Reconciling People with God and All Creation
Jesus is reconciling humans to God, to each other, and to the entire creation, breaking down divisions between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.
Therefore, we are committed to becoming healing communities engaged in the work of reconciliation wherever sin and evil hold sway.
We seek to be diverse communities of hope that realize the power of the cross to reconcile what has been separated by sin.
This requires us to move beyond our personal preferences to engage those who are perceived to be unlike us and to actively break down barriers of race, culture, gender, social class, and ethnicity.
We are convinced that the church – locally, nationally, and globally – is meant to be a diverse community precisely because Jesus is Lord over every nation, tribe, and tongue.
We are not satisfied with the status quo when it doesn’t reflect this kingdom reality, but are eager to pray for the coming of God’s kingdom here and now and to realize this mark of the kingdom in our midst.
Biblical Basis for this Core Value:
So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (NLT)
