You are Accepted and Valued – The Heart of Restoration

I attended a memorial service recently for one of the great saints in our church. George was 94 years old and to many men about my age he was a mentor and father figure. On the Order of Service Bulletin handed to us as we walked into the sanctuary was printed scripture that we read responsively from 2 Corinthians 5:14-19. The verses spoke to me about restoration. Here are verses 17-20:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 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 men’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.” (NIV)

Reconcile means “to re-establish friendship between two people” or “to take a previously harmonious relationship from enmity back to harmony”. Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians that a harmonious relationship between God and man, man and man, and even the relationship between spirit, soul, and body in one man was fragmented so that a state of enmity existed between these parties when Adam chose disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Ultimately, these relationships are restored to a state of wholeness and harmony through Jesus and the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit as we enter into and live with Him in the Kingdom of God.

Reconcile is a form of restoration. To restore is to “bring back to a previous, normal condition.” In fact, renew, redeem, restore, and reconcile have the same root meaning: the prefix ‘re-‘ means to restore to a previous condition or position.

As Christians, restoration/reconciliation is the heart of the message of Jesus. We were originally made in the image of God; we were made to reflect His glory into the world. But Adam and Eve usurped God’s position in their relationship with Him and sin entered into their lives. Their decision to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil resulted in a break or fracture in their relationship with God. A relationship of harmony was replaced by a relationship of enmity.

Through disobedience Adam and Eve rejected God. This led (in Genesis 3) to a rejection of self (shame – Genesis 3:7), a fear of rejection (Genesis 3:8,10), and rejection of others (Genesis 3:12,13). The manifestation of the break in the relationship between God and man was rejection and the fear of rejection. In the Garden, I believe that a spirit of rejection entered into the hearts of Adam and Eve. In Genesis 5:3 we read “When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.” We descended, according to Scripture, from Seth. And because we were made in the image and likeness of Adam, we inherited the spiritual DNA of Adam, which includes a spirit of rejection.

Whether you believe in the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve or not, the spirit of rejection is alive and well in the hearts of men and women in the 21st Century. The fear of rejection drives most of our decisions. We can trace the need to control, perfectionism, fear of relationships, need for power, anger and hostility, and even war to the fear of and reaction to rejection. The greatest human need is to be accepted. The greatest source of darkness in the human heart is rejection. And if you reject me, I will reject you. Humans are remarkably clever and devious in how they ‘get back’ at the ones they believe rejected them. We all live in bondage to the spirit of rejection!

But Jesus said “I have come to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners “(Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18,19). Broken hearts, captives, release from prison? What does He mean? We see what He means, at least in part, in His ministry. Jesus accepted the rejected ones: prostitutes, the infirm and sick, Samaritans, tax collectors, women, and the demon possessed were all rejected by the Jewish culture in the time of Jesus. He healed them and cast out demons. He accepted them, which is itself healing, into the Kingdom of God. For example, the woman at the well was miraculously ‘healed’ when Jesus accepted her for who she was (John 4). The paralytic at the pool of Bethesada, who had sat by the pool for 38 years, was singled out and healed by Jesus. Those who had previously been devalued and even dehumanized were set free from the prison of rejection, brought from the darkness of persecution and hate, and into the light of the Kingdom of the Son.

The rejected became the accepted and the accepted, those who turned their backs on the rejected and Jesus, became the rejected in Jesus’ Kingdom. This is the heart of Christianity today. Or it is supposed to be. John 3:16 tells us that “God loves the world” – you are accepted and valued by God, right now, no matter what. The deception is that you are also loved by ‘the world’. The world does not love you; the world uses you. “What have you done for me today” is the world’s refrain. But when you believe in Jesus and accept Him as your Lord, when you surrender your life to Him, you receive His acceptance and value that has always been yours, and are set free from the darkness and bondage to the spirit of rejection. It might take some time for this freedom to be realized. There might need to be some deliverance and emotional healing. But you are free! You are accepted! And no one can take that away from you.

To be accepted means to be approved, believed, recognized. When the woman at the well, a social outcast at several levels (a woman, an adulteress, and a Samaritan) approached the Elders of the village in John 4:28-30 they believed and recognized her. They did what she told them to do. She was accepted by Jesus, healed from her spirit of rejection, and became an accepted person in her culture. To be valued means to be highly regarded, much esteemed. I know that if this reality works it’s way into our hearts, and not just our minds, our broken hearts are healed, we are set free from rejection, and our lives are transformed. This is more than the work of a good man, this is the supernatural power of God, the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. And this change is tangible to us and visible to the world around us. We are ushered into the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Jesus is the door into this Kingdom He calls it the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. To enter through this door, which is open to all of us, we need to confess that Jesus is Lord and repent of our lives in the kingdom of self. We need to believe Jesus when He says we are accepted and we need to decide that we will follow this One who has set us free from rejection. I need to ‘accept’ the One who accepted me. If I accept that Jesus is who He says He is, I will decide to follow Jesus with my whole heart. I will surrender my life to Him and obey His commands. In this way, I will experience life in the Kingdom of God. Jesus shared this caveat with several of those who He accepted: go, and sin no more. We are accepted but this comes with a responsibility to to begin to lead a life of obedience and surrender, which, in turn, is the pathway to holiness. But, and this is important, we are accepted and valued independently of the choices we make and the work we do. But I do have work I must do: I chose to follow Him every day.

This is the Good News. The Kingdom of God is here, not in its fullness, but it is here. Jesus says in Matthew 12:28 “But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” And the one who believes in Christ and is born again enters into the Kingdom of God where there is healing and wholeness; acceptance not rejection; forgiveness not condemnation; a life in the light, not the darkness.

How is this possible? If we carry the DNA of Adam, the spirit of rejection that causes us to reject God and all around us, including ourselves, as our default position, how can we be reconciled to God, how can our relationship with Him and with others be restored? This is the amazing part of Christianity. God sent His Son, Jesus, to die so that the effects of this rejection of Him can be cancelled. Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God, invited all who believe to enter through the door He opened on the cross. In the Kingdom of God Jesus provided the indwelling Holy Spirit, a transformed and healed heart where the spirit of rejection is defeated; authority and power, and the Spiritual gifts, one of which is the gift of healing. These are some of the consequences of the death of Jesus on the cross. And with these gifts given to us as we live in the Kingdom, we are changed. We are not the same, we are a new creation and the old ‘person’ is gone, obliterated, dead, finished. How exactly this change takes place is a mystery, at least to me. But it does occur. I can testify to that truth.

Are you broken hearted, are you living in a prison of rejection, are you struggling with the consequences of rejection like low self-esteem, addiction, despair, certain types of depression; is your life a life of darkness that you can’t escape? Come to Jesus. Cry out to Jesus. For some of you, you will be instantly set free. If this sounds too good to be true check out the book ‘Chasing the Dragon’ by Jackie Pullinger. She describes many men and women in Hong Kong being instantly (well, within 24 hours) delivered from addictions to heroin and opium when they accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. For many of us, the journey toward freedom is a longer road that involves making choices (this is where our choices are important). But we do not travel the road alone. The Holy Spirit travels with us and gives us power. And we should travel that road with fellow believers, sharing and praying for each other.

Underlying the journey is one sure thing: I am accepted and valued by Jesus; not because of anything I have done or not done, not because of my work, but because of who He is and because of His work on the cross. This is Grace. I rejoice in that acceptance every day. Not perfectly, but it is the rock on which I have built my life, and so far it has not let me down.

Back to the scripture from 2 Corinthians. What does it mean for us to be ministers of reconciliation and Christ’s ambassador? Jesus is telling us another amazing truth. He has come to restore the Cosmos back to God’s original intention, purpose, function, and condition – the New Jerusalem described in Revelation 21 and 22. And He will do it through His people!

“Now the dwelling of God isttyl with men, and He will live with them. they will be His people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3 ,4 NIV)

This is God’s vision for the restored earth. Paul writes in the book of Romans concerning this future restoration “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:20, 21 NIV). That is a good description of restoration. You and I are a part of that plan.

God has a plan. He will restore all creation back to His original intent and function. Israel was supposed to be the instrument through which God’s plan was accomplished. When this didn’t work out in the way God intended, He sent His Son, Jesus. Jesus continues the work of Israel. He does this work by announcing the “Kingdom of God is here”, reconciling us to Himself through His message of restoration and the cross, and inviting us, the accepted ones, to enter into the Kingdom life with Him; to be restored. This is the Gospel, the Good News. The Gospel is not the “Gospel of sin management’, it it he Gospel of the Kingdom. In the Kingdom we are empowered, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, which is one of the gifts of the Kingdom, so that we can take up the mantle of Christ. The scary truth is that God’s work of restoration has been passed on, through Christ, to us. That is you and me. That is what it means to be ambassadors and ministers of reconciliation. We are plan A; there is no plan B. It will be done through us, not in our own power, but as God’s ambassadors and ministers.

Grace and peace through our Lord Jesus Christ,

John