"God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God... If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Cor 5.19-20, 17).

In these unforgettable words the apostle Paul summed up the Christian message of God, the ground of faith and the practical aspect of the new life.

God is he who in Jesus Christ goes the way of the cross, who takes suffering upon himself in order to reconcile the world; who dies in abysmal forsakenness in order to impart his love to the world; who becomes poor in order to make many rich.

The world in which we live, suffer and struggle, is the creation which God loved in the cross of Christ and did not forsake, reconciled and did not spurn. The world is not accused, but acquitted. It is therefore intended to live and not to perish.

And we ourselves are those who are new creatures in community with Christ, freed from the law of the old, passing world, freed from fear of its lords and powers, freed from sin and death and now open for new life in joy, open for the redemption of the whole yearning creation, open for the coming creative act of God.

"Behold, all things are become new." Behold the dying Christ and you see the dawning of the coming day of God which will transform all things.

So this is our task: As representatives of the poor, suffering, and dying Christ, and in his name, we are to beseech all men to be reconciled with God, and in so doing to invite them all to their new future, to freedom, to peace, and to righteousness. His cross is the sign of hope on this earth. God's reconciliation is the living fountain of liberation for guilt-laden, dying men, for the humiliated and offended, for the poor and wretched. The man who believes in the God of reconciliation begins to suffer because of this unredeemed world. He can no longer put up with conditions in the separated churches, in a divided world, and in inhuman societies. He hin1self has become different. The world must not remain as it is. It is open for the freedom that means redemption, because it is reconciled in Christ. We hope for the future transformation of the world, because we believe in its reconciliation with God.

The man who believes in reconciliation begins to suffer because of the church.

The message of reconciliation has been misused and betrayed by historical Christianity itself. False prophets speak of peace and admonish men to peace where there is no peace; they comfort the people in their distress and pretend things are really not so bad (Jer 8.11). Reconciliation is often confused with appeasement. Moreover religion is misused in order to keep the poor subdued, so that those who suffer will become acquiesced to injustice and not protest against it. Faith is then intended as an inhibitor of the impulses and a damper of the emotions. People call conflicting parties to reconciliation simply as a means of remaining neutral themselves and not having to take sides. By demanding reconciliation with our enemies, whom we have treated unjustly, we often expect to evade the confession of our own guilt. We confuse love with tolerance toward evil. Can people believe churches which preach reconciliation to others but do not themselves practise it concretely as Jesus did when he healed the sick, exorcized demons, and sat at table with sinners and tax collectors? Why are many Christians turning away from the churches and joining revolutionary social movements or new messianic cults? They see churches and congregations which are reconciled more with the privileges of their society and with the goodwill of the powers that be than with the crucified Christ. It is for this reason that the rebels hate the message of reconciliation, for everywhere they see the spurious practice of the "placators", who do not live and act as representatives of Christ but are concerned only with their own vindication.

Reconciliation means new community with God and with one another. How is this community to be proved credible by separated churches? The separation of Christianity into different churches, their jealous competition in missions, the mutual discrimination of Christians through the polity of other churches is a scandal. It is a scandal not only before the world which has to witness this pitiful spectacle, but an even more shameful scandal in face of the sufferings of the dying Christ. If the churches still want to convey to society something of Christianity, and that means of God's reconciliation, they must open themselves to renewal. The believer is in the first place a Christian and only secondarily a member of "his" church. His suffering because of "his" church stems from his love for Christ who has loved him together with the world. Does this love for Christ and the world lead us today out of the established churches?

In many churches today we find such an emigration movement on the part of youth. And without doubt, they are leaving the churches not merely for the sake of a revolutionary social transformation of the world, but also for the sake of Christ. They no longer find Christ in the churches; they find him in the slums. The churches, which for centuries have been separated, are today on the way -so we hope -to an ecumenical community. The modem social-revolutionary criticism of the churches, whether they are now separated or united, is throwing up within Christianity battlefronts that were hitherto unknown to us, but will be increasingly forced on our attention in the future. In this situation, where in Christ's love for the world we suffer because of the church, we should not try to evade this suffering either by a conservative retreat into the past or by a modernistic escape into the future. We should accept this suffering and in the midst of these conflicts seek productively for a new, credible community of Christ. Through God's reconciliation the churches, too, can become free again, free of their failures and their defection to the powers of this world. This is our hope for the church of Christ. We believe in the one church of God liberated through reconciliation.

The man who believes in reconciliation begins to suffer because of the divided world.

We have had to bury many of our hopes for the humanization of the world through science, technology, rational economics and world politics. We live in a mutually antagonistic and divided world. One division follows another, paradoxically enough, the more the world develops into "one world". The second world war left the legacy of the east-west conflict, which led to the division of the world into spheres of influence controlled by the two great white powers, Russia and America. During the last twenty years the economic conflict between the rich peoples of the northern hemisphere and the poor peoples of the southern has come increasingly to the forefront. To the ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism has been added the racial conflict. Where ideological differences, social, religious, and national tensions emerge today, political peace is secured not by reconciliation but by separation, dispossession, schism, apartheid, and ghettos. An ideological wall has been built in Berlin. A religious barbed-wire barrier runs through Belfast. The process of ghetto-building continues in South Africa and North America. Whole populations in the Near East, in India, in Indochina, etc., are dispossessed and persecuted in order that the rest may share the field. Divided cities, divided countries, divided peoples, caste and class systems scar the face of this earth on which men obviously cannot and will not live in a human way with other men. Every tyrant who would extend slavery lives by the slogan -divide et impera: Divide and so dominate. The life of humanity is oppressed by division and domination. In this divided world, appeasement is not a way to reconciliation but only a method of surviving by means of separating the combatants and postponing mutual annihilation.

The man who believes in reconciliation begins to suffer because of the inhumanity of man and his society.

Inhuman is the man who abandons his humanity and makes himself the proud and despairing God of himself and his neighbour. He is afraid of himself and of his fellowmen. He can no longer love. He loves only himself. For this reason he misuses his experience, his possessions and his fellowmen to the end of his own self-justification. They are all required to tell him repeatedly who he really is, and thus to alleviate his inner lack of assurance. In his fear, he sets his dependence on transient things. These are to buttress his self-confidence. He expects from the good things of the creation what only the Creator himself can give him. He transforms the glory of the invisible God into an image resembling transient man (Rom 1.23). He changes the truth of God into a lie and serves the creature more than the Creator (Rom 1.25). "The heart of man is a factory turning out idols", as Calvin rightly said. This emerges above all in man's religion wherever it is a "religion of fear". In this sense man is ineradicably religious. His world -even his modern world -is full of idols, gods, fetishes and personality cults. But when man gives his heart to idolized values and realities of this kind, then he is no longer free to accept his life as it really is, without either illusion or resignation. He is no longer free to assent to his own life and alongside of it also the different life of others. Every attack on his idols becomes for him an attack on his better self, and he reacts to it with deadly aggression. As an idol-worshipper of this kind, man is in very truth a neurotic being. Human societies that have used political religions to exalt idol-worship into a cult are inhuman. Men are sacrificed to the Moloch of their own proud nation. Humanity is sacrificed to the fetishism of goods and consumption.

We are all too often not ready for peace, because each is afraid of losing his own pride. The idol factories in our countries are working at high pressure. The crucified Christ, or these idols - that is the question. Those who in faith in the crucified Christ have experienced liberation from fear begin to suffer because of the inhuman pressures of this fear. The followers of him who was crucified by the gods and forces of this world will also be ready to rise in freedom and shatter the gods and cults of their society.

To demonstrate and practise in our time man's liberation through God's reconciliation will mean that in the midst of hatred fn the one hand and anger on the other, in the midst of reaction and revolution, we maintain the enduring power of hope. We should consciously accept the suffering of our time, should take "ver the cry for freedom that comes from the heart of oppressed men and peoples and make it the object of our own yearning, and should answer it with the. call to reconciliation. The world, 00, can be liberated through reconciliation. This is our hope ~r a humanity divided and tormented by idols and the fear of j01s. We believe in the one, new humanity of God, liberated by reconciliation.

II

Yet what is reconciliation? How does God reconcile us. "0 as to shatter both our wishful thinking and our nightmares, ° transform our divided and enslaved world and make it free? Where is the reconciling God at work?

Whatever course Christian faith and theology may take, the crucified Christ alone is our reconciler and liberator. If we would know what reconciliation really is, then we must look upon the way of Jesus. Jesus realized God's reconciliation by proclaiming the nearness and liberation of God among the godless, by healing he sick, by exorcizing demons, by sharing the life of lepers, sinners and tax-gatherers, by championing the cause of the poor and oppressed. He took the reconciliation that is created by God, and lived and proved it amid the conflicts of his divided society. That is why the way of Jesus became the way to the Cross. And here, in the solitude of his dying, there took place the reconciliation and liberation of the whole godless world through the love of the Father. What distinguishes Christian faith from other religions and revolutions, is solely the sovereignty of the crucified Christ. His cross separates faith from unbelief, as also from superstition. Everything that Christians believe and do must be brought to light and justified before the face of the crucified Lord. For it was through his suffering and dying that God once for all reconciled the godforsaken world with himself, accepted it, and opened for it the way to freedom. It was not Jesus who reconciled God, but God himself, through the dying Jesus, who reconciled the world with himself.

The cross of Christ makes plain the cost of reconciliation (John 3.16).

The raising of the crucified Christ discloses the universal future of the freedom that arises therefrom.

Let us make plain first the cost of reconciliation. God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt not by reconciliation with Pharaoh but by delivering the persecuted and destroying the persecutors in the Red Sea (Ex. 14). According to the Prophet Isaiah's visions of the future, this God will sacrifice great and distant nations for the redemption of his people from the Babylonian exile (Is. 43.1-7). But according to the gospel of the "new covenant" God, in Christ's suffering and death, sacrifices his own Son, and that means himself, because of his love for the world's freedom. The corruption and the condemnation have become so vast and worldwide that God himself sets to work and bears the sins of the world. Forsaken by God and man, Jesus dies alone on the cross and so takes upon himself the solitude, the forsakenness, and the burden of corruption for the whole world. This creates life, freedom, peace, and a new joy for this world and all men in it. This reconciliation is therefore not simply asserted. It is no decree. This reconciliation is accomplished by substitutionary suffering and the sacrifice of love. God did not spare himself but gave himself up for the reconciliation of the world and its freedom. Reconciliation is an expensive grace. By taking the corruption of the world upon himself, God created a new future for the world in salvation. We must grasp that in the very suffering and death of Christ God creates something new. God is "for us", for us sinners. God is "with us", with us the godless.

Reconciliation with God is brought about solely by God himself. He is the subject and we are the objects of reconciliation. This is also why Christ's substitutionary act is exclusive, unique, unrepeatable and once for all. God's reconciliation provides the ground on which, and the power by which to bring about reconciliations between mutually hostile men. God is "for us", and therefore we can and should be "together" and not against one other. The word of the cross is the gospel of God, as Paul says. If a man does not here begin to believe in God, to live with him and to give thanks to him, then he has not yet made a beginning with Christianity at all. We shall best call faltering Christendom back to God by calling all men to the cross of Christ.

It is true that reconciliation here means that guilt is forgiven. We know quite well that men and peoples often cannot recognize and own up to their own guilt because they think they would then loose all their se1f-respect. Hence guilt is mostly repressed. But repressed guilt continues to work and poisons the life of individuals and whole peoples with hatred of others and fear of themselves. On the cross of Christ, however, the guilty are not called to account and punished. They are called to love and made free. Guilt no longer needs to be repressed, but can be owned as guilt forgiven. Yet reconciliation does not mean only forgiveness of guilt, but also, liberation from the power of sin. For Paul sin is not only a guilt that we have, but far more a power that totally enslaves us. It is the godless curse of death which obtains power over men through fear. This fear is responsible for man's unhumanly making idols of transient things which are supposed to guarantee him security. Fertility becomes the idol of his fear. The nation, or a leader, becomes the idol of his fear. Men who are different from himself become spectres and phantoms of his fear. The man who is afraid can be dominated. He can be blackmailed and exploited. Liberation from the power of sin is therefore always also liberation from fear and liberation from idols, and liberation from our hatred of men who are different from ourselves. This liberation from the dominion of sin takes place through the power of reconciliation. We find it in the raising of the crucified Christ from the dead. For this reason Paul linked "reconciliation of the world" with "life from the dead" (Rom 11.15). For in the resurrection of him who was crucified for us, death is indeed stripped of its power. The man who is grasped by the spirit of the resurrection, which is the spirit of freedom, has no longer any fear. He is God's friend, even if the world is his foe. He laughs at the lords and powers of this world. The evil curse of their lordship and domination is broken where the crucified Christ becomes the trail-blazer of life in freedom. The man who has no longer any fear cannot well be dominated any longer. He can be shot, it is true. But "it is a wonderful thing when you suddenly have no more fear".

Where does this liberation through reconciliation take place? The proclamation of reconciliation with God brought Jesus into deadly conflict with the official powers of his time, with the priests and the politicians. He was expelled from their camp and died "outside the gate" (Heb 13.12) between other condemned criminals. Hence reconciliation was not accomplished in a sanctuary, not in a religious sphere, but in the midst of the world, and moreover at its lowest point, on a gallows for the lost. Therefore we should not make reconciliation into a cult which is celebrated in the tranquillity of the church in isolation from the world's suffering. Rather we must seek and receive the reconciliation of Christ where he suffered. "Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him", says Hebrews (13.13). Reconciliation is not a religious cult for the pious but the justification of the godless and the love of God toward his enemies in the midst of their world (Rom 5.6). We dare not allow liberation through reconciliation to be cooped up in a religious ghetto. The power of the resurrection seeks the complete renewal of the whole world. If the cross of Christ did not stand in a holy place but "outside", then reconciliation also does not belong within the personal recesses of the devout heart. We cannot confine reconciliation to the ghetto of our hearts. We must seek the reconciliation of Christ and receive his freedom precisely where he suffered, and that means in the midst of the concrete situations of inhumanity in our society.

For whom is God's reconciliation in Christ meant? Here Paul recognizes two spheres: reconciliation is meant firstly for "us" (2 Cor 5.18) and secondly for "the world" (2 Cor 5.19; Rom 11.15; Col 1.20; Eph 2.16). These distinctions are not antitheses, since reconciliation is meant for us together with the whole enslaved creation, and it is meant for the world through the witness of our lives. The sphere of reconciliation is in fact as wide as all God's creation. His reconciliation reaches every place beneath the sun. When Christians reserve reconciliation for themselves and allow the rest of the world only their sympathy or their foreign aid, they betray the cross. This is the "Christian caste" which segregates itself from the rest of the people. If not everyone can become reconciled, then we also are not really reconciled. We should therefore break out of the narrow-mindedness of our petty faith, out of the bottleneck of our churches, and out of the anxious egoism of our nations and develop a new religion of solidarity with all men and especially with the damned of this earth. "God was in Christ reconciling the world..." And the churches are surely not "the world", but at best a small beginning of that reconciled world of God. Out of the tension between "us", the reconciled, and the "world" reconciled by God there arises our mission of freedom, our commitment to freedom, and our involvement in the cause of righteousness in the world. If we are really aware of this tension, the ground is virtually burning under our feet.

Finally we should not forget that the reconciliation of the world is brought about through the bodily death and resurrection of Christ. The salvation of the world is therefore not merely the blessedness of the soul but, along with that, the redemption of the body. "The body belongs to the Lord and the Lord to the body", argues Paul (1 Cor 6.13). He does not speak of any preeminence of the soul. Now that Christians have so long emphasized the salvation of the soul and the redemption of the individual, we are today beginning to discover the "materialistic", bodily components of salvation which are inherent in the new creation. "The ways of God all end in bodiliness", said a German theologian two hundred years ago (Oetinger). Man is subjected bodily to death, sickness, hunger, exploitation, and humiliation by other men. Believers together with the whole waiting creation also yearn bodily for redemption from transience. (Rom 8.23). The reconciliation of the world accomplished through Christ opens up to this world the wide and all-encompassing horizons of that redemption, that salvation, that kingdom in which God dwells with men. Salvation in this comprehensive sense means shalom: a new creation of the whole man, body and soul; a new creation of the whole of humanity, persons and conditions; a new creation of heaven and earth so that justice and peace finally embrace on earth. That is what resurrection means.

The more we take the bodily sufferings and death of Christ seriously, the more comprehensively shall we interpret the eschatological range of freedom as disclosed by his resurrection.

III

How is the reconciliation of the world with God radiated in terms of the cross? How can we credibly reflect this reconciliation in word and deed? We are taking up here what the World Alliance of Reformed Churches thought and said in its last assembly at Frankfurt under the theme "Come, Creator Spirit".

Reconciliation on the cross is preached, lived, and practised in this unredeemed world through the power of the Spirit. Through preaching, through community, and through acts of righteousness, testimony is borne to it. I would like to show that the cross of Christ is not only the object of Christian acts of witness, but also determines the shape of these acts in the world.

The reason why the message of reconciliation has become so cheap and ineffective is surely that we have not dared loudly and clearly enough to utter the judgement which, because of the cross, is inseparable from that message. For Paul, however, the "word of reconciliation" is the "word of the cross". For some this cross is the power of God, but for many others it is folly and an offence (1 Cor 1.18). Reconciliation, therefore, has nothing to do with the neutrality of non-involvement. It was to "the poor" -not to "the rich" -that Jesus himself preached the gospel of the nearness of God's Kingdom. He was a friend of sinners and lepers and not of Pharisees. His mission was to all men precisely in the fact that he forcefully took sides with the weak, the discriminated against, and the hopeless. Jesus took hold of the whole of human society, one might say, at its lowest extreme: among the despised. Despite the special covenant with the people of Israel, there is already running through the Old Testament the profound insight: You are the God of the wretched, the refuge of the oppressed, the sustainer of the weak, the defender of the forsaken, the saviour of the despairing. This, then, is where God is present and this is the way he acts: "He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty", Mary says (Luke 1.52-53). Precisely in order that all flesh "together" shall see the glory of the Lord, God humbles the mountains and exalts the valleys. If today we grasp this partiality of God and of the gospel, then we shall also understand again the "revolutionary" character of the bible. Its message is good news only for the poor. It is painful for the rich and the self-righteous. The message of reconciliation is not the religious balm of polite society, but the salt of the earth. And salt burns in the wounds of the earth, yet it prevents rotting. We must regain this penetrating sting of the gospel if we would really radiate the freedom of the crucified Christ in this chaotic world. "Woe to us if we do not preach the gospel". Woe to us if it is not the gospel that we preach, but the law. Hence: "We beseech you on behalf of Christ", says Paul. Through us the crucified Christ begs mankind to be reconciled with God. A beggar has no great power. His hands are open and stretched out invitingly. He oppresses no one and constrains no one. His plea respects the freedom of those who are invited and allows them time. His steadfastness in pleading opens up for them ever anew the way to a future of reconciliation and freedom. Masters make demands; judges pronounce judgement; party leaders make proclamations. God uses the dying Christ, and us too, to appeal to men. That is why he is the liberating God in a world of slavery and rebellion.

Reconciliation is lived in the Christian community. This is the second point. But how does the cross manifest itself in the life of the reconciled? Human societies are naturally grounded in the similarity of their members. "Birds of a feather flock together", as Aristotle already observed. "Dog doesn't eat dog". The same class, the same race, the same nation, the same proprietory standing, the same opinions, and the same morality bring men together. Those who are like ourselves confirm our identity. Those who are different from us disturb us. Therefore we naturally love friends and despise strangers. Yet the principle of life in the Christian community is not this homogeneity, but precisely the "recognition of the others" in their otherness. This recognition and love unite non-equals. The Christian community gives visible form to the reconciliation of enemies with God in a divided world when it is a community of "Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and barbarians, masters and servants, men and women" (Gal 3.28). The walls and barriers of the ghettos, which men erect against each other so that each can assert himself, are undermined and broken down by the Christian community. For in the spirit of reconciliation, the crucified Christ himself steps between the hostile parties and calls a new community into being (Eph 2. 14ff). Old enmities, as well as old friendships, break down in face of the new creation in Christ. Then the church is really the reconciling body of Christ in the world.

But our churches and congregations are not like this. Again and again the natural and yet inhuman social principle prevails, according to which only those who are alike come together in the church and the "others" remain outside the door. National churches, racial churches, class churches, middle-class churches, etc., in their everyday life are pagan and heretical. They spread not reconciliation, but contempt. Only where a Christian community consists of unequals, of educated and uneducated, of blacks and whites, of high and low does it become a witness to our hope of a world reconciled by God. Such a church will have difficulties in our divided world. It will be accused of betraying the "most sacred values" of the society and classes and nations concerned. It will be a church under the cross. But we are waiting for such a community, for our hope depends on it alone.

Finally, the service of reconciliation takes place in concrete acts of liberation. Reconciliation in the cross of Christ contains a world-transforming impulse. The resurrection shows us the nature of this impulse. When the power of death is broken, then the power of fate is also broken. Where the spirit of the resurrection prevails, there is freedom: a freedom which overcomes, and therefore transforms, the world. Where by virtue of reconciliation sin is forgiven and enmity overcome, a new future that is worth living for is disclosed. When a man is reconciled, he is also transformed. If God has reconciled the world with himself, then for the believer all the conditions in this world are transformable. Nothing has to remain as it is. Everything can become new. Reconciliation without the transformation of men and their relationships is cold comfort. Today's Christians should see this. On the other hand, transformation without reconciliation leads to terrorism. Today's revolutionaries should realize this. For only reconciliation breaks the constraint of evil deeds which cannot but continue to bear evil. Only reconciliation can break the vicious circle of revenge. Only reconciliation can overcome the law of retaliation. New, creative justice, creative peace, and a freedom such as the world has scarcely ever seen arise from reconciliation and not from the law.

The pattern of the divided world has been deeply branded upon human thought and feeling. It is our own fear which teaches us.to hate our opponent. The man who preaches hatred is always afraid. The propaganda of the ruling powers has taught us to think in terms of friend and foe. But Christ is not against "the communists", he died for them. Christ is not against the "whites", he died for them. This demands of us a new way of thinking and a new solidarity of love. For only love overcomes fear. In all its thought and action, love embraces also its opponent. It sees in him the reconciled and liberated friend of tomorrow. It practises now already what is possible tomorrow, for it sees its opponent, too, in the hands of the dying Christ. Love has therefore a critical trust in the transformability of its opponent and a permanent distrust of the rightness of its own position. In social and political conflicts Christians are "unreliable allies" for both sides. They, too, struggle against the unjust masters, against the racists and the exploiters. But they are immune to the seductions of hatred and terror. They do not allow the rules of the battle to be prescribed by their opponents, but use their own methods of striving to liberate their adversaries from that fear which leads to hatred and the use of violence. They know that God's reconciliation also embraces their opponent and that for this reason justice can be achieved only by mutual transformation. They can therefore enter into the vicious circle of violence and counter-violence only under pressure of necessity, if at all, -for of course their aim is to overcome this vicious circle, and not to reinforce it.

Mao says: "We stand for the abolishing of war; we want no war. But war can be abolished only by means of war: and if we would do away with guns, we must take our gun in our hand" (Worte, Peking, 1967, p. 76). His opponents think exactly the same. This dialectic, however, is not of a hopeful, but of a very desperate kind. We, too, stand for the abolition of war. We, too, want no war. But war can be abolished only by means of creative peace. If we would do away with guns, then let us strive for peace by peaceful means and make plowshares of our swords.

Certainly, it may be that Christians also despair of eliminating economic and political injustice by peaceful means and are ready to take refuge in violence as a last resort. But -they cannot justify the use of force. Then they take upon themselves a guilt which must be forgiven. Those who forget this and justify violence become a public danger. But those who do nothing, in order to avoid guilt, still fail in obedience to God. Most often, however, we do not face this ultimate question. Most often arms are resorted to because men in their fear can think of nothing better. If we are no longer impressed by this fear, we should develop a productive imagination in the cause of peace. In the cause of martial death, we have heavily invested our scientific, technical, and strategic imagination. On life, however, on peace, on non-violent resistance and the transforming of our opponent we have expended hardly any imagination at all.

Men, engaged as they are in mutual conflict, persecution and extermination, are reconciled in Christ, even if they are not yet redeemed. Thank God! We and our opponents are transformable. Even the world has become a transformable world. God has made possible the seemingly impossible. Let us therefore practise today the destiny of tomorrow. "It is far on in the night; day is near. Let us therefore throw off the deeds of darkness and put on our armour as soldiers of the light", (Rom 13.12) and embrace the freedom which brings us reconciliation.