In Christ

Last week we talked about how we do be crazy, and we have all sinned against God, yet He wants to have relationship with us. He reconciled us to Himself back into right relationship with Him. Why? The second verse of “Reconciled, I’m Reconciled” by Mike Kerry that we talked about last week goes, “Hallelujah! I’m justified, I’m justified, It’s just as if I’d never sinned, And once I knew such guilty fear, But now I know His peace within me. Justified, I’m justified, It’s all because my Jesus died; I’m justified, I’m justified by God.”

God can reconcile us to Himself because when we ask Him to forgive us, He remembers that our sins were punished in Jesus and He looks at us as though we never sinned!! So it is no surprise He wants a relationship with us! We come up with a thousand reasons why God should be ashamed of us and He has one reason why His arms are open wide towards us, Jesus. When we ask for forgiveness, God chooses to look at us through the lens of what Jesus did on the cross. He sees us in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” The old unsaved you was at odds with God but now, in Christ, you are reconciled back into relationship with God.

Last week we talked about how one way the term “reconciled” is used is in accounting. God is a good businessman. He does not make bad deals. Yet, when He looked at us, He didn’t think, “Yep, let me cut my losses and get rid of all of them. Let Us create a new world, call it “Earth 2.0” where the people are not crazy, infected by evil and messed up.” You would think it would have cost Him less to just get rid of us and start again or move on but He didn’t do that. Why? Why did God send Jesus?

Psalm 8:3-6 says, “Look at the splendor of Your skies, Your creative genius glowing in the heavens. When I gaze at Your moon and Your stars, mounted like jewels in their settings, I know you are the fascinating artist who fashioned it all! But I have to ask this question: Why would you bother with puny, mortal man or care about human beings? Yet what honor you have given to men, created only a little lower than Elohim, crowned  with glory and magnificence. You have delegated to them rulership over all you have made, with everything under their authority, placing earth itself under the feet of your image-bearers.”

God places so much value on us. However, we have spent so much time listening to the voice of the enemy that we sometimes see ourselves as less than, inferior, not worth the trouble, insignificant, or in the words of the 10 Israelite spies, grasshoppers. God does not see us that way. He has crowned us with glory and magnificence and when we are in Christ He sees us as perfect and without any flaws. In John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the [only] Way [to God] and the [real] Truth and the [real] Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

In ourselves, we will never see God but in Christ and through the finished work of the cross, our Father welcomes us to Himself. You are valuable to God. Your value is not based on what you did or did not do. That was all dealt with on the cross. Your value is simply because He made you in His imagine and when you put your faith in Jesus, the old is gone and you are made new in Jesus Christ. Your heavenly Father is reaching out to you. He wants you to get to know Him and get to experience new levels of His love and all He has for you.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.