Rom. 5:11, And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
2 Cor. 5: 17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
The word reconciliation is one of the most interesting and powerful words in the New Testament. Paul uses the word only four times, and the word “reconciliation” means much more than what most people understand because, in our culture, we simply think of reconciliation as when two people who’ve been divided are brought together in peace and relationship. The word “reconciliation” was a word that was used among the Greek people that primarily meant “to exchange.” it literally meant an “exchange” of something, and then a profit from the exchange. When talking about reconciliation, it is important to note that Paul never speaks of God being reconciled to men, but always of men being reconciled to God. Reconciliation is not something that man accomplishes, but it is something that God accomplished, and man either embraces or doesn’t. The gospel is about the “Great Exchange.” Paul said in that Romans 5:11 passage that we have now received “the” reconciliation. At the Cross, in Christ, God performed the great exchange when Jesus died for our sins, and the old self, which was controlled by the power of sin, was crucified and buried with Him, and then out of the grave in union with His resurrection life a totally new self-emerged. That is the great exchange; He became sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, and in union with Him, we would share His very life, that we might live daily by His adequacy, instead of being controlled by our fallen inadequacy. When we, in time and space, by faith, embraced this great gift of the Exchange Life that He accomplished for us at the Cross, that is the moment of our new birth when we received The Reconciliation. The Christian life is much more than a changed life; it is an Exchanged Life. It is an “Instead of” Life. Christ inside of me, and His ability, instead of mine.