a time in your experience when you. have admitted your estrangement to the Lord? Has there been a desire in your life to be brought back into re lationship with the One who made you? Can you recognize sin as the reason for your estrangement? Are you prepared to acknowledge that Jesus Christ died for your sin? If you can answer in the affirmative to all of these questions, then there is one thing more you need to do. Quiet ly pray to the Lord and say, “Dear Heavenly Father, I acknowledge my sin. I ’ve wandered away from You. I have rebelled and gone my own way. As a result I’ve gotten complete ly out of touch with You, living as though You never really existed. I understand that in Your concern for me, You sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for me. I want to thank You for this, asking You to receive me back to Yourself for the sake of the Saviour.” If you will pray that prayer, you will be reconciled to God. This, how ever, is only the beginning. There are many wonderful vistas of the Christian life to explore throughout the pages of Scripture, and particu larly of this wonderful book of Romans.
Keep in mind that nowhere in the Bible does it teach that God is re conciled to man. You see, He hasn’t moved away from His position at all. It is man who has drifted away from the Lord. Man needs to be recon ciled. The Saviour’s purpose in com ing to earth was that He might act as Mediator and bring us back to God. It is unfortunate that some peo ple feel Christ’s ministry of media tion was because of His exemplary life; that through the miracles per formed and moral precepts taught He has furnished us the example. “We must only follow His principles,” they will erroneously declare. Such does not bring reconciliation at all. This is not what the Bible teaches. While these aspects of His life are certain ly true, yet as Romans 5:10 clearly reveals, it is “by the death of his Son” that we have this blessed state of reconciliation with God. Before the two estranged parties can be reunited, the cause for the break must be mended or overcome. Sin must be dealt with before man can be reconciled to God. Through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, sin was dealt with once and for all. A holy, righteous, and just God found it necessary for sin to be punished by death. The clear principle of Scripture is just that: “the wages of sin is death; the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The genius of the Gos pel is that God sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for our sins. When He did this, God was in a position to judge sin in the person of His Son. By this means He was then able to forgive sinners. But God could never forgive sinners without first judging sin. He could never reunite His estranged creation with Himself un til He had dealt with the cause of their separation. Before we can start talking about the Christian life, we must ask our selves a perfectly reasonable and yet terribly profound question: “Am I absolutely certain that I have been reconciled to God?” Has there been
Dr. Dorothy Braun(left), member of the Biola College faculty serving in the Christian Edu cation Department, talkswithPastor TruongTot of Dalat, Vietnam. Pastor Tot has come to Biola as one of fhe "Operation: Firebrand" students. Lookingon is Carolyn Duncan of LongBeach, Calif.
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