The "Yes" Face

by Skip Heitzig | March 15, 2024

President Thomas Jefferson was once out riding with a group of men. They came to a river where the bridge had been washed away, so they had to ford the river on horseback. Another man walked up to Jefferson and asked if he would carry him across the river. Jefferson pulled him up on his horse and took him safely across.

When one in Jefferson's group asked the man why he had asked the president for help, he said, "I didn't know he was the president. All I know is that on some of your faces was written the answer no. His was a yes face."

I share that story because I want to talk about reconciliation. You might be wondering why. Well, reconciliation is God looking at you with a yes face, saying, "I will accept you. Yes, I will forgive you. Yes, you can be My child."

Reconciliation is the process when broken relationships are made right again. The word means literally to change or to exchange. So the idea is to change enemies into friends, to restore a relationship between two parties who are at odds.

The apostle Paul used the word in 1 Corinthians 7:11, when he spoke about a wife being reconciled to her husband. Jesus used the same word in Matthew 5:24, when He said you should be reconciled to your brother before offering a gift at the altar.

But in Colossians 1, the word reconcile refers to people being restored to a right relationship with God through Jesus: "And by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross" (v. 20).

Paul was saying that God by Himself can reconcile humanity back to Himself, because reconciliation with God is a one-sided process. God is always the initiator. We are always the responder. "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

In the Greek, the term referred to a financial exchange. We use that term today when we speak about reconciling our check register or balancing our account. So for God to reconcile with us, there must be a transaction. For God to justly forgive sin, He can't just wink and say, "Not a big deal." That wouldn't be just. Payment must be made, and we are bankrupt before God.

So what happens is what I like to call the great exchange or the great substitution. Jesus stood in for us and took the punishment. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5).

God put your sin on Jesus' account and Jesus' righteousness onto your account. "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Or put another way, God the Father treated Jesus like you and I deserve to be treated, so He could treat us like Jesus deserves to be treated.

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul wrote that God "has given us the ministry of reconciliation…. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (vv. 18, 20-21).

All of this is our message to the world: "Be reconciled to God. God will exchange your badness for His goodness, your sin for His righteousness. He wants to reconcile you to Himself. He has made the first move. He has turned His face toward you, and He is saying, 'Yes.'"

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