What Does 2 Corinthians 5:18 Mean?
And all things are out of God, who exchanged us back to himself through Jesus, the Anointed One, and gave us the service of exchange.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;THE KEY
God’s act of reconciliation becomes the very ministry he entrusts to you.
THE MEANING
God is the source of this reconnection: through Jesus Christ, God brings you into relationship with himself. That same work becomes a ministry entrusted to you, so what you receive is also something you carry into your relationships now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that you must repair your relationship with God by your own effort before God receives you. Here, God is the one who reconciles, and the work follows as a gift.
THE ROOT
καταλλάσσω
katallassō
GROWS FROM
ἀλλάσσω
allassō
To change, alter, or exchange; καταλλάσσω names the restoring of relationship.
“exchanged us back to himself” in this verse is katallassō. The verse repeats this word family: God reconciles, then gives the ministry of reconciliation. The work entrusted to you carries the same movement God has already enacted: restoration is received, then becomes shared service.
ALSO GROWS
katallagē: Reconciliation, restoration of relationship.
καταλλαγή
This is the word translated ministry of reconciliation in the verse, joining what God does with what God entrusts.
allassō: To change, alter, or exchange.
ἀλλάσσω
The base word reveals that reconciliation belongs to the language of changed relationship, not merely the easing of a feeling.
THE PATTERN
Reconciliation begins with God’s initiative and then becomes work entrusted to people.
That God was in the Anointed One, exchanging the world back to himself, not counting their falls against them, and setting in us the word of exchange.For if, while we were enemies, we were exchanged with God through the death of his Son, much more, being exchanged, we will be delivered by his life.And he rose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his inward parts were moved, and he ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.THE THREAD
And, having made wholeness through the blood of his cross, through him to bring all things back to himself, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.The same Greek reconciliation word-family appears here, with all things as its scope. The ministry entrusted in this verse belongs to a restoration whose reach extends through earth and heaven.
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