Romans 5:9-11

We have been reflecting on a graphic scene from a famous painting, The Crucifixion, by fifteenth-century artist Matthias Grünewald: the central panel of the great polyptych he completed to adorn the high altar of the hospital chapel of St Anthony’s monastery at Isenheim in Alsace.

This work of art set new standards in the depiction of tragedy, the macabre, and spirituality. Grünewald (c1475-1528) combined the record of the Gospels, the mysticism of the Middle Ages, and the new artistic techniques of the Renaissance to create a deep and disturbing vision of the crucifixion.

At the centre of the painting stands the makeshift cross, and at its foot gather four people. There is John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalene, and the Apostle John, and Mary the mother of Jesus. And on the cross is Jesus. As Neil Macgregor observes in his book, Seeing Salvation,

There is no mistaking the Cross imagined by Grünewald for anything other than a hideous instrument of execution. On these rough-hewn timbers Christ’s broken, elongated body has been nailed up to die – pierced with nails so huge that their blunted spikes protrude from the wood. He bears the marks of prolonged torture. The livid hands, drained of blood, are crisped in agony … His head sags under the crown of thorns. Thorns, and the broken-off ends of twigs, are embedded in his cruelly scourged flesh. His loincloth has been torn to shreds … Christ’s feet twist around the ghastly pivot of a single nail, his blood still flowing down the unused, useless, wooden platform that was meant to take his weight … this is [an image of] Christ who died for us in supreme agony.

And yet it was on the cross, and through this man, and in this way, that God purchased our salvation. As we place our trust in Jesus, we are justified. As we rely on Jesus to bear our sins, we are forgiven. As we accept that his death was for us, we are reconciled to God.

That is what the Bible teaches. We see this clearly in Romans 5:1-11. There are many ways of understanding what Jesus has done for us through his suffering and death on the cross, but today I want to focus on the idea of reconciliation.

Paul refers to reconciliation five times as a way of describing the work of Jesus on the cross (Rom 5:9-11; 11:15; 2 Cor 5:16-21; Eph 2:11-22; Col 1:20-23). Reconciliation is about making friends out of enemies. Reconciliation with God is about God’s action in making friends out of his enemies.

As Derek Tidball, Principal of London Bible College, says, “[Reconciliation] is the least metaphorical and most concrete way of speaking of the new relationship between God and human beings that arises from the death of Christ.”

In Romans 5:6-11, Paul describes us as we were before we discovered God’s grace and love: we were “weak,” “ungodly,” “sinners,” “enemies.” That is what we were. But as we encounter God in the person of his Son, and as we engage with the story of the cross, and as we experience the new life that comes to us through the death of Jesus, we are changed.

Our hostility toward God is transformed into harmony. Our alienation from God is transformed into affinity. The fragmentation of our relationship with God is transformed into fellowship.

And as reconciliation takes root, and as our relationship to God deepens, it bears distinctive fruit: it transforms our relationships with other people. The gospel really does change people, and change whole communities.

One of the most powerful examples of the power of the story of the cross to achieve personal and social transformation is that of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa following the end of apartheid – an evil policy that had multiplied injustice and created many enemies.

When Nelson Mandela was elected President, his government could not act as though the wrongs of the apartheid years had never taken place. He established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission so that people on all sides could openly confess their wrongdoing, and receive forgiveness once the truth had been spoken.

Speaking at the Rustenberg Church Conference in 1990, which, for the first time, brought together the leadership of the white Dutch Reformed Church and that of the ‘anti-apartheid’ church, Desmond Tutu said:

If there is to be reconciliation, we who are ambassadors of Christ, we to whom the gospel of reconciliation has been entrusted, surely we must be Christ’s instruments of peace. We must ourselves be reconciled. The victims of injustice and oppression must be ever ready to forgive. That is a gospel imperative.

But those who have done wrong must be ready to say, ‘We have hurt you by our injustice, by uprooting you from your homes, by dumping you in poverty-stricken resettlement camps. By giving your children inferior education. By denying your humanity and trampling down your fundamental rights. We are sorry, forgive us.’ And the wronged must forgive.

Reconciliation of this kind, and on this scale, is not an unreachable utopian ideal. It is possible, and achievable, and desirable. And let me remind you that Australians too suffer from lack of reconciliation and peace of various kinds. We have issues of our own that have multiplied injustice and created many enemies. We have our own Reconciliation Commission, and our own opportunities for applying the gospel imperative.

But I believe that the power of the gospel to effect social transformation comes as the fruit of personal transformation. Jesus did not die for governments – he died for people like us. He did not merely die as an example – he died to reconcile people to God. He did not die in an attempt to address the global imbalance of evil against good – he died to take away our sins and establish righteousness, to utterly defeat evil and do away with it forever.

It all begins when, as individuals, you and I approach the cross by faith, and acknowledge that we are God’s enemies because of our sins, and accept that God has dealt with our sins through the death of Jesus – the agent of reconciliation, and receive God’s forgiveness and new life.

The outcome of this reconciliation is “peace with God,” as Paul notes in verse 1. But, as many scholars have pointed out, this peace involves more than the absence of hostility. It means

the presence of positive harmony. It speaks not of the absence of wrong relationships but of the presence of right relationships. It is the soil in which our well-being can grow. It leads to our wholeness. It stands for all the benefits of salvation that we find in Christ.

It is no wonder, then, that Paul gets excited when he considers that God has reconciled his enemies through the death of his Son, and then saves those who are reconciled by the life of his Son (v 10)!

And he goes on: “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (v 11).

Are you rejoicing in God today? Has God reconciled you to himself? Have you experienced God’s forgiveness and received his new life? Are you now God’s agent of reconciliation in your world? You can be!

Looking for the last time at Matthias Grünewald great painting of the crucifixion, it seems hard to believe that forgiveness could flow from violence, and friendship from enmity; and that victory could come out of defeat, and life out of death.

But that is precisely what has happened. And that is why Paul rejoices in God, and that is why we rejoice in God today – even as, with heavy hearts, we contemplate the fact and the significance and the personal meaning of the cross on this Good Friday.

I conclude as I did last week with words from another poem by G.A. Studdert-Kennedy, this time referring to the awful scene at the cross, and what Jesus accomplished there for God – and for you and me:

And sitting down, they watched him there, The soldiers did: There, while they played with dice, He made his sacrifice, And died upon the Cross to rid God’s world of sin.

He was a gambler too, my Christ, He took his life and threw It for a world redeemed. And ere his agony was done, Before the westering sun went down, Crowning that day with its crimson crown, He knew that he had won.

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E148 Copyright (c) 2004 Rod Benson. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2001). To talk with Rod about this message, email RodBenson[at]morling.edu.au or write to P.O. > Box 1790, MACQUARIE CENTRE 2113 AUSTRALIA. To subscribe, email RodBenson[at]morling.edu.au with > “subscribe-riverbank” in the subject.