Restoration part 2
Jesus came to restore creation to the way it was in the beginning. He came to bring heaven to earth. Because, as we see in Revelation 2:4, "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love." And, just for the record, our FIRST love is HIS love. "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). And, as we see in the NLT, "We love each other because he loved us first." We love Him BY loving each other. Because He first loved us. That's the first love that we left, when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (the tree of death) and then hid from the presence of God. We left a finished work and entered into a man-centered, performance-based religion. That was a problem. But Jesus is the solution. Jesus--God in the flesh. Love in a body. God in OUR flesh. Love in OUR body. He came to bring us back to our first love. Look at 2 Corinthians 5:19 in the NLT, "For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation." Jesus, the Lamb of God, took away the sin of the world. The unbelief of the world. He defeated the lie that says you have to do in order to be by showing us who we really be. By showing us who HE really is. He defeated the lie by shining His light and telling us (and showing us) the truth. Showing us how things really are. Showing us that God is love. That God is our heavenly Father and we are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Jesus came to reconcile us back to God. Back to love. Not by scaring us straight with the threat of punishment, but by loving the hell out of us. It is the GOODNESS of God that leads us to repentance. And the repentance that the Bible talks about in Hebrews chapter six is repentance from DEAD WORKS. Repenting (or changing our minds) about trying to earn something that can't be earned. The lie that says you have to do in order to be was defeated by the truth of who you already be. So we don't have to try to be somebody we're not. And we don't have to try to get something we haven't got. Everything we thought we were lacking has been restored because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. We have been given all things that pertain to life and godliness. We have been blessed with all Spiritual blessings. We have returned to our first love. Which is... love! I've Ranted and preached about this at length, but when we see the admonition in Proverbs 4:23 to, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life," what we need to understand is that we don't guard our hearts by shutting them down. We guard our hearts by keeping them open! Keeping them open to LOVE. Not building walls to keep people out, but building bridges to let people in. Building connections. Relationships. Not isolating ourselves (or others) but restoring that perfect balance in which we understand that we are all parts (albiet very different parts) of the same body. We ARE all connected. So we need to stop with the idea of separation. We have been reconciled, to God, and to each other. The love has been restored!