What Time Is It? Romans 5

Romans 5:10 "For if, while being enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, as having been reconciled, shall we be saved in connection with his life;"

"It is something like a man who wakes up, finds that his watch has stopped, and turns on the radio to learn the time. When he hears, he sets his watch by the radio time. What he’s done is to 'reconcile' his watch to the radio." Richards, L. (1990). The 365 Day Devotional Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

I believe it was in 1971 that I bought a Bulova Accutron watch. I wanted it because in Indonesia at that time, it was difficult to always know the exact time. The Bulova Accutron used the vibrations of a tuning fork to keep the watch within a few seconds of the true time thus meeting my needs. I was disappointed later to learn that I could have bought a quartz crystal watch that used an even more accurate technology. These watches still tended to gain or loose several seconds a day, however, and several minutes a month but they were far more accurate than their predecessors.

Today I get accurate time from my cell phone which has access to the atomic clock located in the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. This atomic clock will not deviate more than 2 seconds from accurate time for the next 2 billion years!!! An even newer atomic clock has been developed which is accurate to 1 second for an even longer period of time, but may not be in use yet.

Another amazing thing about this new technology is that it is available to us free through WiFi and can be updated to the second every few minutes. Wonderful. No excuses for being late any more.

What does this have to do with Romans 5:10? Well Paul says that we have been reconciled to God through the death of Jesus. Reconciled means that we have been set right with God. L. Richards, a favorite author of mine, gives the example of a watch being reset. Reseting your watch every few minutes to the accuracy of the atomic clock in Washington is like reseting your watch to perfection just as Jesus did in reconciling us to God, Jesus reset us to perfection spiritually. This spiritual reset was not available prior to the death of Jesus on the cross but is available today, free to everyone with a faith connection to Jesus. Jesus is our WiFi continually reseting us to the perfection of God himself.

Do you have a faith connection to Jesus? Have you been reset to the perfection that is God himself? You will still find yourself drifting away from perfection from time to time but with a continual faith connection to Jesus you will continually be reset to perfection. Romans chapter 6 tells us how to get and maintain that faith connection. Get your's today if you don’t already have one. It’s free. And the download speed is out of this world.