The Nature of Reconciliation

Most religions focus on wrong doing, due to a misunderstanding of the nature of sin. The real problem is wrong being, determined independence from God. The cure lies not in corrected behavior but in a corrected nature. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. We fail in our attempts to present the gospel when we focus on sins, rather than sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power. Offended sinners claim we are judgmental or self-righteous because we have failed to convey that we ALL have a sin nature. Instead we convey that they are sinning like we formerly did. Sometimes, sadly, this is because we don’t understand that our reconciliation is based on our new nature and not our new behavior.

The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the sin nature.  “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. . .” Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross. We can become the righteousness of God in Him.

Nick