Separation part 3
In reality, this whole idea that we could ever be separated from God (from LOVE) is pretty absurd. Look at John 1:3 (NLT), "God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him." Speaking of Jesus, right? The Word of God. Love. The King James puts it like this, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." Nothing that was made was made without love. Least of all... you. You are God's special posession. His greatest creation. You are why God does what He does. Why God did what He did. On the cross God proved that He would rather die than live without you. And now watch this, "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden" (Genesis 3:8). Did you catch that? MAN hid from the presence of God. Because WE thought God was mad at us. He swore He would never leave us nor forsake us. And He never has, and He never will. So if there was ever any separation... it didn't come from God. It came from us. We disobeyed Him and then ran and hid because we didn't want Him to punish us. When, really, God never said He would punish man for eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He said if we ate from the tree of death we would surely die. And what else could we expect? A tree can only produce after its own kind. The tree of death could only produce death. So on that day, when the natural consequences of man's action was death, we twisted it around to somehow get the idea that God was mad at us and wanted to get us. Guys... God got us on the cross. Got us when we were dead in our trespasses and sins and brought us straight into His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life! He wasn't out to give us a death sentence. He was out to give us a LIFE sentence! Let me put it another way: "To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:19). So, again, God never put any separation between Himself and us. We did that. And even still He gave the ultimate sacrifice to reconcile us to Himself. He chose to NOT hold our sins or impute our trespasses against us. Jesus cried out on the cross for His Father to forgive us, because we didn't know what we were doing. He shined His light on us when we were stumbling around in the dark. When we were doing the best we could with what we had... but were trying to get whatever we could because we didn't think we had anything! That's when God gave us everything. He literally gave His life for us, and to us. Simply because He wanted us to have it. He didn't want there to be any separation on any side. He didn't want us to think He had put it there, and He wanted to obliterate it even though WE put it there. We ran away, and He drew us back to Himself. He made sure things were the way they were supposed to be, no matter what else was going on. Everything He made was made with love. Everything He did was done out of love. Love doesn't separate. It is the tie that binds!