April , 2003

The Gospel is the divine word of reconciliation.

Reconciliation becomes necessary when division is real and severe.

Division is everywhere ? between/within nations, races, beliefs, socail classes, sex, generations families, etc.

Division itself is not necessarily evil. It is actually a divine work in origin.

God separated heavens from earth. He divided the heavens. He separated the land from the sea, etc.

His work of creation is the work of division.

As the consumation of His creation, God created Man in His image and then He made man in two persons, male and female.

And He gave him some portion of His ability to create, i.e. to divide and control things.

Indeed division is the basis of dominion.

Man especially has the ability of speech, which consists of words.

Words is divided portions of reality.

Without division, everything becomes chaotic.

Thus division is originated in divine creating work and essential for human activities.

Division, however, can become problematic or even evil when division is not the means but the goal.

God has commanded man to rule over the creation. But that is only one side of the coin.

The same God has also commanded us to bring reconciliation. Why?

Let’s take male/female aspect for example.

In God’s eye, i.e. in spiritual realm, husband and wife are one. But in the physical, they are separated.

This separation is necessary for both persons to grow and to regenerate.

They are separated for the sake of higher level of reality, that is the realization of spiritual oneness.

Once this goal is forgotten or abandonned, separation becomes the end and divison start to take the form of hostility.

In God’s plan, everything is divided so that everything becomes spiritually one.

This oneness is not achieved by ignoring or eliminating differences. Indeed differences are absolutely necessary to keep the order of creation.

What is needed then is to see the spiritual reality and make physical differences an essencial means to achieve spiritual unity.

That is exactly the work of reconciliation.

But how can we see the spiritual reality so that we can bring reconciliation?

First of all, we have to see the reality of division.

Division is real but it is not easy to see why and how things are divided.

Many times we tend to overlook and underestimate the division.

We may say over and over, “We are all the same essencially.” But we are divided anyway.

Reality is we are all different though there are some similarity.

Furthermore, looking at the difference on the surface is not enough.

Root cause for the division must be taken into account.

Male is not female. The elder is not the youth. One nation is not the other.

Of course, just being different does not mean there is hostility. Often differnce can be simply ignored.

But if you want close relationship, chances are you might experence some conflict.

And that is the beginning of the story.

It is the same way with faith.

As long as you are content with being just a person without God, you can conduct your life as if God didn’t even exist. Or if you think that God is just like a human being, you might be able to have a handy charm.

But once you realize God is not man, and yet you want to have some connection with Him, you have to see that there is a vast difference between God and man. Not only that, we have to face the reality that we are even hostile to each other.

What is the hostility here?

Truth is that we don’t like God who is different from us. We don’t want a God who tells us what to do.

We don’t even expect God to move whereever and whenever He wants.

In short, we want only a survant, not God.

This is our hostility toward God, not just difference.

What, then, is the divine way to take away this hostility?

Does He preach at us to change our wrong attitude?

It apears so. The Bible itself tells us to repent, that is to change our mind.

But that is only one side of the coin. That is a ministry of separation, trying to make us realize who we are and who God is.

Then the ministry of reconciliation begins. Just as He takes the initiative in the ministry of separation, He takes once again in the ministry of reconciliation.

He does not ask us to reconcile ourselves to Him. He, instead, Himself has reconciled us to Himself by the cross of His Christ, the annointed One.

What we need to do is to realize this initiative God has taken on the cross.

On the cross God accepted all our hostility. On the cross all our accusation against God, which is by difinition sin, was nailed to the cross without condeming us.

Jesus did not counter-attack us on behalf of God but rather he simply died.

And all the invisible forces of evil, that had been accusing God and mankind, were made public display.

When cancer kills a person it has been infecting, that is the end of the cancer itself.

So God killed all the hostilities on the cross.

If a person allowed his enemy to kill himself, it could only prevent the possibilty of second murder. But it would’t eliminate his hatred.

Does the cross eliminate our ill-feeling and wrong attitude toward God?

The answere is Yes and No.

Yes, because God is able to bear all of our hostility. He does not become weary at all.

No, because we need to accept the fact of the cross and surrender to Him.

We do not surrender because God is stronger than us and trying to purnish us.

We do not surrender to change Him.

Whether we surrender or not, His cross stands. His act of reconciliation never changes.

But we need to surrender so that we can change.

We surrender because it is the most natural thing to do if we see what God has been doing in the spiritual realm.

We surrender not to His force to destroy us but to the power of His infinite love and mercy.

That is the only way to eliminate our hostility. This leaves us no pride in ourselves.

And here is the turning point.

Does this fact give us shame and leave us there?

Or create in us a sense of awe and gratitude toward God?

This still remains a mystery.

For we cannot create awe or gratitude in us. They are given or rather created in us by God’s mercy.

Yes, God takes initiative in all these process; division and reconciliation.

This whole process expressed in our lives is called the faith.

And this faith is originated in the faithfulness of God Himself.

As we participate in this faith process, we are being changed by His leading hand and made to be ministers of reconciliation.

We are called to preent the cross, where the whole process of faith begins and complets.

We invite people to the cross, where the fulness of God’s faithfulness is manifest.

This is the message of the cross.

And we are called to be living messengers of the cross.