What is Biblical Reconciliation?

Put simply – What is biblical reconciliation?

The restoration of the favor of God through Christ. Our relationship with God is restored to what it was before the Fall.

Or even more simply –

Jesus takes our badness, we get his goodness.

A little more complicated –

This word carries with it a sense of monetary exchange; our standing has been made right with God by an exchange. This exchange was not with money or gold but with the sacrifice of Christ. In some translations, the word atonement is used instead of reconciliation. Martin Luther referred to this act as The Great Exchange; we receive Christ’s righteousness and he takes our sin, thereby, reconciling us to God.

Scripture References:

• Romans 5:11 “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
• 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”
• Ephesians 2:14–16 “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”
• Colossians 1:21–22 “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.”