Our study of this passage of Scripture has been building toward reconciliation. We have seen that the very beginning of this process is the understanding that Jesus died for all. Jesus didn’t die for you or for me. Jesus didn’t die for those that have believed or even those that will believe. Paul wrote that the love of Christ that compelled and controlled him was built on this one foundational fact, Jesus died for all. In addition to our text which says that “if one died for all, then all died”; Hebrews 10 says that Jesus Christ offered His body “once for all” and that He offered Himself as “one sacrifice for sins forever”. Now we have to be careful with this, the fact that Jesus died for all therefore all have died, and that Jesus died “once for all” as the one and only “sacrifice for sins forever” does not mean that all are saved, it means that the way of salvation has been opened to all. The incredible goodness of God’s character caused Him to not merely pay the debt of all those who approach Him, who confess to Him, who change for Him or who even repent of their sins to Him, He paid the debt of every sin for every sinner, but that payment is only applied to those who surrender to Him. One of our main points throughout this process has been that reconciliation requires a surrender. Jesus defined the surrender of reconciliation this way: “Deny yourself, take up the cross and follow Me.” Paul defined the surrender of reconciliation this way in Romans 10:9” “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.” Can I ask this morning why those two statements sound so differently to us when I believe they are both defining the same thing? We have told people “All you have to do is confess and believe” and yet the Scriptures teach us that confession and belief are our greatest acts of surrender. Confessing Jesus as Lord is a denial of self, it is the taking up of the cross. Confessing Jesus as Lord is denial of my own lordship of my own life. It is laying down my effort to understand and explain every detail, of my effort to set myself up for what I want or to beat anyone else out for what I fear we are competing for. Confessing Jesus as Lord is a rejection of the idea that I have to look out for myself or love myself first. Confessing Jesus as Lord means that I don’t just give Him the keys to my heart along with plans of what I think He should do, it means that I give Him my heart and trust Him to do what He says is good, right and loving. Confessing Jesus as Lord is the surrender that begins the beautiful work of reconciliation, it is no longer living for ourselves because until we lay that part down we can’t possibly begin to pick up the idea of living for the One who died and was raised. If that is what confessing Jesus as Lord really looks like, it’s not just the utterance of three words but instead it is the surrender of everything to Him then what does believing in our hearts that God “raised Him from the dead” look like? That belief is what it means to follow Jesus. If God raised Jesus from the dead, then God will raise me up with Jesus. If God gave Jesus new life, then He will provide that new life to me as well. If Jesus surrendered His life to the Father only to have the Father breathe new life into Him three days later then I can and I must believe that if I will truly surrender my life to God through Jesus, then He will also breathe new life into me. This morning is our last step we will take before we enter into studying reconciliation; we are not there yet but we are right on the edge. There is one more truth we have to see before we can settle in, let go and surrender. My hope and my prayer this morning is that we will be able to see and believe that we are not being asked to let go of what we have been holding on to nearly as much as we are being asked to release what’s been holding us back, that we are not being called to surrender so that God will come near but we are being promised that if we will let go our Father will catch us because long before we surrender to Him He has surrendered to His love for us. We are not a people who are trying to catch up with God, we are a people who God has never stopped pursuing. We are a people who must come to realize what it means for “All things” to be “of God”.