Easter would not mean a great deal without the cross before it.  What Jesus did and accomplished on that cross makes Easter so outstanding--and the resurrection proves God accepted Christ’s sacrifice for us. 

In our first study in this series we looked at the amazing truth that our debt was cancelled out at the cross.  We owe God a debt of perfect obedience.  We owe that to Him because He is our creator and as our maker He has that right over us.  However, sin makes it impossible for us to live a life of perfect obedience. 

So God did for us--through Jesus Christ--what we could never do for ourselves.  Jesus led a perfect life--fulfilling the demands of God and the debt that we owed.  Since Jesus owed no debt Himself, He was able to take ours upon Himself and pay for them--which is exactly what He accomplished on the cross.  He took the list of our sins and nailed them to the cross thereby canceling them out.  The moment we accept this truth God applies it to our account and our debt to Him is wiped away.

Cancelled debt, it is one of the tremendous results of the cross.  Now, we’ll look at result number 2.  Remember, these results are in no particular order.  There’s no chronology or hierarchy we are following.  Each result is significant in its own right.  These are simply in the order I decided to preach them.  For number two, I decided to move from cancelled debt to reconciliation. 

We are actually going to focus on two Scripture passages:  Colossians 1, and Ephesians 2.  I want to start in Colossians. 

Colossians 1:19-22 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.  Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.  But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

There is actually a two-pronged dynamic to reconciliation in the Bible, and both prongs come out of a single source--the cross.  The first prong (first in both priority and chronology because without taking care of the first you have little or no power for the second) is between God and man.  The second prong, then, is between man and man.  The ability for both of these to happen was accomplished for us at the cross.

And that's good, because reconciliation is a tough thing--just as Leon and Mildred of British Columbia, Canada discovered.  They had been having some friction in their relation.  The main point of friction arose over the amount of alcohol the Leon was consuming.  Mildred complained it was way too much and wanted him to cut down; Leon said he had every right to go out drinking with his buddies whenever he wanted.  Their relationship was hurting and broken over this issue.  What they needed was reconciliation, but they chose a different path. 

While Leon was out drinking one night Mildred changed the locks on the house.  When Leon got home late he was unable to get into the house.  He pounded and screamed but Mildred refused to open the door.  It turned out that Leon was a heavy equipment operator by trade.  In his anger, he went out behind the garage and fired up the bulldozer, whereupon he promptly smashed the house to smithereens.  Mildred escaped safely, and Leon’s explanation later was, “If I couldn’t sleep in the house then neither was she!” 

Again, reconciliation is difficult to achieve.  It is difficult between people; it is impossible between man and God--apart from the work of Jesus Christ.  In Colossians, two key concepts about our reconciliation with God comes out.  Those concepts are the source and the strategy.

For the source take a look at verses 19 and 20 again.  It starts out by saying, “It was the Father’s good pleasure.”  And then it lists two things that it was His good pleasure to do.  One is to have the fullness dwell in Jesus.  “The fullness” could be a whole sermon in itself, but basically the idea is fleshed out for us in chapter 2 verse 9.

The second thing it was the Father’s good pleasure to do, according to 1:20 was, “through Him to reconcile all things to Himself.”  God the Father, through Jesus, reconciles all things to Himself.  Reconciliation began with God.  He initiated it.  He is the source.  The Bible is not a record of man searching for God and then finally finding a way to have a right relationship with Him.  The Bible is a record of God’s work towards man.

Since man is spiritually dead he cannot seek God!

Man did not seek God--God sought man.  In fact, since man is spiritually dead he CANNOT seek God.  Dead people can’t initiate something like that.  The only reason anybody seeks after the divine is because God places that desire in them.  So, reconciliation is not a work of man towards God, rather it is a work of God for us. 

This is a pivotal distinction between Christianity and every man-made religion in this world.  All the man made religions; Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, spiritism, new age, and whatever else you can think of, they all start with man working his way towards God.  Man, through his efforts and works and good deeds and piety will be able to make himself acceptable to God.  It is only Christianity that shows God reaching down to a helpless humanity.  The source of our reconciliation is God Himself.

Now that brings us to the strategy.  The strategy that God used was so bizarre that most of the Jews and Romans that witnessed it refused to believe it.  Look at the next line in verse 20, “Having made peace through the blood of the cross.”  The strategy or the means of reconciliation was the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross.

There is no other way it could have happened.  We could not be reconciled to God if our sin was not dealt with.  As long as the sin was left in our lives we could never be at peace with God.  The relationship could never be right.  Holiness and unrighteousness cannot dwell together.  But Christ shed His blood, dying in our place so that our sins could be forgiven.  And one of the tremendous results of that is that we can now be reconciled to God.

The word ‘reconcile’ literally means to change or to exchange.  Because of Christ’s death on the cross we are able to change our relationship to God.  In fact, in terms of our relationship with God everything is changed because of the great exchange.  The great exchange is our sinfulness for Christ’s righteousness.  That is what takes place at the moment of salvation. 

God takes all of your sins and charges them to Jesus Christ’s account and Jesus pays for them by suffering and dying on the cross.  God takes the total and complete righteousness of Christ and He applies it to your account.  So now when God looks at you He does not see a poor miserable sinner.  He sees a person perfectly righteous, a man or a woman without sin.

Have you ever wondered how it is that God can even stand the sight of you sometimes?   You know what I’m talking about.  You’ve sinned… again.   Maybe it was the same old sin that you promised God you would never do again.  And you feel awful, you’re just miserable about.  You go to God and you ask for forgiveness.  Just like you’ve done dozens of times before.  And even as you are praying you wonder how God can stand to look at you when you fail so much when you can’t hardly stand to look at yourself? 

Well, this is how He can.  Because when He saved you He did a wonderful work.  He exchanged your sinfulness, all of it--past present and future--for Christ’s righteousness.  And because of that great exchange your relationship with God is forever changed, even during those times when you fail.   You are reconciled with God. 

Verses 21 and 22 give us a quick before-'n'-after picture of this great exchange.  Before, according to verse 21 alienated, hostile in mind and engaged in evil deeds.  Alienated means to be separated from and not on good terms.  And most people, before they get saved will admit that they don’t have that closeness with God.

But hostile is another matter.  Most people would deny being hostile towards God.  However, that is only because we think of hostile as being angry with God, hating God, openly rebellious and shaking their fist at God.  Most people would say, “That’s not me, I’m just kind of apathetic towards God.”

But hostile doesn’t necessarily mean openly angry it simply means that we are against.  And if you are in charge of your own life, doing your own thing, then guess what?  You are against God, because God demands His rightful place as Lord and master of your life.  He demands to be in charge.  And any resistance to His authority is hostility. 

But in salvation that alienation and hostility are exchanged for a life that is holy, blameless and beyond reproach.  Now if you are a Christian and you just thought to yourself, “Whoa.  I’m not holy, blameless and beyond reproach,” you missed this concept of the great exchange.  You are holy, blameless and beyond reproach because your sin has been exchanged for Christ’s perfect righteousness. 

That’s who you are now and how God sees you.  And that is how you can be reconciled with God.  You are not at odds, you are not distant, you are not on poor terms.  You are fully accepted and pleasing to God because of what Jesus did for you on the cross.  It allows you to have a right relationship with God, a close and loving relationship.  And you get this relationship even in the midst of your struggles and failures.  Being reconciled with God is a tremendous result of the cross.

But it goes even a step further.  Not only can we be reconciled to God, but man can be reconciled with his fellow man:

Ephesians 2:13-19 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.  For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.  His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.  For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.  Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with god's people and members of God's household

A lot of things were different in the church of that day compared to ours today.  They didn’t have Powerpoint presentations for their songs.  There was no microphone to amplify the preacher, which I suppose made it easier to fall asleep during the sermon.  There was no necktie to choke us, and no clock on the back wall to regulate the length of the service. 

But in spite of those differences there is more that is the same--because people, sin, and the problems caused by sin are the same today just as back then.  And one of the big problems they had to deal with was vastly different people getting saved and then coming together in one church. 

The early church had slaves and slave masters in the same congregation.  The early church had men who were raised to think of woman as barely better than a slave along side of woman who were working, serving, and ministering in the church.  They had Greeks, who considered themselves superior to every other race.  And worst of all, they had Jews and Gentiles who carried a deep-seated hatred for each other. 

 How could this possibly work to have them all together?   Only one way:

Ephesians 2:16 ...and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 

Again, it is a tremendous result of the cross.  What exactly did Jesus do?  There are two main things.  One, according to verse 14 Jesus became our peace by making us one.  This is explained in greater detail in other Bible passages, but we are all brought into one body in Christ.  Your background doesn’t matter, slave or free, Jew Greek or Gentile, male or female, we are all brought in and made to be a part of the one body of Christ.  We all function and operate together as one.  That is how God designed us to be.  There is no room for petty prejudices or selfishness and no reason for it.  Jesus is our peace, teaching us that all men are created equal.

The second is found towards the end of verse 15 where it says about Jesus, “that in Himself He might make the two into one new man.”  When you become a Christian you become a brand new person and the old distinctions no longer divide because we are all the same new creation.  We no longer are divided by nationality because we are all citizens of heaven.  We are no longer divided by race because we all have the same heavenly Father.  We are no longer divided by feelings of superiority because we know we are nothing without Christ.  And we aren’t divided by feelings of inferiority because we know that we are each an important part of the body of Christ. 

We cannot let differences divided us because that denies the truth of Jesus’ making us all into one new person.  We must not let sinful attitudes divide us because Jesus crushed that sin at the cross.  Since God through the forgiveness achieved on the cross reconciled us to Himself, we can- through forgiveness- be reconciled to one another.