The Reconciliation Complete by W. E. Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 18, 1909

The Reconciliation Complete

By W. E. Haskell

The Greatest Reconciliation— No. 4

The Reconciliation Complete

W. E. HASKELL

This giving, this sacrifice, required the separation of Father and Son, the breaking of ties that bound them together. But what this separation involved would depend much on what they were to each other.

We read that Jesus is “the brightness of his [the Father’s] glory, and the express image of his person;” and that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Between them there would be a mutual understanding each of the other; delight each in the other; love each for the other; sympathy and companionship each with the other, such as could be between no others in all the universe. The ties of friendship, betrothal, of home relations, of all human love combined, can reveal only in part the ties which bound them as one.

The suffering resulting from the breaking of these earthly ties, all combined, would be far surpassed by the infinite suffering caused by the breaking of those ties of infinite love between the Father and the Son. To a being whose nature had never been benumbed and paralyzed by sin, contact with sin would be the most painful contact possible. But the sin of the world pressed upon Christ as being his own. He endured the double agony of separation from his Father and of closest contact with sin at one and the same time. Jesus would make a way for love to be revealed in its fulness, even though that way must be through his own broken heart. He endured the awful contact with sin, that from sin we might be forever separated. He endured the awful separation from his Father, that with them we might enjoy eternal reunion. The infinite sacrifice, self-denial, and suffering—the overwhelming display of love—reached its climax on the cross.

By means of the cross of Calvary, multitudes of sinners have had confidence restored, and their reconciliation with their Maker has been accomplished. “And you that were sometime alienated and enemies, . . . yet now hath he reconciled.” Col. 1: 21. “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself.” Verse 20. “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; . . . that he might reconcile both unto God, in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.” Eph. 2: 14, 16. This was so fully done that many have said, and more will yet say, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Rom. 8: 35, 38, 39.

The cross has a power possessed by no other agency to conquer unbelief and enmity, and to establish faith. It has filled the hearts of multitudes with the assurance that God is love, and therefore that in whatever he has required or permitted, “he hath done all things well.” On the cross, sin was punished in a way that makes equally plain God’s infinite hatred of sin, and also his infinite love for the sinner.

The one supreme act by which God’s justice and mercy were reconciled is the overwhelming display of love by which alone rebel sinners can be reconciled to God, and thereby with one another. Truly love’s conquest of unbelief and stubborn will is the greatest conquest in the world. Let the individual ask, “Has it conquered mine?”

“Just as I am, thy love I own Has broken every barrier down; Now to be thine, and thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”

Brayton, Tenn.