There’s a Spanish story of a father and son who had become
estranged. The son ran away, and the
father set off to find him. He searched
for months to no avail. Finally, in a
last desperate effort to find his son, the father put an ad in a Madrid
newspaper. The ad read, “Dear Paco, meet
me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you.
Your Father.” On Saturday, 800
Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
I have no idea if this is a true story, but it is a
fantastic illustration of the state of relationships in our world. How many of us have strained relationships
with others that we just wish they would come to us and say, “You know
what? Let’s just settle this and get
back to the business of caring for each other.”
One of my favorite words in the Bible is
reconciliation. It really is a beautiful
word. It rolls off my tongue and around
in my mind, and it’s so pleasant. I
think the word itself sounds so nice, but even more beautiful is the meaning of
the word. In the Bible, reconciliation
is restoring a relationship to where it was before it was broken. We’re not talking about the awkward kind of
friendship you might patch together after a betrayal. I mean a solid, close connection that looks
like there was never any division in the first place. That’s what makes it so beautiful. And this is what God seeks. Through Jesus’ work on the cross, God wants
to reconcile with His children, to have a relationship so close that you would
hardly be able to believe it was ever any different.
Not only does Jesus reconcile us with the Father, He also
gives us a job.
“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that
one died for all, and therefore all died.
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for
themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldy
point of view. Though we once regarded
Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
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. We are
therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through
us. We implore you on Christ’s
behalf: be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 (NIV)
I can’t apologize for putting all eight verses there for you
to read; this passage has so many gems in it that I couldn’t cut any of them
out. But notice how Paul says that we
have been given the ministry of reconciliation and the message of
reconciliation. We are the voice of God
to the unbeliever, in the same way an ambassador speaks in the place of the
leader of his country. Speak the heart
of God to His lost children and encourage them to reconnect with their Father
who loves them.
Jesus on the cross was the ad in the newspaper to “Paco.” Make sure all the “Pacos,” the estranged
children of the Father, know that the Father is seeking them out and longs to
be reunited and reconciled with them.
What is your favorite word in the Bible? What significance does it hold in your life?
