Matthew 5:23-24 English Standard Version
23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
This passage has been on my mind for days now. My older brother passed away without his issues with me being resolved. What he held against me my whole life was the fact that I was ever born. That was something that was not my fault but it has been held against me for 76 years.
Reconciliation has to be found on reasonable terms. The problem with reconciliation in my situation is that the wronged party was the wrong party. It does not work that way. It was impossible to restore a relationship we never had, never, not one day.
This is not the biblical meaning of reconciliation. In order to have a relationship with God the guilty party cannot make amends to a God they have never had a relationship with to begin with. Adam broke faith with God and sin entered into the world and we all come into this world as broken people. There is nothing we can do to reconcile what Adam did in original sin.
Reconcile in spiritual terms is a book accounting practice. It means to move one party out of the red, debt owed, into the black, debt paid.
by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
I could not reconcile my birth to my brother and none of us can reconcile our birth to God. Justice demands that a debt has to be paid and since we are a bankrupt people empty of any righteousness, God the Father had to send God the Son to reconcile our debt as an acceptable sacrifice for all mankinds debt. His atonement blood was the only blood sacrifice that held the power to satisfy such a great debt.
Sadly there are many out there that refuse to acknowledge their sin debt to God. In so doing they also reject the free will offering for the cancellation of that debt in the atoning work of the Cross of Christ.
Once we are in the grave it is too late. We still have time to reach them.