All of us have wandered. Jesus came to bring us back to God.

Easter 2018

Introduction

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

The story starts eons ago when God created a good world, and created human beings in His own image to tend the world with Him. Each time God completed a creation cycle, like an artist, He paused to admire what He had made, and He said, “Ohhh…that’s good!” But when He had created us in His image, He admired us, and said, “Now that…that’s very good.” God made you good, and made you for Himself—He made you to live in a relationship with Him. You were made to love God! And when you do, then you are living life as God intended it. And it’s very good.

Such a good start—what happened? The world is so broken—war, poverty, disease and death, oppression and injustice, the Zags losing in the Sweet 16—it’s an ugly, broken mess. What happened? We did. We broke the relationship with God and wandered far away. Our first ancestors rebelled against God—decided they wanted to be their own gods—and left God. And human beings have followed them ever since. All the brokenness in our world—and the brokenness inside each of us—is the result of our rebellion against God, and our distance from Him. And that’s very bad.

So now what? The good news is that God didn’t abandon us, but came to bring us back to Himself! We broke the relationship, but God moved toward us to fix it. We wandered from God, but He came looking for us in Jesus. Jesus came to find us and bring us back to God. He lived a perfect life—the life that none of us could live. And He died a sacrificial death—the death that each of us deserved. He paid our moral debt and took our place, absorbing on the cross the just punishment that was due us. He died with a shout of triumph: It is finished! It is paid in full! And on the third day, God raised Him from the dead. In Jesus, death died. In Jesus, we and all creation are reconciled back to God. Our enmity with God is over—Jesus is our peace. ︎

And our enmity with each other is over too—Jesus is our peace. «︎ He not only reconciles us to God, but to each other, and sends us into the world as inst