Reconciliation

I am an accountant, CPA to be exact. So when I was reading a few verses about reconciliation last night, I had to step back and look at it again. Yes, my frame of reference is numbers, so if you don't do numbers, you may need to hold your seat for a bit. I hope it'll be worth it. :)

Reconcile - to restore harmony and relations, to make compatible, to make one account consistent with reality

In Scripture, this is discussed in Colossians 1:19-22 and then again in I Corinthians 5:18-19. The idea is that we are separated from God by our sins and that through the death of Jesus, God has brought us back to himself. Amazing, but let's not stop there.

For bank accounts, we start with how much money the bank says we have and we make adjustments for checks and deposits that haven't cleared the bank to get to how much money we really have. We adjust what the bank says to get to reality. This is reconciliation. It doesn't change what the bank says, but just our understanding of what is the true balance. If we spend money based on what the bank says and not our reconciliation of reality, we will bounce checks. We will be spending what we don't have. Because what the bank says is not reality. The bank doesn't know all the facts.

So, we all have an idea of who we are. We know our strengths and weaknesses and most of us focus more on the latter. We are always comparing, always working, always trying to be better than the next guy so that we feel better about ourselves. That is our bank balance. Who we are as defined by our characteristics and flaws, our assets and liabilities. Who you are on paper - a resume of your education, experiences, strengths. Your references - people's opinion of you, your experiences, your reputation. All of that makes up who you are by human standards. But we don't know all the facts.

But God does! His opinion is reality! How God sees us is who we really are. God is outside of time and space. Our thinking is limited because we are in this world, so our perception of ourselves and reality is skewed. The reconciliation process is not just about God bringing us closer to himself in relationship, but adjusting our perception to reality. It's changing us so we love ourselves and each other according to what is real and not what we see. So we act like who we really are and not who we have believed we are. Reconciliation is us being closer to God in relationship and in thinking. Like minded, in harmony, on the same team.

The fact that God loves us enough to not leave us in our sin but to pull us out of it and to himself, making us more like him is amazing! He wants us to be close to him so he has eliminated the obstacles and given us opportunity to be reconciled to him, but the choice is ours.