OUR DAILY BREAD: MINISTER OF RECONCILIATION

[cimi]

MONDAY JANUARY 18


MINISTER OF RECONCILIATION

READ:
Romans 5:10
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while we were
God's enemies, we
were reconciled to
him through the
death of his Son.
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As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached on a Sunday morning in 1957, he fought the temptation to retaliate against a society steeped in racism.

"How do you go about loving your enemies?" he asked the Dexter Avenue Baptist congregation IN Montgomery, Alabama. "Begin with yourself....When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it."

Quoting from the words of Jesus, King said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you...: that ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven' (MATT. 5:44-45 KJV).

As we consider those who harm us, we are wise to remember our former status as enemies of God (SEE Rom. 5:10). But "[God] reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation," wrote Paul (2 COR. 5:18),. Now we have a holy obligation. "He has committed to us the message of reconciliation" (v.19). We are to take that message to the world.

Racial and political tensions are nothing new. But the business of the church is never to feed divisiveness. We should not attack those unlike us or those who hold different opinions or even those who seek our destruction. Ours is a "ministry of reconciliation" that imitates the selfless servant-heart of Jesus. ____Tim Gustafson

**In Christ there is no east or west, in Him no south or north,
but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.
______John Oxenham
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Hate destroys the hater as well as the hated. ____Martin Luther King JR.

*************************Today's Bible Reading _ 2 Corinthians 5:16-21**************************
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point
of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way,
we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,
the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new
is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself
through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:

19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not
counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to
us the message of reconciliation. 26 We are therefore Christ's
ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through
us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him
we might become the righteousness of God

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>INSIGHT<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Our salvation changes everything about us.
Paul says that the old has gone and the new has come. This
is not a future event but a current state, for those who are in
Christ are now a new creation. Paul uses the word reconcile for
being made new (vv. 18-20))__we are being reconciled to God. To
reconcile is to restore friendly relations, to erase division and
distance. The purpose of being made into a new creation is so
that we can help others become new creations too. ___J. R. Hudberg