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Repentance from sin

                Reconciliation with god

                When reconciliation takes place between people, it is usually
                because  they  have  'fallen  out'  with  one  another.    The
                friendship  has  ceased  and  one  or  other  has  to  take  an
                initiative to apologise and begin to put things right.

                It is not so with God because He never departed from man
                and did not stop loving him.

                However,  just  as  when  people  drift  apart,  they  become  like
                strangers,  so  as  man  drifted  from  God,  mankind  became
                strangers to Him.   But He never has been a stranger to us.

                So all the doctrines that have been looked at, were designed
                by God to enable us to be reconciled to Him.

                Colossians  1  v19,20    'For  God  was  pleased  to  have  all
                His  fulness  dwell  in  him  (Jesus),  and  through  him  to
                reconcile to Himself all things whether things on earth or
                in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on
                the cross'.

                There is a word used in the Bible - PROPITIATION,  which
                means to appease.

                In most religions; and in Bible times the Greeks had their own
                religion; there is the idea that the 'gods' do not naturally have
                good will toward their people.  So people have in some way
                to appease them.

                In  the  Bible  the  word  Propitiate  is  never  used  in  the
                sense of appeasing a disagreeable God.

                Instead the sense of meaning is - to remove all the effects of
                SIN and turn us from enemies to friends of God.

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