Alienation and Reconciliation

Next Part Alienation and Reconciliation 2

"And you, who were once alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works; yet now has he reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy, and unblameable, and unreproveable in his sight; if you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard." Col. 1:21-23

In opening our text, I shall view it under four different aspects, and shall briefly characterize each by one word, to impress it more thoroughly upon your memory–

First, Alienation– "And you who were once alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works."

Secondly, Reconciliation– "Yet now has he reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death."

Thirdly, Presentation– "To present you holy and unblameable, and unreproveable in his sight."

Lastly, Continuation– "If you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard."

I. First, then, let us consider that painful subject, and yet one which all who are taught of God must learn in their own bosom– ALIENATION. "And you who were once alienated."

A. Let us seek to dive into the meaning of this term, as used by the apostle to describe our state and condition before God by nature and practice. What do we understand literally by it? Strangership. It is only another word to convey much the same idea, though in a more forcible manner, of one who is a foreigner or a stranger in a land to which he has no claim by birth or inheritance. And you will observe there is a distinction between being an alien and being "alienated." Let me show you the difference. Every foreigner in this country is an "alien," unless naturalized, that is, made an English citizen, by renouncing his allegiance to his own sovereign and becoming subject to ours. But if an Englishman, a native of this country, were to go to America and cast off his allegiance to our sovereign by becoming a citizen of the United States, he would be "alienated," that is, from his former country and his former sovereign; and, as has actually occurred in many cases, his love might turn to enmity, and he might actually fight against the country which gave him birth. In this sense, man by nature is not only an alien but alienated.

For was man thus always an alien and an enemy to God? Was there always a breach, a distance, a separation between God and him? Not so. Did not the Lord make man in his own image, after his own likeness? When he had created him, did he not place him in a garden of all manner of delight and pleasure, as the word Eden means? Did he not look down from heaven upon him and pronounce all his works good, and man as the last of them very good? for it was not until the close of the sixth day, when man stood before the Lord, created in his own image, that "he saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good; for the last creation put the stamp of God's approbation upon the whole. And when thus created did not the Lord have sweet communion with him in the garden where he had placed him; for we read of his "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. 3:8), as if he came daily in the cool of evening to converse face to face with the intelligent creature of his hand? There was no breach then, no enmity, no alienation. God and man were friends, and, if I may use the expression, the best of friends, for the One was blessed in giving and the other in receiving.

But, alas! this blessed state did not continue long. How long we know not, but evidently for but a short period. An enemy came stealing into this happy garden, a tempter, once an angel of light, but now a fiend, full of all subtlety and malice, whom God, in his inscrutable wisdom, permitted to carry out his hellish plot and execute his infernal design. Satan, under the guise of a serpent, was permitted to tempt the woman; she was allowed to tempt the man, and he not, as she, overcome and overborne by temptation, but willfully disobeyed the command of God, and thus, with his eyes open, precipitated himself and all his future race into the deepest abyss of sin and misery; for we all fell in him. This may seem at first sight strange, and some have called it unjust; but we were in him as our federal head, in his loins, as Levi was in the loins of Abraham (Heb. 7:10); and thus what he did, we virtually did, in him.

The Scripture is clear here– "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for [I prefer the marginal reading, "in whom"] all have sinned." So again, "By one man's offence [margin, "by one offence"] death has reigned by one;" and again, "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." (Rom. 5:12, 17, 19.) I like to make my points clear, and this is the reason why I thus, from the Scriptures, trace up sin to its fountain head.

But now what was the consequence of this original sin, this act of rebellion and disobedience of our first parent? Alienation from God. A breach was made, estrangement introduced. Those who were once friends now became separated, and, what was far worse, they became enemies. So wide, so deep was this chasm then made, that, like the fixed gulf of which Abraham speaks in the parable, none could pass over it, nor could it ever have been brought together but for God's eternal purpose of love and mercy in the Person and work of his dear Son.

But you may say, "How is it that this descended to me? If Adam sinned and fell, I was not in Paradise, how could I help his sinning against God? I was not there to hold back his hand from taking the forbidden fruit. Why then should I, an innocent man, suffer for his transgression? If a man now commits theft or murder, the law does not punish the innocent with the guilty." Then, I suppose, you have no personal sins of our own, and can stand before God perfectly holy and innocent? "No," you say, "I don't mean that, for I know that I am a sinner." But how did you become a sinner? Don't you see how in the fall the seed of sin was deposited by Satan in the very nature of Adam; that this alienation was dropped, as it were, from Satan's hand into his heart, as an acorn may fall into the earth, where it struck root and grew, and so filled, so to speak, the whole of his nature that it thrust out, like an overgrown tree, everything that was good.

But you may say, "How could one sin do this?" Cannot a grain of poison, say strychnine, diffuse itself through a whole vessel full of water? So sin spread itself through the whole of Adam's body and soul, killing the life of God therein and corrupting his nature throughout. But still the question arises, "How can this reach us?" Why, as like can only beget like, the alienation that Satan sowed in the heart of man in the fall in infecting him infected the whole of the race that would spring from him. Do we not read that "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image?" (Gen. 5:3.) A fallen son must come from a fallen father. Thus we come into the world alienated from the image of God, and this alienation is our birthright, our portion, our miserable inheritance; all that we can really call our own for time or for eternity.

1. But look at the CONSEQUENCES of being thus alienated from the IMAGE of God. He who is the fountain of all bliss could not, even if he would, make a creature unlike and estranged from himself really and truly happy; for alienation springs out of sin, and sin is abhorred by the holiness, and amenable to the justice of God. And see how this state of alienation from God goes on, until at last it ends in thorough ruin. We come into the world alienated from God's image, for we lost it in the fall; we grow up still more and more alienated from it, and if we die thus alienated, what must that end be but eternal destruction from the presence of his glory? for there is no reconciliation or regeneration in the grave. There is no possibility of coming into a state of friendship with God when the breath has left the body. As the tree falls, so it lies. If we die alienated from God, we die under the wrath of God.

2. But look a little further into the meaning of the word now before us. In being alienated from God, we are alienated from the KNOWLEDGE of God. Our blessed Lord, in his intercessory prayer, says, "This is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." This alienation, therefore, is an alienation from the knowledge of God; for its leading, its prominent feature is death in sin. So the apostle speaks of the Gentiles "being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." (Eph. 4:18.) If, then, the knowledge of God is eternal life, ignorance of God must be eternal death. He says in his word, "Acquaint yourself with God and be at peace;" but we have no acquaintance with him by nature, and therefore no peace, for "there is no peace to the wicked." There is a veil of ignorance and unbelief spread over our heart (2 Cor. 3:15); and besides this, Satan, the god of this world, blinds our mind and hardens our conscience, so that we neither see the light nor want to see it, for we have an inward consciousness that our deeds are evil. We may indeed by the natural light of conscience and by a notional religion know God in some small measure as a just and holy Lord, whose displeasure we fear; but we cannot know him as a God of mercy, goodness, and truth, for as such he has not been revealed to our soul, nor have we thus beheld his glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

3. But consider a little more closely the force of the word "alienated." There is an alienation, as the apostle speaks, in a passage which I have already quoted, from the LIFE of God. When the Lord begins a work of grace upon our heart, he makes us partakers of a new, a spiritual, and eternal life. This life is in Jesus as a covenant head, for he is the head of his body, the Church; and at regeneration it is communicated out of his fullness to the various members of his mystical body, whereby, as made partakers of his grace, they then for the first time live unto him, live upon him, and live by him. This life, as being a divine gift and work, the apostle calls "the life of God," not meaning thereby the eternal, essential life of God which he ever lives in himself as the self-existent Jehovah, but the life of grace communicated by him and from him to his people.

Now in our state of nature, we are alienated from this life of God; that is, we are strangers to a life of faith in the Son of God. The life which we had in Adam we have lost, being, as the Scripture declares, dead in trespasses and sins, and thus are unable to quicken our own souls. No, we are not only strangers to it, but alienated from it, as hating it and despising it when seen in others, being dimly conscious that there is such a thing, but filled with bitter enmity to, and proud contempt of it.

4. But look still a little further at the word "alienated." There is an alienation from the WILL of God, that is, his revealed will, for his secret will we know not. This will he has revealed in the Scriptures of truth, and ever and anon there flash forth rays of holiness from this revealed will which strike upon, though they do not enter into or influence the unregenerated heart. But in this light, sufficient to condemn if not sufficient to convince, we often see and feel the will of God to be opposed to our own. Yet, though we see the alienation of our heart from this will, we are determined to have our own way, cost us what it may. This, in fact, is rebellion of the deepest dye. There is, therefore, no submission to God's will in affliction; no desire to know it or to do it, however often the lips may vainly utter, "Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven."

B. But there is something worse besides; there is even a state worse than alienation. To live and die a stranger to God and godliness must ensure our destruction, for what mansion in heaven can we think is prepared for one who is alienated from the image, knowledge, life, and will of God? But there is even a more fearful, a more fatal condition than this. When Satan dropped the seed of sin into the human mind to take root there, he dropped a more poisonous ingredient wrapped up in it than alienation, and one which struck deeper root–ENMITY. That one word seems to measure the height of man's rebellion and the depth of man's fall; that he is, as our text declares, an enemy to God by wicked works. All man's sins, speaking comparatively, are but motes in the sun-beam compared with this giant sin of enmity against God. A man may be given up to fleshly indulgences; he may sin against his fellow creature; may rob, plunder, oppress, even kill his fellow man; but though such sins are justly condemned by the laws of God and man, yet, viewed in a spiritual light, what are they compared with the dreadful, the damnable sin of enmity against the great and glorious Majesty of heaven?

This is a sin that lives beyond the grave. Many sins, though not their consequences, die with man's body, because they are bodily sins. But this is a sin that goes into eternity with him, and flares up like a mighty volcano from the very depths of the bottomless pit. Yes, it is the very sin of devils, which therefore binds guilty man down with them in the same eternal chains, and consigns him to the same place of torment. The very thought is appalling, because known and felt by the guilty conscience to be true. O the unutterable enmity of the heart against the living God! What! that I, that you, in our state of nature should be enemies to God; that our carnal mind, which is, in fact, ourselves, for it is the whole of that fleshly image of Adam with which we were born, should not only be the enemy of God, but enmity itself, which is far worse, more deep, desperate, and incurable, because an enemy may be reconciled, but enmity never! How utterly ruined, then, how wholly lost must that man's state and case be who lives and dies as he comes into the world unchanged, unrenewed, unregenerated!

If he were only a stranger to God, an alien from his image, knowledge, life, and will, he could not, it is true, rise up at death into the presence of God in heaven; for what could he or would he do there? God and he would be as much and indeed more strangers there than on earth, because then brought more immediately face to face. Heaven is happiness and holiness. But for whom? For those who can enjoy it. What happiness could there be, then, in heaven for one who is a total stranger to that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord? But, still less, how can enmity be admitted into the realms of eternal peace and love? Will God have enemies in the courts of bliss? Can his enemies sing the songs of praise in sweet unison with his friends? When pride entered heaven in the person of Satan, he and it were cast out together. How then can enmity enter therein? Could it gain admission, it would turn heaven itself into hell.

C. But to proceed a little further into the bosom of our text and into the opening up from it of this deep and dark mystery of enmity against God. Observe WHERE this enmity is and HOW it works. It is "in the mind." That is the worst part of it. If it were merely in the understanding, or if its seat were only in the body, it might haply be weeded out. You can take your hoe and spud out a weed in your garden, or even a stout thistle; but what can your hoe do with an oak that has struck its roots deep into the soil? If a finger is diseased, it may be cut off; but what are you to do with a gangrene of a vital organ, a diseased heart, or an ulcerous lung? So, if this enmity were a disease just in some corner of the mind, it might possibly be gotten out.

But when the whole mind is full of it, so that it is its very breath and blood, what can be done then to it? for the very power that should fight against it is itself infected; and it would be like a person in the last stage of consumption trying to cure one as far gone as himself. We come, then, to this conclusion, that nothing but the mighty power of God himself can ever turn this enemy into a friend. No, even the power of God himself is unable to destroy the enmity of the carnal mind, for we are assured by his own testimony that "it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." (Rom. 8:7.) It must die with our bodies, if indeed we are to rise on the resurrection morn, to see the Son of God as he is, and be conformed to his glorious image. Yes, let it lie and rot and forever perish in that grave in which our bones shall turn to dust, when the worm has fed sweetly upon them.

D. But look also at another expression of our text, "by wicked WORKS." We gather from these words the working and the manifestation of this enmity against God. It is not a dead thing in the heart, a mere quiet, passive feeling, which lies as still as a stone; but it manifests itself in "wicked works," in carrying out the purposes and intents of the carnal mind into downright and inevitable action. This you know is the height of rebellion. Thoughts and words, plots and schemes, may be rebellious, but actions are rebellion; and who that sees the wicked works daily perpetrated by the hands of man, or even remembers what he himself did in the days of his flesh, will not own that in this way the carnal mind most manifests its bitter enmity? If we loved God by nature we would do his will and keep his word. But as we despise his will and disobey his word, it is a plain proof that we neither love nor fear him, but really hate him.

But I will not dwell longer upon this gloomy subject, on this sad exhibition of human wickedness and misery, though it is needful we should know it for ourselves, that we should have a taste of this bitter cup in our own most painful experience, that we may know the sweetness of the cup of salvation when presented to our lips by free and sovereign grace.

II. Our next point then is RECONCILIATION.How sweet the sound as it drops upon the listening ear of the awakened sinner, and is carried by the power of God into a believing heart! The first work of grace upon the soul is to convince us of our sins; and as the Lord the Spirit is pleased to convince us of sin, he opens up by degrees the secret chambers of imagery and shows us what strangers we are by nature to God and godliness, what enemies by wicked works, laying the guilt of this alienation and enmity upon the conscience.

But, together with this work of conviction in the application of the law to the conscience, there is kindled by the same divine power a secret yearning after God, a longing for mercy from him and reconciliation to him. It is a great mistake to think that in the first dealings of God with the soul nothing is felt but conviction of guilt. It may seem so to the convinced sinner, for his mind is too dark to read plainly the writing of God upon his conscience; but it is not all doubt, fear, and bondage. In most cases, for I do not deny that there may be exceptions, the Lord is pleased from time to time to soften and melt the heart, to excite yearnings after reconciliation, longings to be brought out of that state of carnality and death in which the law finds us. The Spirit of God produces this yearning after pardon and peace by being poured out upon the soul as a Spirit of grace and of supplication. "They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them." (Jer. 31:9.)

So it was with the tax-collector in the temple, with the prodigal in the parable, with the thief upon the cross. Conviction of sin and prayer for mercy in their cases went hand in hand. Reconciliation, then, becomes a very sweet sound to a heart that can, as thus taught and led by God, lay hold of any way or plan whereby it may come into a state of friendship with God. The mind may be very dark, unbelief may much prevail, the conscience be full of guilt, great doubt and fear may possess the soul, causing the whole inward work of the Spirit to be enveloped in thick obscurity. Yet through all this thick darkness rays of divine light will, from time to time, beam upon the mind, either under the preaching of the Gospel, or in reading the Scriptures, or by some gentle movements of the Spirit upon the heart in secret prayer. But all these internal sensations are "cords of love and bands of a man" whereby the Lord is drawing the soul into friendship with himself; for his own words are, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn you." (Jer. 31:3.) This leads us to consider more at length what reconciliation is as revealed in the word of truth and in a believing heart.

A. Reconciliation was, in its first rise and origin, a free, voluntary, spontaneous act upon the part of God. He never consulted the mind of man or angel upon the matter, or left it in the slightest degree to hang or hinge upon the will of either. He devised no plan in which he permitted the 'creature' to share the wisdom of the plan with himself. It was planned in eternity by himself and by himself alone in his Trinity of Persons yet Unity of Essence; and when so planned was ordered in the everlasting covenant, which, as specially fixed between the Father and the Son, is called in Scripture "the counsel of peace between them both." (Zech. 6:13.) In heaven the plan was laid, there the eternal decree fixed, there the mode of its execution unalterably determined. And O, what a plan it was! It was nothing less than that God's dear and only-begotten Son should come into this world, take our nature into union with his own divine Person and Godhead, and in that nature, which by this intimate union personally became his own, to suffer, bleed, and die in our room and stead.

But you may say, "What need was there for all this? Could not God have forgiven man without this sacrifice? Was it needful his own Son should die that man might be saved?" What did our Lord say to his Father in the garden? "O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me– nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." It was the will of God that his Son should take the cup of sorrow and of death, and drink it to the very dregs. Do you think that the prayer of Christ in his agony would not have moved the Father to contrive some other way, if any other way had been possible? No! there was, there could be, no other way, for, as Deer truly speaks,
"Sin to pardon without blood,
Never in His nature stood."

As far, then, as we are enlightened from the Scriptures of truth to see into the mind of God, there was no possibility of man being saved without a full and adequate ransom price being paid, without the law being perfectly obeyed, without atoning blood being shed, and a perfect satisfaction rendered. But all this could only be done by the Son of God being made flesh and suffering for our sake. We must be content with believing this, for our reason cannot penetrate into this heavenly mystery; and, when we are led into it by the teaching and testimony of the Blessed Spirit, we shall not only be content with believing it, but thankfully receive what God so freely gives.

B. Looking, however, a little more closely into this heavenly truth as revealed in the Scriptures, we may draw a distinction between reconciliation as effected by the blood of Christ, and reconciliation as made known by a divine power to the heart. These are two distinct things, though closely connected; and, in fact, the latter flows wholly out of the former. Thus, Christ by his death upon the cross reconciled the PERSONSof his people unto God, for he suffered in their stead that punishment which was due to their transgressions. So speaks the apostle, "And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross." (Eph. 2:16.) So again, "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom. 5:10); and again, "And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself" (Col. 1:20); once more, "And all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." (2 Cor. 5:18.) I quote these texts, as I wish to impress it deeply upon your minds that reconciliation to God, that is of our persons, is wholly through the atoning blood of the Lamb.

But there is another reconciliation, not of our persons, but our hearts, of which the apostle speaks (2 Cor. 5:20), "We beg you in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God." He cannot mean there the reconciliation of their persons, for that he tells us was already done when God reconciled us to himself by the blood of the cross; but he means that inwardreconciliation of heart and affection which is produced by the application of atoning blood to the conscience; as we find him elsewhere expressing himself, "By whom we have now received (that is, inwardly and experimentally received) the atonement;" as we read in the margin, which is the right translation, "the reconciliation." (Rom. 5:11.) These two things are to be carefully distinguished, for there is no true peace of conscience as long as we confound them.

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