Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 198, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1917 — THE RECONCILER [ARTICLE]

THE RECONCILER

By His Teaching, by His Life and' by His Atonement Christ Seeks to Win Man Text —n Cor. 5:19. “God was Ln Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” Jesus is set before us in the gospels as the revealer of the Father, as the Supreme Guide of man, as the Sinless and Perfect One who showed that the price of this world had nothing In him. These offices and acts culminated in his death and resurrection, which, in a thousand ways we can never fully realize, abolished the hindrances and barriers between the Creator and the creature. Hence the apostle. In describing the ambassador’s trip of the Christian ministry, lays its weight upon one paramount moral and spiritual truth embodied In the historical Redeemer. He solemnly assures us that God was In Christ, reconciling us to himself, giving unto all who believe pardon for their trespasses and sins, admitting them into the fellowship of life eternal. What love, what service, can be as vital o*r as precious as this love and service? Certainly, all men, however degraded, have an inkling of their Maker. Belief in his existence is too deeply rooted in the human soul, too magnificently expressed In the Scriptures, to be In any real danger. But our Lord raises this instinct for God, this faint apprehension of his existence, this his nature, into a state of grace andnoliness and love. He vivifies the conception of the Eternal One until it \ gains measureless capacity for life apd power. And he does this in three great ways: by his teaching, his life, and his atonement. Hit Teaching. It is not a superficial or an arbitrary relation. On the contrary, It arises out of the divine element in man, which God ever seeks to affiliate with his infinite love; to bring into closest fellowship, Into one living unity. Such an exalted view of our natural affinity with the Father of the spirits of all flesh can be held consistently with the fullest recognition of that radical moral disorder and spiritual failure of men which we call sin. Christ speaks of the best of men as being evil. He traces this evil to their hearts, and draws the darkest pictures of its gravity and consequences. He calls saint and sinner alike to repentance, and tells the learned and pious Nicodemus that he and all others must be born from above, regenerated, before they can enter the kingdom. He detected sin In its first Inceptions, and tracked it down to its last and dreadful result in punishment and in spiritual dissolution. What others regarded as anger he denounced as murder; where the ordinary person saw no more than desire, he saw adultery. His Example. Jesus met this disaster by announcing himself as the Shepherd who seeks the lost sheep, the Physician who heals diseased souls, the Saviour who pays the ransom for forfeited lives. His mission was to bring men out of the false and ruinous relations which are wrought by sin, and into the true anil enriching relations due to their restored inheritance In God.

But how could such instruction as this prevail against fleshly appetites and immoral tendencies, if it stood alone, unsupported by example and left entirely to precept? Prophets and sages have given us similar advice, not so illustrious, not so authoritative, but wise and clear enough to be received. They were not so received because those who aspired to be our guides were themselves in a like condemnation with us. Therefore it is Important to recall that if Jesus reconciles us to God by his words, he reconciles us still more by his life. Be was sinless, without spot or blemish ! Hla Death. Thus, with one' exception, the life of Jesus- and the teaching of Jesus have been the greatest religious forctes that have entered our mortal sphere. That exception is his death. Not on the teaching nor bn the life of the Christ do the New Testament writers lay chief stress as the means of deliverance from sin, but on the death of Christ. Consider the space and treatment given to the death of Christ in the scripture. Now it recurs again and yet again; now it is attached to all heights and depths of love, sacrifice, deliverance, holiness and adoration. Consider its permanent monument in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which is to be to all Christians '“a memorial of his precious death until his coming again.” Here the' whole Deity is known. Nor dare a creature guess Which of the glories brightest ehone. The Justice or the grace. _ , —Rev. S. Parks Cadman, D. in Christian Herald.