By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
Are you an enemy of God? I don’t think I’ve ever asked or even thought of anyone like that. Who has God made his enemy?
I suppose Satan and the fallen angels are as they actively try to destroy his creation. But what about humans? Maybe Satanists might qualify as God’s enemy, but it seems that most enemies of God choose disobedience over God’s will; does that make them God’s enemy, versus them being his enemy? Is He mad at them and out to get them?
But look at James 4:4 “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?
Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” It’s not about God making them an enemy but about them making God an enemy. Forgive me, but that sounds really stupid.
But, in either case, we can find ourselves on the outs with God and need reconciliation. That means we need forgiveness and restoration. Restoration only comes after we realize that we are in need of it.
Rom 5:7 says that we are powerless if we have not done what Jesus asked us to do: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” That’s us: Ungodly …Powerless…Sinners…
So why would Christ even want us? It doesn’t look like we offer Him much. We are powerless to change our status from dead to alive. We can’t be good enough to earn Heaven, and there are no “For Sale” signs on the mansions in heaven.
There is no way we can bring life from a dead heart. And there is no way for anyone to get into heaven without passing through the blood of Jesus.
We are powerless to get into heaven on our own merit. And God knows that, so he sent Christ to pay the tab (atonement) for our sins, opening the door to eternal life in heaven. So, he did it for us…made a way to go from dead to life.
Rom 5:9 “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” He justified us…made us sinless by his death on that cross, and then offers us unlimited access to God …we did nothing to earn it
2 Cor 5:18-20 “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
V18 sums it up…God did it. And V19…it was by Christ’s work of eliminating and forgiving our sins. And he calls us to that ministry. V20 says we ought to do it as if we were Christ himself.
We are to implore the lost to follow Christ at whatever expense is required of us as Christ did for us when we were that lost sheep.
Let me ask this: How can we…you and me…play a part in this process, which we are clearly ordered to do, if we won’t forgive those who have harmed us or our loved ones?
How do we share his love for them if we are unwilling to lay our anger aside? Maybe we can’t get there from here, but maybe just being willing to ask God to show us how is the first step in this journey of becoming a reconciler?
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.