Breaking Up and Reconciling – Both Are Hard to Do

Way back when there was a lilting tune by pop singer Neil Sedaka called “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” I remember silly words it contained: “dum-do-bee-do-dahm-dahm. Comma-comma-dum….” But as the title suggests, the song was about breaking up. Like many in the early ‘60s, it expressed the teenaged angst of love won and lost.

 

Yes, breaking up indeed is hard to do. All of us who have experienced it at least once – and who hasn’t? – know that no matter how many breakups you’ve gone through, it doesn’t get easier. When cherished relationships become broken, it hurts.

The flip side of this also is true: Reconciling can be very hard to do as well. Whether in a marriage, family, close friendships or long-standing business relationships, when those ties become damaged, it can be extremely hard to achieve true reconciliation. It requires humility and forgiveness – which can be difficult to muster when one or both parties have been deeply hurt or betrayed.

 

This is one reason the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so poignant and compelling. After defining a true follower of Jesus – “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) – the apostle Paul explains this is the perfect example of what reconciliation means:

“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…” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

 

When we think about a broken relationship we’ve had and how difficult it was (or would be) to become reconciled, imagine the magnitude of what these words express – God earnestly wanting to reconcile us to Himself, despite our rebellion, refusal to obey the commands He gave us for our good, and defiance in worshipping just about anyone or anything but Him. In a word, our sin.

 

Philippians 2:7-8 tells us that God “…made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and become obedient to death – even death on a cross.” These words sum up most profoundly what true humility, sacrifice and forgiveness look like.

 

It’s impossible to capture this in strictly human terms. Imagine one of us taking on the form of a caterpillar, or even a beetle. That certainly would be humbling, but even that image in no way conveys what it was like for the God of the entire universe to take on human form in the person of Jesus Christ. And yet, that’s the extent to which He desperately desired to become reconciled with wayward, willfully disobedient people. 

 

And going to the cross, dying in our place to atone for our sins as our Redeemer, was the only way He could accomplish that. “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Perhaps we should keep this in mind when we struggle to become reconciled with another person who has hurt us deeply.

 

There’s one other thing I find in this passage that strikes me as amazing: God not only has provided the means for becoming reconciled with Him but also asks us as His children to become agents for this reconciliation. It states, “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” (2 Corinthians 5:19-20).

 

There’s so much that could be written about this, but through the centuries this is exactly the apostles, patriarchs of Christianity like Martin Luther, John and Charles Wesley, Charles H. Spurgeon, Billy Sunday, D.L. Moody, C.S. Lewis, Billy Graham, and even Charlie Kirk have been doing: Imploring men, women and children to be reconciled to God.

Best of all, since we also as children of God are given the title of “Christ’s ambassadors,” this is our privilege too. Who do you know that needs to be reconciled to the Lord, to learn that He loved them so much that He sent His one and only Son to die for them, as we’re told in John 3:16? After all He has done for us, isn’t that the least we can do for Him? 

Fixing Flaws to the Masterpiece as Only the Creator Can

Imagine being a renowned artist who has just finished a painting for a major art exhibit. After examining it with pride, he believes it might be his best work yet. About the time the artist is putting his signature to the painting, one of his grandchildren, four-year-old Eva, arrives with her mom and dad. Excited about their visit, the painter leaves the artwork to greet them. 

While they’re engaged in conversation, Eva slips away, enters the artist’s studio, and decides to try her own creative skills. Following the example observed while watching granddad at work, she goes to the paint palette, its oils still fresh, picks up a brush and happily starts dabbing paint on the lower corners within her reach.

 

Her grandfather, noticing she has disappeared from sight, tracks her down and instantly sees the damage Susan innocently has inflicted on his masterpiece. Because he loves his granddaughter, the master artist stifles an urge to cry out in dismay. He guides Eva away from the painting as calmly as possible, places the palette far out of reach, and immediately starts contemplating how to fix his now-flawed creation.

 

If the painter resolves to repair the artwork, do you think he would he ask little Susan to do it? Of course not. He would do it himself, since as its creator, he’s the only one capable of restoring it to its former beauty.

 

Even as I describe this imagined scene, I can’t help cringing, thinking about how I might react if I were in his shoes. The paramount work of a lifetime, painstakingly created and completed, seriously marred by careless hands. Do you just take a “mulligan” or a start-over?

 

In the most profound sense, this is exactly the story we find unfolding throughout the Bible, starting with its opening words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), followed by its description of the creation account. That first chapter closes with these words: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good…” (verse 31). By “very good,” I don’t think He was saying, “Not too shabby” or “it’s okay.” It was the greatest “Ta-Dah!” of all time.

 

But we know the story didn’t end there. The first humans, whom the Bible identifies as Adam and Eve, wrecked the Lord’s perfect, idyllic work. Committing what is commonly referred to as the original sin, they defied His command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A singular but devastating act of disobedience and rebellion, with tragic ripples that we experience to this day.

 

One term for those ripples is our “sin nature.” Adam and Eve didn’t keep their wayward ways to themselves. Throughout history, men, women and children have been carrying on their sinful “DNA.” As Romans 3:10 declares, “There is no one righteous, not even one…,” and Romans 3:23 adds, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” From the moment we’re born, we arrive with something inside that seems intent on continuing to taint the Lord’s masterpiece.

 

Toward the end of the 7^th chapter of the book, the apostle Paul – having confessed his own struggles with right and wrong – bemoans, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death” (Romans 7:24). Great question, one most of us have asked ourselves, probably more than once.

 

Hymn writer and former slave owner John Newton himself faced this dilemma, wrestling with his dismal past, but arrived at this joyous conclusion as he wrote, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

 

This wasn’t rationalization on Newton’s part. He had discovered and embraced this truth from reading the Scriptures after being dramatically transformed by Jesus Christ. He read passages like Romans 7:25-8:2, in which Paul celebrated, after having asked who would rescue him:

“Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

Adam and Eve, and every human ever born since, set about ruining God’s perfect creation, but He instituted a better plan, one that will ultimately dispense with the devastation completely. The Bible teaches this in many places, but one of the great passages explaining what the Lord has done – and continues to do – is 2 Corinthians 5:17-21.

 

It begins by revisiting God’s creative powers: “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…” Then we find the incredible declaration that we, even in our current imperfect state, have the privilege of being participants in this redemptive process:

“…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. God made [Jesus Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

 

As an old preacher said, “If that doesn’t light your fire, your wood’s wet!”

 

Maybe the imagined master painter we met above didn’t enlist little Eva to help him in restoring his masterpiece; but amazingly by His grace – as Newton recognized – God has chosen not only to reconcile us to Himself through His Son, Jesus, but also wants us to serve as His agents in seeing others restored in relationship to Him as well. Praise the Lord!

A New Leaf – Or a New Life?

An old phrase we sometimes still hear concerns “turning over a new leaf.” This cliché, which apparently dates back to the 1500’s, alludes to the turning from one page (or leaf) of a book – the old-fashioned, paper kind – to a new one. Of course, these days when people talk of turning over a new leaf, they’re not making reference to a book – paper or Kindle version – but rather to beginning again, reforming, or making a fresh start.

People turning over a new leaf in their lives might desire to overcome an addiction, a behavioral problem, even a lack of motivation at work. Leave the old page behind and move onto a new one; start afresh.

Are you feeling a need to turn over a new leaf?

Have you ever tried to do this, turning over a new leaf in some area of your life? It might be as simple as deciding to quit watching so much TV or as urgent as trying to overcome a recurring, relationship-damaging struggle with anger. At the start of every year many of us make resolutions or set goals to turn over a new leaf and start doing – or stop doing – things we were not able to accomplish the year prior.

One common misconception about the Christian faith is that it requires taking a similar initiative – to turn over a new leaf spiritually speaking and attempt to clean up our act. That’s not the way it works, however, according to the Scriptures.

Two Bible passages I initially encountered years ago troubled me for some time. One of them said, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). I thought, “How can this be true – at least for me? I don’t feel like a new creation. I’m still the same old knucklehead I’ve always been. Don’t tell me the old has gone – it sure seems like it’s still here. I’ve been trying to change, but it’s not happening!”

Another verse offered a similar idea, showing my understanding from the other passage wasn’t misconstrued: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Nowhere do these verses direct the reader to “clean up your act,” or even “turn over a new leaf.” They talk about literal, spiritual renewal, orchestrated by God and not our own intentions. My efforts to change my own life, to undo lifelong patterns of wrong thinking and behavior, were as productive as trying to purify a piece of spoiled beef by wiping it off with a paper towel.

Recently I heard an observation by Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, about personal evangelism. He pointed out too often the focus of evangelistic efforts is to invite people to attend a church service or get them to join a particular congregation. That’s not what we’re called to be about as followers of Jesus, according to Stetzer. He stated ours is “not mission of recruitment, but mission of reconciliation.”

He cited 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 (not far from one of the bothersome verses I cited above), which says, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were working his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

In one sense, that’s deep theology. But in another way of looking at it, it’s quite simple. As an old friend of mine used to say, “Jesus took the rap for me.” But He didn’t stop there. Jesus also offered us new life, the capacity to live the life God demands – but in His strength, not ours.

“Apart from Me, you can do nothing,” Jesus told His followers in John 15:5. And as the apostle Paul affirmed in Philippians 4:13, “I can do everything through (Christ) who strengthens me.”

Yes, it might be necessary for us to turn over a new leaf. But we need to understand that Jesus Christ is our leaf-turner.