationship with him, that we would be in right relationship with each other. But more often than not, neither of these things are true of us. We are so very broken. But we didn't start that way.
In the beginning, all things were good. After each thing God created, he said it was good, and when he created people, he said it was very good. Then in Genesis 2:28, God sees something that isn't good. He says it isn't good for man to be alone. Now I'm not going to go fully into unpacking this, but I do want to say it's not just a message for men, but for all people, and it's not just a message about marriage. It's not good for anyone to be alone. We need each other. And so God fixed it. He created a second person, so the man was not alone.
And yet. Flip forward to the next chapter, and you already see the man and the woman hiding from God. The first relationship—the one between us and God—is broken. Flip to the next chapter, Cain kills his brother Abel. The second relationship—that between humans—is also broken. Reconciliation is hard. Living at peace with each other is hard.
When I was growing up, my parents taught me that there are two sides to every conflict and both parties always share some responsibility. I always found that frustrating. Sometimes I would take responsibility for my part and then the other person would act like it was all me and they're off the hook. Is it right for me to play into their hands like that? Is it fair to not hold them accountable for their part? I'm often torn, do I confront them or just take responsibility for my part and leave the rest up to God. Do I sit still and listen to the accusations against me without defending myself? Or do I fight back against the injustice? I still don't know. And I've done both at different times.
I remember when I was in college and my roommate broke my computer. Things between us had been building up, and I yelled at her in public. She got upset with me for yelling at her in public and understandably so. It was wrong of me to do that and I apologized for it, but she focused solely on my wrong and never admitted to or apologized for breaking my computer. We never did work things out.
A youth ministry volunteer was angry at me for various things, and asked for a meeting with me and the senior pastor in which he told me all the things I did wrong. I listened, explained my intentions, and then offered to make changes and do things differently in the future so that we could work things out. In response, he quit. The pastor praised him for being so open and honest, but I was left stunned. Shouldn't we have tried to reconcile? While his honesty was a start, was it enough?
More recently, I sat and allowed a roommate to vent about all the things she was upset with me about for over an hour. I knew she had been letting it build up and would probably feel better after she said what she needed to. I wanted to defend myself, but I knew that wouldn't help in that moment, it wouldn't mend our relationship if I interrupted her or shut her down. And I wanted to mend our relationship. So I just listened. Not long after, she still decided to move out.
Reconciliation is hard. None of those situations ended in reconciliation, but the reality is, for that to have happened, it would have taken both of us. Both of us would have had to do the hard work. Both of us would have had to see the relationship as worth it. And both of us would have had to repent, to change our minds, to change our behavior. That takes a great deal of humility and a lot of hard work.
I'll tell one more story. This was a turning point in my relationship with God. It happened about fifteen years ago. I was going through a season in which I had a lot of things I needed to heal from. A lot of wrongs done to me. I won't get into details, but I'll just say there was a lot of emotional and verbal abuse involved. I removed myself from the situations, but I still carried the pain of the devastated relationships with me. And God told me to write four letters.
My students ask me all the time how I know when God is speaking, and I tell them one of the biggest signs is when I know I'm supposed to do something that I would never think of and never want to do on my own. Also, please don't hear this story as a personal challenge that you should do. I would never do something like this unless I knew that God was telling me to.
Anyway, these letters that I felt compelled to write were to the four people who had caused me the most pain. If that doesn't sound scary enough, I felt God telling me to write them and ask for forgiveness. If you're outraged on my behalf, thank you. I didn't want to do it. It felt incredibly unfair. I remember arguing with God and saying, I get that I'm not perfect and everyone can take some responsibility and has some fault in nearly every situation, but this is like 99.8% their fault. And they're not doing anything to fix it. And if I apologize, they're going to see my confession as me taking full responsibility for everything. I really did not want to write the letters.
But at least in this one instance, I obeyed God. I wrote the letters. I confessed my part in the broken relationships and asked for forgiveness. I was honest and humble and not accusatory—I know that because I saved a copy of the letters on my computer before sending them. I always keep records of things like that. And then, I sent the letters.
I didn't understand why God would ask me to do this, but after I sent them, I had this sense of peace that I had now done everything that was humanly possible—as far as it depended on me—to reconcile with people who had once been incredibly important to me. I never wanted to end those relationships. I hoped and prayed that God would fix things. Two of them actually responded to my letters and took responsibility for things that weren't really the things, but I suppose they were trying, and I was able to let it go. The relationship wasn't going to be restored, but at least there was some semblance of peace between us, and we could move on. The other two never responded. I didn't expect them to, but it still hurts. I think when something hurts fifteen years after the fact, it tells you how much you love those people. And maybe it gave me a small glimpse of how much God loves, how he desires to be reconciled to every person that he has created, even the ones who don't like him very much.
Sometimes, even knowing that reconciliation would take an act of God, we have to try. I have to learn to forgive the way Christ forgave, and in some small way, be that agent of reconciliation—or ambassador of Christ, as Paul called it.
But it's really hard. Reconciliation sounds great as a buzz word. You also hear the phrase “irreconcilable differences” tossed around like it's no big deal. We tried that. It didn't work. Whatever. But to the people who really wanted and tried to reconcile and were unable to, it's a very big deal. Reconciliation is hard. Following God is hard.
God knows it's going to be hard, that we aren't always going to get it right. Paul reminds us,
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body (2 Corinthians 4:7-10 NIV).
Reconciliation is hard. And yet. We get back up. We try again. We love again. And we don't lose hope.
For all the times that I regret, there are others that I got it right, people who I'm still in right relationship with or who I've reconciled with, or even who I've helped reconcile to God because I didn't give up or lose hope.
Martin Luther didn't intend to split the church, but much good came from it. Last I heard, the Catholic Church doesn't sell indulgences anymore. And it even encourages people to read scripture in their own language. The church has been reformed in many of the ways Luther believed it could be, though, not on his timeline. And I believe that one day, the protestant and catholic churches will reunite as one church. One day.
In a beautiful passage in Revelation, we see a picture of what life will one day be.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true” (Revelation 21:3-5 NIV).
God is reconciling all things. And a day is coming when everything in heaven and on earth will be reconciled. Even these very broken relationships. I long for that day. And until then, let's do the work of reconciling to God and to each other. It transforms us into people who look a little more like Jesus. And maybe our small piece of the world will look a little more like heaven as a result.
Watch the sermon video on YouTube.
[1] Curtis, A. Kenneth. The Most Important Events in Christian History. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1991, p. 98.
[2] Grenz, Stanley J., David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999, p. 100.
[3] Katongole, Emmanuel, and Chris Rice. Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008, p. 39.
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