RECONCILIATION

In the beginning God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness...." Strong's Concordance says the word "man"--"adam"--means "man", "mankind" or "humanity at large". So we human beings were created in His image and likeness. Adam and Eve were able to have a personal relationship with God. They had unbroken fellowship with Him. Then they sinned and when they heard Him they hid from Him. There was a break in the fellowship that would take thousands of years and a sacrifice of horrendous proportions to repair.

Even with the break God never forsook man. His love was still there, along with His desire for relationship. He had humans who responded to their creator, because Romans says what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. It could say us instead of them. Abram knew Him for that very reason.

Hundreds of years later God would deliver the law to Moses. The summation of the law according to Deuteronomy and Jesus is love--You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself. To explain how to do this He gave the 10 Commandments. To break any of them is to break fellowship. Breaking them kills love. If we love Him we keep His commandments.

In the fullness of time Jesus came to reconcile man to God and to each other. According to Merriam-Webster's on-line dictionary "reconcile" means to restore to friendship or harmony. The entire world was out of harmony and man was out of harmony and friendship with God and with each other. Romans 5 says, "For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation". It is His desire for all people to be reconciled to Him and if we have fellowship with Him we are also to have it with one another. We will have it if we are walking in His Light.

Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. Normally a Samaritan hated Jews and vise versa. Yet in the Samaritan's heart was God's truth and when he saw a fellow human being suffering he helped. He didn't shirk for any part including paying for the man's room and board. Now that's love. Those who passed by, too busy doing God's work, were not commended by Jesus.

Jesus ministered life to the Samaritan woman at the well. It horrified all those who saw it, yet Love and truth were more important than the cultural divisions of man.

Years ago I heard a sermon on this subject. The Good Samaritan was the primary focus. The man ended with the words, "If you say you love God, yet you hate your neighbor, YOU ARE A LIAR".

I don't want to be a liar, do you? Romans 15:7 says in NASB "Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. In New King James it says, "Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God".

In Strong's the word "receive" is defined as to take to oneself...to admit to friendship. In our day that would also translate "accept".

I want to be God's friend. He says in 1John 1, "You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you".

What do you want?