Reconciliation
When Justin Welby took office in March 2013, he announced his three priorities for his ministry as Archbishop. Alongside the renewal of prayer and a delivery to evangelism and witness, reconciliation took centre phase. Inasmuch as prayer is virtually relationship 'upward' to God, and evangelism and witness are about relationship 'outward' to other people, reconciliation stands naturally every bit the eye of these 3, since '[r]econciliation is about our relationships – with God and with each other.'[1]
Information technology is therefore appropriate to ask: what is the pregnant of reconciliation in the New Attestation? And what is the relation between the 'upwards' and the 'outward' dimensions of reconciliation? This is an extract from a affiliate I have written for a forthcoming volume (due out in October). In the first part I look at reconciliation in Paul (particularly in Romans 5 and ii Cor 5), and this section looks more widely in the gospels.
Reconciliation in the wider NT
If reconciliation is such a meaning term in Paul, do we come across this in other parts of the New Testament?
Ane of the striking things well-nigh the narratives of Jesus' healings and deliverances is the way that restoration to wholeness is often followed by restoration of relationships and communities. In the brief account of Jesus healing Simon Peter'south mother-in-law (Marker 1.30–31), her restoration to her part in the household as host follows on from her physical healing. The homo with a skin disease is also returned to his ritual customs upon healing (Mark 1.40–44). The Gerasene demoniac, living on the outer fringes of human being community when Jesus meets him, is not only delivered from demonic possession merely is also restored to his own customs: 'Go abode to your ain people…' (lit 'to your household and your [people]…' Mark five.19).
This pattern is found across the gospels. In the carefully structured business relationship of the raising of a widow'south son in Luke 7.11–17 (told in such a way as to echo Elijah'southward like activity in 1 Kings 17), Jesus' pity stands at the numerical center of the story.[1] The restoration is made explicit in Luke's retelling: at the terminate of the phenomenon story, Jesus gives the male child back to his mother (v xv). In Jesus' conversation with the adult female at the well in John 4, the timing of the run across has a literary/theological significance. The woman can see evidently who Jesus is in the broad light of mean solar day, in dissimilarity to Nicodemus in the preceding chapter who still gropes with his questions in the evening twilight.[2] But also has a cultural/historical significance: her noon-time trip to the well also speaks of social rejection and marginalisation. However as presently equally her eyes are opened as to who Jesus really is, she returns to the community that has rejected her with a passionate invitation: 'Come, see a human who told me everything I e'er did! Could this be the Messiah?' (John iv.29).
Simply what is equally striking in the gospels is that this reconciliation and restoration of relationships as well brings with it sharp division. The most demanding expression of this comes in Jesus' proverb in Matt x.34–36:
"Exercise not suppose that I take come up to bring peace to the earth. I did non come to bring peace, simply a sword. For I have come to plough
"'a homo against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a girl–in–constabulary against her mother–in–law—
your enemies will be the members of your own household.'"
Matthew locates this saying inside a drove of Jesus' sayings and teaching that he has gathered together, every bit is his addiction. (The parallel in Luke 12.51–53 sits with other sayings.) It therefore needs to exist distinguished from the material on time to come persecution (ten.17–25, which has parallels in Matt 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21) that Matthew has blended in seamlessly to Jesus' didactics about the present mission of those he is sending out at present. In other words, this 'division' is not something unique to times of hardship; it is integral to our recognition of Jesus as God's all-powerful i. This is fabricated articulate both past the preceding say (Matt 10.32–33) which introduces the notion of abrupt stardom betwixt those who do and do not acknowledge Jesus, and the use of the saying from Micah vii.half-dozen, widely interpreted to chronicle to the time of the coming Messiah. The irony of this is brought out past Matthew's setting this saying in the context of a mission which was to proclaim 'peace':
Peacemaking is an essential part of the good life (v.ix). Merely the manner to peace is not the way of avoidance of conflict, and Jesus will be continuously engaged in robust controversy particularly in chs 21–23, while his whole experience will be the opposite of a peaceful style of life. His followers can await no less, and their mission to establish God's peaceful rule tin can be achieved only by sharing his experience of disharmonize.[iii]
This paradox of reconciliation/peace and conflict/sectionalization is expressed in narrative form in the story of the 'Prodigal Son' in Luke 15.11–32. Although this parable is often taken equally the quintessential expression of the gospel of God'south grace, there are some striking contrasts with the previous stories of 'the lost' that precede it. The father, whilst anxiously straining to look for the render of his son (unremarkably inferred from v xx), he does not actually follow after him to seek him as the shepherd has sought his lost sheep (5 four) or the woman searching for her lost coin (v 8). In fact, the son is only restored because he has 'come to his senses' (5 17) and begun the journey home. There is fabric loss for the father as well as loss of dignity (in his running, v 20) and a forfeiting of his right to verbal retribution on the son who, in asking for his share of the estate, was finer wishing his male parent expressionless. In that sense, the story does not mesh hands with classic models of amende.
It does, still, match the pattern of reconciliation that we take already seen. Though the son expresses his desire to accept the consequences of his action, it is the father who absorbs the cost and thereby effects the restoration of relationship, highlighted past the souvenir of robe and band (v 22). And the 2nd one-half of the story, the complaint of the elder son at his father's generosity and forgiveness, is integral to the whole even though it is often treated as an appendix to the chief story. Luke has structured this equally a shut parallel to the situation of Jesus, as he makes clear in verses ane and 2. The 'tax-collectors and sinners' come up almost to listen to Jesus, whilst the Pharisees and scribes grumble nigh his acceptance of them; the younger son returns to the father and is accepted by him whilst the elder son stays in the field complaining. So the reconciliation that Jesus brings, at toll to himself, in breaking downward division and forming a new, unified humanity, brings division between those who will accept this reconciliation and those who will not.
Joel Green sees the parable characterised in precisely these terms:
The younger son attempts to reconstrue their human relationship equally one of master/hired manus—a definition at odds with his father's persistence in regarding him in filial terms. Accepting his status every bit son, he is reconciled to his father and restored as a member of the family unit.
Will [the scribes and Pharisees] identify with God's will and, having done and then, join repentant sinners at the table?… Or, refusing to embrace God'south gracious calculus, which works to include those who (re)plow to him, will they exclude themselves from the family unit of God?[4]
The Dynamics of Reconciliation
We therefore see the post-obit dynamics at piece of work in the New Attestation's exposition of reconciliation:
- Reconciliation is primarily the work of God, and is primarily between God and humanity. It is enormously costly, but against all the cultural norms, in this relationship it is God, the offended party, who both takes the initiative and pays the cost.
- Reconciliation between humanity and God and so flows out into reconciliation amongst humanity; God'south goal and purpose for humanity is to break downwardly every dividing wall of hostility which would frustrate this.
- It is therefore non possible to separate reconciliation amidst people with their reconciliation to God; the first flows from the 2nd. Reconciliation amongst people never stands as a dissever activity, or a goal in itself, separate from the reconciliation of humanity to God. It might role every bit a sign pointing to reconciliation to God, only in the New Testament it always follows and never precedes it. (Matt five.24 is not an exception to this; reconciliation with the 'blood brother' is prompted by the prospect of reconciliation with God in the sacrifice to be offered.)
- Paradoxically, because the reconciled unity of humanity is always connected with God and his purposes, this thought can actually be a cause of segmentation—division between those who volition accept God's agenda for reconciliation, and those who reject information technology, either in its terms or in its goal.
These dynamics shed light on particular examples of disharmonize and its resolution elsewhere in the NT. A key example is the divergence betwixt those educational activity that Gentiles must exist circumcised, and Paul and Barnabas (joined past Peter) opposing them in Acts 15. The partitioning on the upshot was sharp and pregnant: in that location was 'no pocket-size dissention and debate' (Acts 15.two) The procedure is instructive; afterwards 'much debate', they mind to the primal testimonies of Peter, Barnabas and Paul, and then James proposes a way forward with reference to what God has said in Scripture (albeit quoting the Septuagint rather than Hebrew text). And, as Richard Bauckham has demonstrated, the only requirements that are imposed on Gentiles joining the customs of believers express a four-fold summary of the Holiness Lawmaking from Lev 17–26.[5] The intention of God as expressed in the Scriptures is the key reference betoken in resolving the conflict and effecting reconciliation.
Paul'southward perspective on this upshot in his letter to the Galatians illustrates the same dynamic of unity and segmentation highlighted by Green'due south comment on Luke 15. The reason why Paul sounds to polemical—antagonistic, even—is considering he sees God'south inclusive invitation every bit under threat from those who would reject it by imposing additional requirements. This would make something other than reconciliation with God the footing of reconciliation between the two parties.[half-dozen]
We come across the same dynamic at work from another perspective, that of James himself, in his circular letter.[vii] Since God is i, in whom there is changing or turning (James two.19, i.17), then at that place must exist unity in every aspect of the lives of believers. We cannot separate religion from activity (2.14); we cannot speak with both expert and harmful words (iii.11); we cannot treat rich and poor in unlike means (2.2); and nosotros cannot tolerate disharmonize and disputes (four.1). Yet, into this vision of unified humanity (which sits almost comfortably in the wisdom tradition) James introduces the theme of eschatological sentence and separation (five.one). God will judge those who reject the unity that he is and the unity that he brings.
Our differences cannot exist resolved but past attending to the two parties in conflict; they have to resolved with reference to a 3rd point, the truth most the God to whom both these sides have been reconciled. That is the merely effective grounds for mutual agreement.
[ane] "Archbishop Justin'southward Priorities." Retrieved 28th April 2015
[i] See Green, The Gospel of Luke
[2] Perhaps the best exposition of the contrasts betwixt John iii and John iv tin be found in Stibbe, John
[three] France, The Gospel of Matthew p 408
[4] Greenish, The Gospel of Luke pp 579, 586.
[5] Bauckham 'James and the Gentiles' in Witherington (ed), History, Literature, and Society in the Book of Acts pp 172–3. Bauckham argues that the first listing of these atmospheric condition in Acts 15.20 is a less accurate summary than the second listing in Luke's version of the alphabetic character which is sent in Acts 15.29. Run into ibid p 183. For the significance of this specifically on the sexuality debate in the Church, see Goddard, God, Gentiles and Gay Christians.
[6] The previous consensus on Galatians, the 'Northward Galatian hypothesis', saw Paul'due south letter as written to a grouping he has non visited, therefore written later and not continued with the Council of Jerusalem. The consensus now is the 'South Galatian hypothesis', that Paul is writing to the cities he visited in his early travels with Barnabas, so his visits to Jerusalem mentioned in Galatians stand for in some way to his visit in Acts 15. For further details see Paul, "Resolving Disharmonize in Galatians 2."
[7] For a full word of authorship run across Davids, Epistle of James pp two–22
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