Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

by John M. Perkins

The second R—reconciliation—is the heart of the gospel. It is the process by which God brings us to Him and keeps us. It is the main activating force within the redemptive idea. It is the process of forgiveness of sin. The Bible makes it clear that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19 NKJV). It’s also the process by which believers in Christ are joined to one another: “His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Eph. 2:15–16). He’s working out our forgiveness. It’s His intention to hold us together through reconciliation. Reconciliation is working in the process of forgiveness—being forgiven and forgiving others. It’s an ongoing, living thing in the Bible. It’s active. It’s a moving force. We work out the idea of redemption with redemptive living. Our churches today make reconciliation an event or an institution, rather than treating it as a gift from God and an integral part of the gospel message in general.