Calvin holds the tension between God’s hatred of sin and love of the sinner as well as anyone has:
‘God, who is the highest righteousness, cannot love the unrighteousness that he sees in us all. All of us, therefore, have in ourselves something deserving of God’s hatred. With regard to our corrupt nature and the wicked life that follows it, all of us surely displease God, are guilty in his sight, and are born to the damnation of hell. But because the Lord wills not to lose what is his in us, out of his own kindness he still finds something to love. However much we may be sinners by our own fault, we nevertheless remain his creatures. However much we have brought death upon ourselves, yet he has created us unto life. Thus he is moved by pure and freely given love of us to receive us into grace.’1Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.3; Battles ed., 505-6. See Paul Dafydd Jones, ‘The Fury of Love: Calvin on the Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 213-36.
‘God reconciled the world with himself, without its assistance, apart from it, without the world contributing anything to it.’
It Works Both Ways
Bavinck draws out the necessary implication: ‘Reconciliation is not unilateral but bilateral: not only must we be reconciled to God, but God, too, must be reconciled with us in the sense that, by giving Christ as propitiation … he puts aside his wrath and establishes a relation of peace with human beings.’2Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 447; slightly amended.
Who Moves First
The initiative belongs entirely to God.
In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul declares that God ‘reconciled us to himself’ and ‘is reconciling the world to himself,’ and on this basis the appeal goes out: ‘be reconciled to God.’
The direction of movement is telling: ‘[i]nstead of the offending party taking the initiative by offering sacrifice at the altar to atone for sin, God, the offended party, takes initiative by offering sacrifice through Christ to restore peace and friendship — to reconcile humanity to himself.’3Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Second Edition, 794.
That inverts every ordinary expectation. In human quarrels we assume the one at fault should make the approach. Here the wronged party does.
Reconciliation is set in motion by God himself. He must begin it, carry it off and complete it; we cannot be its initiator or accomplisher, because of our sinful condition.
‘People do not reconcile themselves with God as though alongside and side-by-side with God they were the subject of reconciliation. But God reconciled the world with himself, without its assistance, apart from it, without the world contributing anything to it or needing to contribute to it. People only receive reconciliation as a gift (Rom 5:11) and accept it by faith (2 Cor 5:20).’4Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:450.
It remains our responsibility to respond and receive what he has done — yet even this capacity is his gift. God must first transform us so that we are able to repent, believe and trust.
Widening Circles
The scope of this reconciling work widens as Paul’s letters are read in turn.
In Ephesians 2:11-22, Christ is described as ‘making peace’ so as to ‘reconcile us … through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.’ Those once ‘far off’ from God are brought near by ‘the blood of Christ.’
Strikingly, the cessation of hostility between God and humanity triggers the cessation of enmity between Jews and Gentiles. A new multi-ethnic, international community — with Christ over all, among all, and alongside all — is established for all eternity as a direct consequence of the cross.5Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 126.
In Colossians 1:18-20 the scope expands further still. Peace has been made ‘by the blood of his cross,’ and through Christ ‘all things’ have been reconciled to God — a reconciliation encompassing the new creation, the new heavens and new earth, in which the curse and all corruption are undone and perfection wholly restored (cf. Eph 1:10).
What It Actually Delivers
Reconciliation — whereby God makes friends and family of his human enemies — presupposes a prior state of ‘enmity with God’ (Jas 4:4). Before atonement can yield peace, restoration, renewal and relationship, that hostility must first be removed.
Once it is, reconciliation issues in peace with God (Rom 5:1), access to the Father (Rom 5:2; Eph 2:18), nearness to God (Eph 2:13), confidence that God is for us rather than against us (Rom 8:31), and joy — indeed, rejoicing — in God himself (Rom 5:11).
Its reach even extends to the relationship between husband and wife (1 Cor 7:11).
In a word, reconciliation makes the relationship with God — and with one another, and with all creation — for which we were made, both possible and real.
‘The gift of reconciliation is personal, communal, and cosmic in scope. Personal: The new creation has come (2 Cor 5:17) once sinners are reconciled to God through Christ (2 Cor 5:18). Communal: Beyond “not counting people’s sins against them,” this reconciling God teaches those who are in Christ to stop regarding others from a worldly point of view (2 Cor 5:16, 19). Cosmic: Passages like Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 celebrate “all things” as the object of reconciliation. In between individual sinners and all things Christ has placed the church as a new form of reconciled and reconciling humanity.’6Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 303.
Bavinck offers a fuller list of benefits accruing across every dimension of human existence — the juridical (forgiveness, justification, adoption, eternal life, redemption); the mystical (crucified, buried, raised and seated with Christ); the ethical (regeneration, new life, sanctification, cleansing); the moral (following and imitating Christ); the economic, meaning ‘household management’ (covenant and law fulfilment, ethnic unity); and the physical (victory over the world, death, hell and Satan). He concludes:
‘In a word, the whole enterprise of recreation, the complete restoration of a world and humanity, which, as a result of sin, is burdened with guilt, corrupted, and fragmented, is the fruit of Christ’s work.’7Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:451-452. This is Calvin, noting the distinction and contrast between our legal-relational position as reconciled sinner with our ongoing current moral condition: ‘Christ, bearing our sins, takes them away. Although, therefore, sin continually stays in us, yet in the judgment of God it is nothing, for as it is abolished by the grace of Christ, it is not imputed to us. … Let us therefore learn that we are reconciled to God by the grace of Christ if we go straight to his death and believe that he who was nailed to the cross is the only sacrificial victim by whom all our guilt is removed’ (Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 33).
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- 1Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.3; Battles ed., 505-6. See Paul Dafydd Jones, ‘The Fury of Love: Calvin on the Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 213-36. ↩︎
- 2Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 447; slightly amended. ↩︎
- 3Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Second Edition, 794. ↩︎
- 4Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:450. ↩︎
- 5Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 126. ↩︎
- 6Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 303. ↩︎
- 7Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:451-452. This is Calvin, noting the distinction and contrast between our legal-relational position as reconciled sinner with our ongoing current moral condition: ‘Christ, bearing our sins, takes them away. Although, therefore, sin continually stays in us, yet in the judgment of God it is nothing, for as it is abolished by the grace of Christ, it is not imputed to us. … Let us therefore learn that we are reconciled to God by the grace of Christ if we go straight to his death and believe that he who was nailed to the cross is the only sacrificial victim by whom all our guilt is removed’ (Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 33). ↩︎