What is Biblical reconciliation?
Title page of the Great Bible (1539). (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Reconciliation properly applies not to good relations in general but to the doing away of an enmity, the bridging over of a quarrel.
It implies that the parties being reconciled were formerly hostile to one another.
The Bible tells us bluntly that sinners are ‘enemies’ of God (Rom. 5:10; Col. 1:21; Jas. 4:4). We should not minimize the seriousness of these and similar passages.
An enemy is not someone who comes a little short of being a friend. He is in the other camp. He is altogether opposed. The NT pictures God in vigorous opposition to everything that is evil.