“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5: 17-19
God is in the world reconciling all things (Colossians 1:19-20) through his son, Jesus the Christ. We have to start there. God is trying to reconcile all things back to himself.
But what is he trying to reconcile back to himself?
To understand this, we have to have a proper understanding of God’s original intent in Genesis 1-2 and the four connections that God established and why Christ reconciling our internal divided worlds is so important.
In the beginning part of our story in the Garden of Eden we see God establishing a connection with humans, between the humans (Adam and Eve) who he created, between the humans and world they were living in, and within themselves internally.
At the fall, all four of those connections were broken. God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden, thus breaking fellowship between God and humans. Adam and Eve for the first time experienced enmity between each other and blamed one another for disobeying God. Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden and work became toil.
And lastly, but for the purpose of Loving Freely, most importantly, Adam and Eve experienced a division in their interior worlds as they experienced shame and hid themselves with fig leaves after discovering they were naked.
But, of course God does not leave his creation to save itself. God always intervenes and all through the story of scripture, he reconciles his people back to himself through his son, Jesus, thus initiating the New Covenant.
Through Jesus, we can now have access back to God and know him personally. We are now being reconciled across color, class, culture, and each other whether it’s husband and wife, family units, or friends. We can now enjoy the fruit of our labors through work as we discover the joy of working. And, we can now experience Christ reconciling our divided lives as we discover the true self that he’s put in each of us.
It is my belief that reconciliation must begin in the deep interior parts of our lives and move outwards. If we are not allowing Christ to reconcile the deep interior parts of our lives, it influences every other part of God’s restoration.
If we don’t allow Christ deep into those hurts and wounds of our past, then we will only have a surface level relationship with the triune God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
If we are not honest about our own prejudices, biases, how our false self divides, then we will not be able to fully live into Christ’s new humanity here and now. This is true in seeking to be reconciled with my own wife, but also across color, culture and class. If we are not honest about how the curse of sin and death has conditioned us, we won’t be able to live into the fullness of what God desires for us.
If we are not honest about how God has created and wired us to be, we will be living someone else’s life and our work will become labor some and not joyful like God desires it to be. We will be overworked, not living within our limits, spending way too much money and just surviving.
This is why emotional health, racial reconciliation, how we keep a budget is all connected. It’s all about how Christ is reconciling all things back to the Father with the original intent of Creation with the focus of what is to come when Christ comes to fully restore all things here and now.
And this is why we lament about the divided lives we have inside of us. We live divided lives internally and this manifests itself in a world that is divided relationally, racially, culturally and socio-economically. I lament because the reason the world is divided is because the division lies in us. The division in our own lives does not allow us to face the brokenness of our past, that many times we are living someone else’s lives, and that we cannot be honest and name what’s happening inside of us or in the world. We are conditioned to avoid pain and it’s killing us. The reality is that the past is always playing out in the present, both in the deep interior parts of our lives and the isms plaguing the church.
This is why what Paul highlights in Ephesians 2 is so important. It is because of Christ’s work and making us his handiwork that God is now reconciling the Jews and the Gentiles into One New Humanity! We cannot love the other if God’s love has not been made true in the deep interior parts of our lives. We cannot be reconciled to each other if we are not first reconciled internally.
God wants to reconcile all things back to himself. He longs for us to know his unconditional love. He longs for His bride to be made whole across color, class, culture, family units, and any other relational unit that’s divided. He longs for us to enjoy the fruit of our labor in long and healthy lives. And, he longs for us to face the division in our own lives in order to live into the fullness of what he desires.
Jesus modeled all four of the restorative connections in Mark’s gospel. He was reconciling people back to God, to each other, to creation, and for the purpose of Loving Freely, within themselves.
Reconciliation begins within ourselves with a significant moment that happens in Mark 1 In chapter 1 of Mark we see these three significant movements of the spiritual formation of Jesus, that I believe fuels his ministry and allows him to come to a place of loving others freely.
In vs. 11, Jesus is declared the beloved by the Father. In vs. 12-13 he led to the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by Satan. And, then in vs. 35, he withdraws to a solitary place, where he prayed.
In Mark’s gospel, he portrays Christ as a servant, yet, before Jesus becomes a servant, He is first God’s beloved, he then spends time in the wilderness away from any sort of ministry, and then after calling his disciples, driving out evil spirits, healing many and healing a man with leprosy, Jesus withdraws to pray and be with the Father.
The reality is that Jesus loved others because he was God's beloved, not to become the beloved.
This changes everything. We love others because we are God's beloved children, not to become the beloved child! And, it's because God see Jesus as his child, whom he loves, and whom he is well pleased that he can become aware of what's happening all around him.