Re-tied Together

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 1:2

If you’re reading this on a phone or computer, you’re using an amazing piece of 21st century technology. What used to take up an entire room with specialized power and air conditioning now sits on your lap, or in your hand.

But they never work by themselves. They have to be connected to someone else, something else. In addition to electricity, they need to connect to the internet, a cellular tower, Bluetooth. Without these connections, they can never work like they were designed.

Think back to the last time you lost your internet or cellular connection. Remember how frustrated you got? How you ran all around the place, looking for something to reboot. Then, when that didn’t work, you went looking for someone just to boot. To kick. To release your frustration.

And when your connection was restored, how happy you were. Everything started working again. The way it was supposed to. The way it was made to.

Peace – This is the big idea behind the second big word, peace. It’s less about the absence of conflict and more about being reconnected. Peace is to join things like they’re supposed to be. When there’s peace, there’s harmony, because everythings connected like it’s meant to be.

When there’s war or fighting, people are disconnected. But when they are connected the way God made them to be, there is peace. When there is trouble, people are not together how they should be. But bring them back together, trouble turns into peace.

It like a rope that has a lot of individual fibers. Each strand by itself is weak. But when you put them all together, you can pull a great ship. When one strand is tourn, the rope still works. But break enough of them, then the rope gets weak and can break apart if pulled hard enough.

This is the image when God made peace.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Colossians 1:19,20

When we turn our backs on God, we break the individual fibers and entire rope connecting us with him. By breaking his holy law, we shout independence from our loving creator, saying that we have the right to do and say whatever we want.

In short, we throw God off his rightful place and replace him with ourselves. We create an eternal disconnect, demanding total control, while spitting in the face of the one who love us more than anyone else.

This is why the death of Jesus is so huge. His once-and-for-all sacrifice on the cross satisfies God’s demand. Our breaking God’s right and righteous commands tore apart our connection with God, making any kind of a relationship impossible.

The death of Jesus reconnects us with God. His sacrifice binds us back together with God, making peace with him. His blood restores our Father-child relationship with the one who made us. By dying on the cross, we can have that tranquil connection with God restored.

But that peace didn’t come cheap. That peace comes at the eternally high price of the death of the Son of God on the cross. God had to do what we couldn’t do, to repay the debt that we’d created. We dug ourselves into that eternal hole each and every time we turned from him and to ourselves.

Through the payment of Jesus on the cross, we can look into the face of God because he has made peace. Peace for us. Peace with us. The eternal debt has been stamped “paid in full,” restoring our connection with God.

We can’t pay the price, but we can claim the peace. We need to receive his peace-making payment for our rebellion, for our sin. We let him do what God does best, make and remake us.

And then in thanks for who he is, and how he’s made peace with us, our hearts will overflow with thanksgiving, praise, and worship. It will move like a tsunami over us and our lives, washing away the old and replacing it with the new.

Isn’t that something being thankful for today? Have you let God retie himself to you through Jesus? That reconnection will change everything.

Noodling Questions

• How have you disconnected, cut yourself off from God? From people?

• What are the results from this separation?

• How have you experienced God reconnecting himself to you? Others?