Do you ever come across a part of the Bible and the more you read it the more complex it becomes? Romans has a lot of verses that do this to me. Some things I can read over and say to myself, “got it!” But then there are others I just sit and stare at for quite some time with my brain feeling quite perplexed.

Now on the surface I read over a scripture like this one in Romans and say, ok… He justified me by His blood, I am saved from His wrath, I was an enemy of God… got it, and then I get to the “I am reconciled to God by the blood of his Son. Now that I am reconciled I will be saved by his life.”

The first place for me to start dissecting this verse is to have an understanding of the word reconciled. What does it mean to me and what does it mean in this text. I understand reconciled in a very basic way. Just like many of you, I have to reconcile my checkbook every month to make sure I still know how to do fifth grade math. Sometimes it works and other times I spend hours combing over the numbers to find a discrepancy of 3 cents. To me reconciled means to be in balance. To have two things come together and be equal.

Webster defines reconciled this way: Brought into friendship from a state of disagreement or enmity. To be reconciled to God by the blood of his Son means to be a friend of God. That makes sense since the words right before this say that “while we were enemies” he reconciled us. God sent his Son to shed his blood so we could become His friend. In order for us to be reconciled with God, He had to remove the strife, enmity, and disobedience from us and balance that out with the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of our transgressions. Being a friend of God is His work in us not our work toward him.

There is so much more packed into this verse, but the piece I got out of it today was that God has given me a way to be reconciled to Him by believing in and accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. To be friends with God through Jesus is the most amazing experience a person can receive.

Lord God, thank you for making a plan before the beginning of time to allow your sinful creation to be able to be reconciled to you. I know that it cost you more than I can ever repay. Jesus says that no greater love is this than one who lays his life down for his friend. You Lord laid down your life so we could be friends. Thank you, thank you, and Amen.