RECONCILIATION IS REAL!
So if you are about to offer your gift to God at the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar, go at once and make peace with your brother, and then come back and offer your gift to God. Matt. 5:23, 24, T.E.V.
We parents have often watched our children go to church, sing "Jesus Loves Me," pray for their family members by name, then return home and fight with each other until the tears flow. We wonder just how we can get them to bridge the gap between the religious words and actions they perform at church, and the issues of their practical life. There are few things more deadly to true spirituality than for religion to become a round of mere formalism and ritual, cut off from conscious connection with the real world.
One of the greatest truths in salvation history is that God has gone to stunning lengths to win us back to Himself, to reconcile us wayward children to our Father. He sent His Son in human form to tell us that our warfare had ended, that the hostilities we felt toward Him, and perceived from Him, could be laid to rest. On the cross, all mankind could see the depths of divine love and the thoroughness with which God had dealt with sin.
Thousands of years earlier God had given His people an acted parable of the cross and its Sacrifice through the system of animal sacrifices. It was God's desire that it bring spiritual realities closer to the people, since they would actually participate in bringing the animals. As they watched innocent blood flowing because of their sins, it would draw their minds toward the great reconciling act of Christ on the cross.
Unfortunately, however, most of the people lost the message in the sacrifices. In the next deadly step, they came to believe that it was the animal sacrifice itself that God required--for His sake! They did not grasp that the sacrifice was Intended to change them, not God.
Jesus tugged their thinking far beyond ritual; He carried it into their real lives. He said, in essence, "Don't come to celebrate God's reconciling act until the meaning of reconciliation has touched your own heart. When you have made peace with your alienated brother, you will know more of the reality of what God has done to win you back.
So if you are about to offer your gift to God at the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar, go at once and make peace with your brother, and then come back and offer your gift to God. Matt. 5:23, 24, T.E.V.
We parents have often watched our children go to church, sing "Jesus Loves Me," pray for their family members by name, then return home and fight with each other until the tears flow. We wonder just how we can get them to bridge the gap between the religious words and actions they perform at church, and the issues of their practical life. There are few things more deadly to true spirituality than for religion to become a round of mere formalism and ritual, cut off from conscious connection with the real world.
One of the greatest truths in salvation history is that God has gone to stunning lengths to win us back to Himself, to reconcile us wayward children to our Father. He sent His Son in human form to tell us that our warfare had ended, that the hostilities we felt toward Him, and perceived from Him, could be laid to rest. On the cross, all mankind could see the depths of divine love and the thoroughness with which God had dealt with sin.
Thousands of years earlier God had given His people an acted parable of the cross and its Sacrifice through the system of animal sacrifices. It was God's desire that it bring spiritual realities closer to the people, since they would actually participate in bringing the animals. As they watched innocent blood flowing because of their sins, it would draw their minds toward the great reconciling act of Christ on the cross.
Unfortunately, however, most of the people lost the message in the sacrifices. In the next deadly step, they came to believe that it was the animal sacrifice itself that God required--for His sake! They did not grasp that the sacrifice was Intended to change them, not God.
Jesus tugged their thinking far beyond ritual; He carried it into their real lives. He said, in essence, "Don't come to celebrate God's reconciling act until the meaning of reconciliation has touched your own heart. When you have made peace with your alienated brother, you will know more of the reality of what God has done to win you back.
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