Question of the Week: What is Biblical Reconciliation?

by Anne Lang Bundy

"Reconciliation"
Sculpted by Josefina de Vasconcellos
(image source: trinityfellowship.net)

What is the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, (in the sense of being available for further abuse)?
~ Anonymous

Last week's post provided some contrasts from the Bible about forgiveness, separation and accountability. This week offers some examples of how enmity, forgiveness and reconciliation might play out.

Three important notes in preface:

• if a Christian experiences enmity, relationship with Christ will bring the desire to eliminate it;

• the below examples of forgiveness and reconciliation are biblical ideals toward which God's Holy Spirit enables us to work, whether or not we reach them;

• the person who has been wronged should not only be ready to forgive and reconcile, but also ask God if there is anything for which he or she should repent and ask forgiveness.

"Love your enemies,
bless those who curse you,
do good to those who hate you,
and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,
that you may be sons of your Father in heaven;
for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?
Do not even the [heathen] do the same?"
~ Jesus (Matthew 5:44-46)

EXAMPLES OF ENMITY:

You hurt me and I hope you suffer for it.

I want to hurt you back, whether I do it openly or secretly, with or without restraint.

I want you out of my life. Your death wouldn't bother me. Killing you myself isn't out of the question.


EXAMPLES OF FORGIVENESS:

If I hate you, it will hurt me more than it will hurt you, so I release my enmity. God's forgiveness and love enable me to forgive and love you, and I choose to do so.

I am willing to hold you accountable for your wrongdoing with the hope that your repentance will enable full reconciliation between you and God, between you and me.

I ask God to do good things for you. I seek opportunity to be an agent of His blessing. I wait for God to heal the injury you have done to me. I hope God will move you to become an agent of that healing by your right response to Him, expressed to me.


EXAMPLES OF RECONCILIATION:

Whether you and I associate peaceably or have no contact, your lack of repentance has prevented reconciliation between us. But my forgiveness prevents enmity toward you—even if circumstances prevent me from escaping further injury. Though I desire reconciliation with you, I instead reconcile myself to knowing I have done as much as I can. I am at peace.

Or:
You have repented—you have acknowledged your wrong against me, you have expressed remorse and apology, and you may have reconciled yourself to God through Jesus. Forgiveness and repentance enables you and I to experience reconciliation. But until your cooperation with God enables you to overcome the behavior which led you to hurt me, we cannot share the level of relationship I still hope for, which I pray God brings to pass. I am at peace.

Or:
Your thorough repentance and my thorough forgiveness have enabled our reconciliation to God and to each other. We are brother(s) and sister(s) through Jesus Christ and are free to enjoy that relationship in love. I am at peace.

Now all things are of God,
who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation ...
and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
~ 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 (NKJV)

Photo credit: Ed Gardener, Flickr.com

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This post originally appeared at Bullets & Butterflies. To see ongoing dialogue in comments posted there click here.

What questions do you have about Christianity or the Bible? You're invited to leave them in the comments below (anonymous questions welcome), or email buildingHisbody [plus] @ gmail.com.

© 2011 Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Lie of Hell #5: Loving People is Enough

A recent "Question of the Week" at Bullets & Butterflies listed five of the devil’s lies which sound close enough to the truth to make them believable. This week addresses them in more detail:
• Monday – "You'll never be worthy of God's grace or love."
• Tuesday – "If you have faith, it doesn't matter if you sin."
• Wednesday – "Following Jesus solves your problems."
• Thursday – "Problems indicate God's condemnation."
• Friday – "If you love others then you're loving God."

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"God wants us to love Him more,
not to love others less."
~ C.S.Lewis

Lie of Hell #5: Loving People is Enough

We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
~ 1 John 4:19-21 (NKJV)

Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:29-31 (NKJV)

The devil wants you to believe that if you love others then you're loving God and don't need to love Him first. This message of humanism elevates people above God.

Some people argue that the above passage from John says we must love others first before we love God. (Three posts in April elaborated on learning love and agape love in more depth, and can be found here.)

While our love for God is made more complete in our love for others, and we first learn love by being loved and loving others, we cannot truly love others—love unconditionally with agape love—until we first experience the love of God and love Him.

It may seem that God is too big or distant to be loved and people are easier to love. It may seem that divinity does not need our love as much as humanity does. It may seem much more scary to love Almighty God than to love a simple person.

But if we are honest, people are difficult to love. Humans can be very unpleasant. They either reject or are indifferent or fail to adequately return our love. When we place love of God first, He lives in us more fully and empowers us to love unpleasant humans, even the ones who hurt us. And in passing on His love, we really do love God as described by John.

Such love is Real Love.

Lord God, You are love. Thank You for the forgiveness which enables us to know Your love. Please help us to forgive others and love them as You have loved us.

Your feedback is appreciated. Post to BuildingHisBody.com Comments or e-mail to BuildingHisBody@gmail.com. Copyright 2010, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Learning to be Unloved

Note: This week’s three posts are an extended response to a comment from Russell Holloway (who consistently makes me think hard) on Foundations Part II, in which Russell asserts that love for God and love for man cannot exist apart from one another.

“Loving means to love that which is unlovable—
or it is no virtue at all.”
~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Learning to be Unloved

“For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”
~ Matthew 5:46 (NKJV)

It feels good to be loved. I daresay the need to be loved is greater than the need to sleep and eat and breathe.

Learning to love can be difficult, especially when it is love which requires selflessness and sacrifice. But there is the expectation that if we express love, we are loved in return, or at the very least get a good feeling from being selfless and sacrificial. The expectation is understood.

God operates on different principles. He asks us to do things like

• love your enemies
• do good to those who hate you
• bless those who curse you
• pray for those who spitefully use you
• to him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also
• from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic
• give to everyone who asks of you
• from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back
(Luke 6:27-30 NKJV)

This is learning to be unloved.

There is a place within Christian relationships to confront those who sin against you, to honor God and preserve the relationships. Several places in Scripture speak of sin and specifically puts it in the context of “if your brother ...”

Jesus’ words of Luke 6 are not one of those contexts. We seem to therefore draw the conclusion that they’re meant for the way we treat people of the world. We might argue a while before we finally break down and do good to those who hate us when a stranger is involved. We can reason that a non-Christian doesn’t know better.

But when bad behavior come from a brother or sister in Christ, there’s something about the expectation of good from a Christian that makes us bristle when they fail us. When we’ve invested ourselves in another person and sacrificed and there has been love shared, we don’t expect to see the day when love becomes apathy or betrayal or outright malice.

We expect love to feel good. No matter how many times we are hurt, no matter how many people sin against us, do we ever reach the point where we accept love as painful?

We don’t expect that learning to love will graduate to learning to be unloved while continuing to love. By ourselves, it is thoroughly impossible. With God, it is more than possible. It is our mandate. It is what our Lord asks of us and empowers in us, because it is the love He has given us.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
~ Romans 5:8 (NKJV)

Our precious Lord, we are thoroughly unworthy of You. Thank You for the great love You pour out upon us. Thank You for enduring the pain it cost You. Please enable us to love in the face of pain, of hatred, of apathy, of sin. Please teach us to be unloved and yet love, as You do.

Your feedback is appreciated. Post to BuildingHisBody.com "Comments" or e-mail to BuildingHisBody@gmail.com. Copyright 2009, 2010, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.
#love
Image source: sundijo.wordpress.com

Learning to Love

Note: This week’s three posts are an extended response to a comment from Russell Holloway (who consistently makes me think hard) on Foundations Part II, in which Russell asserts that love for God and love for man cannot exist apart from one another.

“Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased.
It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.”
~ Pearl Buck

Learning to Love

We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
~ 1 John 4:19-21 (NKJV)

If we must first learn to be loved before we can love, then does it follow that we learn to love those whom we see before we learn to love Him Who is unseen?

Yes. And no.

We first learn to love those we see, but it is a selfish love. We love them for who they are to us, what they are to us, and what they do for us.

Yesterday’s example was an infant, learning love the Greek language calls storge, or natural, family love. Today’s example is a wife, who receives a husband’s eros love. While eros is often defined for its physically sensual dimension, it is far more. It involves a passion which appreciates the beauty within a person. The philosopher Plato (from whom the term “platonic” love comes) said that eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to understanding of spiritual truth.

A husband might love his wife with eros love because she belongs to him and he to her in a unique and lifelong relationship of unity. He may love her because she is his companion and advisor with phila (brotherly love, or friendship love). He may love her with storge love for the physical sustenance she provides by bearing his children, feeding his stomach and keeping his house.

But until any one of us comes to know the agape love of God, our incomplete love for another—including love for God—will always be no greater than our appreciation for how that person relates to me, myself and I. Whatever love we learn for others and express to them, we cannot love others simply for who they are apart from us until we know God’s unconditional, sacrificial, unlimited agape love. In experiencing God’s love and learning to love Him, we learn how to truly love others.

And in loving others with such agape love, we are making more complete our love for God. Apart from loving others with agape love, the Bible says we do not truly love God. The two are fully dependent upon each another.

As beautiful as eros love is, it cannot rise to agape love in its fullness.

Lord Jesus, please use the storge, eros and philia love we understand to teach us the agape love which is known only through You. Please fill our hearts with Your agape love until it spills over back to You and to others.

Your feedback is appreciated. Post to BuildingHisBody.com "Comments" or e-mail to BuildingHisBody@gmail.com. Copyright 2009, 2010, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.
#Love
Pictured: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor from the movie "Taming of the Shrew" © 1967 Sony Pictures

Learning to be Loved

Note: This week’s three posts are an extended response to a comment from Russell Holloway (who consistently makes me think hard) on Foundations Part II, in which Russell asserts that love for God and love for man cannot exist apart from one another.

“We learn to love before we learn anything else.”
~ Unknown

Learning to be Loved

"Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?”
~ Isaiah 49:15 (NKJV)

The Greek language has four words for love: agape, philia, eros, and storge. Storge is the only one which doesn’t appear in the New Testament. It refers to natural affection, such as the love of parents—especially mothers—for their children.

There are certainly mothers who do not love their children, but it is wholly unnatural. Even the animal kingdom displays unusual protectiveness of mothers for their young. Completely tame animals will attack if their babes are threatened. If males will fight to the death for the right to procreate their offspring, then females will fight to the death to preserve their offspring.

My expertise on motherly love was learned by bearing, birthing and nursing five children. At birth their only consciousness was of themselves, their hunger, and separation from the mother under whose heartbeat they’d lived for nine months. Their dependence on my breast was supplemented by their dependence on my presence and familiar voice. By around six months of age, their love for me became disdain for strangers, sometimes even for Daddy.

Isaiah quotes the Lord asking if a mother can forget a nursing babe. I never could. Even leaving them home with Daddy for me to go grocery shopping was stressful. What would happen if anything prevented or delayed my return and we remained separated, since my little ones never had bottles? I didn’t have a moment’s peace until we were safely reunited. (Nursing mothers would understand. The rest of you will think me a little crazy. So be it.)

From the time they were conceived, I was transferring to my children not only the nutrients I was so conscious to take into my body, but my soul’s fierce love for them and for God. Even from within my womb, they came to know love in my prayers, in my songs of praise, from the love of God I was fed from the Bible. It was a love they later learned in my eyes and touch and language as I taught them of their Creator. ("Look! It’s the moon! God made the moon for you because He loves you.")

Being loved is the very first thing we have opportunity to learn.

Your feedback is appreciated. Post to BuildingHisBody.com "Comments" or e-mail to BuildingHisBody@gmail.com. Copyright 2009, 2010, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.
#Love
Image source: sciencedaily.com