BRINGING BACK ORDER

My mind is drawn, as it often is, to how things were ‘in the beginning.’ This is because ‘in the beginning’ the Lord put order within us. This order became unbalanced when the selfishness of sin pushed it off course. Now it is necessary to re-establish the original order by means of repentance. The repentance of our hearts in the gospels is a re-establishment of the original order established by God within us. What we need is a rectification. Order must always be corrected and rectified.

Repentance also means conversion. And conversion means a different moving, from us to God, or back to God. This is the endless exchange from the psychological structures of the ‘old man’ (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9) toward the orderly structures of God; which is essentially His love in the ‘new man’ (1 John 4:16).

According to the scriptures, the original plan of God in creating humanity was because he wanted to enter into communion with us by indwelling us. This is the ultimate goal of God’s intervention in salvation history and is the objective of the covenants. Having created us in His image (Genesis 1:26), God wants to make humanity more like Him; He wants to form family with us, to make us more like Himself, making his children share in His nature. Love is His nature. Love is order.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus