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As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says, ‘In the time of my favour I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you’. I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:1-2).

Today, I invite you back to 2 Corinthians and follow on the heals of what Pastor Anthony brought to us yesterday. He spoke about reconciliation, which happens through repentance and forgiveness. First, we are reconciled with God when we repent and ask him to forgive us. He always does. But then we are to go out to tell this story and to live it. And to invite others into it.

In the verses of our text, Paul puts a bit of fire under the boots of his listeners. Get going, he says, don’t receive God’s grace in vain. What does he mean by that?

Well, to validate this urgency, he quotes from Isaiah 49:8, which is part of a larger theme in the Bible. This theme is rooted in the story of Israel coming out of Egypt. What is the repeated refrain of that story? The people didn’t trust God. They didn’t believe he could fulfill his promise to give them the promised land. In the end, they refused to go in.

As a result, God would not bring them in. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and died. They forfeited his salvation.

Throughout the rest of the Bible this becomes a parable for what happens when God’s people refuse to trust him. Psalm 95 is one of the stronger passages in this narrative, saying rather bluntly: “Don’t be like that.”

The writer to the Hebrews picks it up when he writes: “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Hebrews 3:13). In the New Testament, the ‘day of salvation’ or ‘Today’, is now. Jesus death and resurrection were God’s great acts of salvation to reconcile us to himself. We must respond now, today.

The response is always two-fold. On the one hand, we must receive reconciliation from God. We receive his grace. On the other hand, we must reach out with grace and reconciliation to those who have wronged us. These two cannot be separated. That is why Jesus followed the Lord’s prayer with, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).

We cannot receive grace without passing it on. If you are not sure how to begin becoming an ambassador of reconciliation, then begin at home. Begin with those that you need to forgive. Stop holding grudges. Stop making people pay for their wrongs. Break down the walls.

Is this easy? Not at all. But remember, the God who calls us to this has also reconciled us to himself and gives us the grace to reconcile with others.

Paul’s urges his listeners, in Corinth and in Hamilton, to get to it.