AMBASSADORS NOT BASTARDS

Notice that after the Fall, God took the initiative to seek out Adam and Eve. He didn’t cut them off or quit on them. Instead of shaming them, he covered their shame and charted out a restorative plan for them. This same restorative plan he extended to us in Christ. Without his initiative, we would not even want to be reconciled with him.

Why then is it that when one of our own strays, we are quick to vilify, mortify and blacklist them? We take joy in their fall and form a caucus to unleash a sneer and smear campaign against them. We gloat over their failure. We assume a self-righteous posture, brandishing the gavel of judge, jury, and executioner to do them in.

Who really are we, image-bearers of a loving God or vengeful cannibals preying on our own kind? God’s purpose in creation and redemption is to have a family of children conformed to the image of his Son, not a bunch of rivaling siblings plotting one another's mishap (Rom 8:29).

Every act of malice, conspiracy, treachery against our own kind, deforms our 'likeness' of Whose image to which we are meant to be conformed.

Our new creation experience is based on God's gracious initiative to reconcile us to himself and he went on to entrust us with 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..." (2 Cor 5:19- 20a)

We are not bastards but ambassadors, so let's start reflecting the true nature of Christ, living up to the ministry of reconciliation invested in us!