LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 71

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THE CONVENTION ESSAY 71

tive divine activity and that it is associated with the
atoning death of Christ.” §

This then is the message we bring to our world —
a grand message of reconciliation and peace with God.
But things look even better as we examine more closely
what Paul tells us. Note first the way Paul puts it in
verse 18: “God, who through Christ reconciled us to
Himself,” and in verse 19: “God was in Christ reconcil-
ing the world to Himself.” Note that God reconciled us
to Himself. God initiated the plan, and God did the
work. God is the subject of the reconciling, and man is
the object. In great love God reached out in Christ to
do away with our alienation from Him. The apostle
states this with great clarity in Romans 5. For example,
in verse 8 he states, “God shows His love for us in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” In verse
10 he says, “If while we were enemies we were recon-
ciled to God, by the death of His Son.” From this we see
that it is God in action all the way. There is no initiative
on the part of man. It is God’s love, God’s grace, God’s
gift all the way.

But how was the reconciliation effected? Did God
as an indulgent father merely say, “Boys will be boys,”
or “Let’s shake hands and make up”? Did He send
Jesus merely as a great man, a great humanitarian to
show mankind the way, to demonstrate how men ought
to live together? Is this the ambassador’s message of
reconciliation?

Let it be clearly said that such notions sell the New
Testament message short. Paul is very loud and clear
in saying that reconciliation cost something, indeed the
greatest price ever paid. For man to be reconciled
meant that Christ had to step into man’s shoes and be
judged by God as man’s substitute.

See how clearly this thought comes through in Paul’s
words in 2 Cor. 5:14: “We are convinced that one has
died for all; therefore all have died.” One for all. The
Greek word hyper used here and translated as “for”
clearly indicates a substitution is being made. It stresses
that God acted in behalf of man. The same construction
is used in John 11:50, where Caiaphas says that it is
expedient that one man should die for the people. Paul
uses it in Galatians 3:13, where he flatly states, “Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become
a curse for us.” The same grammatical construction ap-
pears in 2 Corinthians 5:21, where Paul says, “For our
sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that
in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Two great facts stand out. The first is that Christ
was sinless in His personal relationship with God and
man. Peter writes, “He committed no sin” (1 Peter
2:22). The author of the Letter to the Hebrews describes
Jesus as “One who in every respect has been tempted
as we are, yet without sinning.” (4:15)

The second great fact is that God identified Christ
with us in respect to our guilt. He took our place. “For
our sake He made Him to be sin,” says Paul. (2 Cor.
5:21)

The Old Testament provides a symbolism for what
happened when Christ took our place and died for us

on Calvary. Leviticus 16 tells the story of the scapegoat.
On the great day of atonement Aaron the high priest
killed a goat and sprinkled its blood on the Ark of the
Covenant in the Holy of Holies for the sins and trans-
gressions of Israel. Then he came out into the court-
yard. While the people watched, Aaron laid both his
hands on the head of the live goat and “confessed over
him all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their
transgressions and all their sins,” and he “put them upon
the head of the goat.” The goat was then led into the
wilderness, carrying with him all the iniquity of the
people. (Lev. 16: 20-22)

This practice pointed to Christ, who as the Lamb of
God was loaded with the iniquity of all mankind and
thus “became a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). The writer of
the Letter to the Hebrews clearly says, “For it was fit-
ting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blame-
less, unstained, separated from sinners, exalted above the
heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer
sacrifices daily, first for His own sins and then for those
of the people; He did this once for all, when He offered
up Himself.” (7:26-27)

This is the heart of the Gospel. Isaiah put it most
beautifully, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried
our sorrows: yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by
God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our trans-
gressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him
was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His
stripes we are healed.” (53:4-5)

You see also that Paul clearly states that the object
of this reconciliation is that “we might become the
righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). The beautiful im-
plications of this phase of reconciliation are often
sounded forth in the Lutheran Confessions. The For-
mula of Concord states: “Our righteousness before God
consists in this that God forgives us our sins purely by
His grace without any preceding, present, or subsequent
work, merit, or worthiness, and reckons to us the righ-
teousness of Christ’s obedience, on account of which we
are accepted by God and are regarded as righteous.” ®

Some have said that it is not proper to think that
God required a penalty to be paid so that His sense of
justice might be satisfied and reconciliation brought to
pass. These persons remind us that in the New Testa-
ment God is never said explicitly to be reconciled to
man. He is rather the subject of the verb and is said to
reconcile man to Himself. They point out that God
loved man already before the reconciliation. They then
conclude that therefore no satisfaction needed to be
offered for man’s sin. God's mind didn’t have to be
changed.

But such a view misses the point of the tension be-
tween God’s great love for the sinner and His abiding
wrath against sin. Scripture is clear in ascribing to God
definite opposition to everything that is evil. Both the
Old and the New Testament speak of the wrath of God.
In Isaiah 54:8 God says: “In overflowing wrath for
a moment I hid My face from you, but with everlasting
love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your
Redeemer.” Paul states plainly in Romans 1:18: “The

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