Read: Colossians 1:21–22   Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

When God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden, He visited them. God wanted to enjoy the fellowship of a mutual relationship with Adam and Eve; He wanted to know them and have them know Him. But the couple hid from Him, because they felt afraid and ashamed, and their relationship with God was marred. The deepest meaning of life is to know someone. Satan’s lie was that the deepest meaning of life is to know something. He promised Eve that if she ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then she would gain wisdom (know something) and be like God (Genesis 3:5).

This Satanic lie has infected the human race and continues to drive the pursuits of the majority of us. We crave information, knowledge, wealth, power, fame, and material goods to satisfy our pride. This comes at the expense of the most important part of our lives—meaningful relationships. As for Adam and Eve, their sin of unbelief and disobedience resulted in the rupture of their relationship with God as well as their relationship with each other. They hid from God and covered themselves from each other, thus losing the transparency which is necessary for healthy relationships. Both their vertical and their horizontal relationships were marred.

The deepest meaning of life is to know someone. Satan’s lie was that the deepest meaning of life is to know something.

This is the human condition—we are unable to have proper relationships, being alienated from God and from one another. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your mind” (Colossians 1:21). If God had not intervened in human history, we would have remained in the darkness of our sinful minds. And as the apostle Paul wrote, “we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:3–5, emphasis added). Note that God’s “great love for us” is at the heart of God’s intervention to bridge the alienation caused by our own foolishness and sinfulness.

God has allowed His love to flow out from Him and touch the human beings He has created. We are thus forgiven, reconciled, and empowered to live according to God’s original purpose for us. God’s loving intervention through Christ and the Spirit made this possible and solved the vertical problem that we face.

At the same time, God’s intervention also resolves our horizontal problems. Today, as always, there has been enmity between individuals, ethnic groups, and nations. The first murder took place between the two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain was, jealous of his brother Abel and plotted his murder and treacherously took his life. Ever since, the pages of human history have been stained with blood.

The cross stands in the middle of broken relationships. It is Christ, the Peacemaker, who makes peace possible in all relationships.

Writing to the Gentile Christians in Ephesus, Paul explains how the death of Christ on the cross is the means by which the enmity between the Jews and the Gentiles is abolished. “For through him [Christ] we both [Jew and Gentile] have access to the Father by one Spirit” (v. 18). In one action, the cross of Jesus makes vertical as well as horizontal peace. The cross not only creates peace between God and man (Romans 5:1–2), but also between human beings.

The cross stands in the middle of broken relationships. It is Christ, the Peacemaker, who makes peace possible in all relationships. This peace is not won through political negotiation or clever strategy. It is achieved through the self-sacrificial love of the cross. This love is divine love, the love that God has poured into our lives through His Son and His Spirit.

Christian discipleship, then, involves a life of loving relationships, vertical and horizontal. Thus we live out what the Lord Jesus pointed out as the two greatest commandments. In so doing, we allow the self-giving love that has flowed out from God to us to flow back to Him and among ourselves. This is God’s radical action based on His radical sacrificial love, most clearly visible at the cross. We are called to follow Christ by denying our self and taking up our cross. In this way, we find God’s peace in every relationship.

Consider this:

God is a relational being and has made us for relationships. In what ways may you be neglecting relationships in your life? What factors (e.g. busyness, stress, anxieties) contribute to this and how can they be dealt with? Why do we need to love both vertically and horizontally, and how are these two dimensions related?

 

Excerpted and adapted from We are Pilgrims: Thoughts on the Way to Church by Robert Solomon. ©2016 by Robert Solomon. Used by permission of Armour Publishing. All rights reserved.

 

Related Resources:

God Is Love: Reflection on the Character of God.. Turn to Scripture to find the only true, pure form of love there is—God’s love. Understand how God is love and how He demonstrates His love to us in amazing ways. Find out more here.