Resurrection and Restoration

John Telgren

To you remember the movie Short Circuit?  Through a freak accident, a robot, named simply, "Number 5," begins to think independently.  In one scene a bug was killed.  He didn't understand.  The lady he was with tried to explain that it was dead.  Number 5 said, "disassemble?"  She said, "yes."  Number 5 said, "Reassemble."  She responded that she couldn't.

Indeed, when life is lost, there is no way to put it back together again.  Like the nursery rhyme said, "All the kings horses and all the kings men could not put humpty back together again."  Mankind did indeed have a great fall.  The fall came as a result of sin.  When Eve and Adam sinned in the garden, it brought all kinds of unforeseen consequences.  They had no idea what "death" really meant.  It became clear immediately that death was not merely the death of the body, though that would eventually come.  Death meant alienation, twistedness, and guilt.  The guilt brought shame, which caused them to cower and hide before God and before each other.  The realized they were naked.  It wasn't as if they had no realization they were wearing clothes, it was that they felt shame as a result of the guilt of sin.  They wanted to cover themselves up.  But it was more than this.  In the following chapters of Genesis, we see the results of sin.  If affected family relationships and society as a whole.  For starters, we see the rise of hate, envy, murder, unrestrained vengeance, sexual sin and pride.  This infection became so great that every thought and intent of the heart was only on evil continually.  God was grieved in his heart.  Man had become fully twisted inside and out.  Sin separated him from God (Isa 59:2), which means he was separated from life, wisdom, and all the other things that come from God.  This is why those lost in sin, even though they profess to be wise, become fools (Rom 1:21).  Their minds became futile and they were darkened in their understanding (Eph 17-18).  In other words, their minds were affected by sin.  Due to sin, people by nature become children of wrath (Eph 1-3).  Due to sin, people become helpless to truly change and reform and could not rid themselves of sin (Rom 5:6).  They had become slaves of sin (Jn 8:34), and sin had effected even their will and desire to the point that they would need God at work within them to will and work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:23).  No wonder the Bible often speaks of being "defiled" in sin.  The ultimate result of this condition is to be eternally separated from God, which the Bible speaks of eternal death, or Hell.

But God didn't let it end there.  He provided a means for redemption at a great cost for us.  When Jesus was crucified, he died for our sins (1 Cor 15:3), which is what separated us from God.  When he rose from the grave, he defeated death.  All who are in Christ will be made alive (1 Cor 15:22).  Through the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, we can find victory over sin and death.   In addition to personal redemption, Jesus provides a means for personal reformation as well.  Through Christ, we are transformed into his image (2 Cor 3:18).  He renews us through the Spirit (Titus 3:5).  Our inner self is being renewed day by day (2 Cor 4:16).

Only our Lord can put fallen humpty back together again.  Only our Savior can "reassemble" what had been destroyed by sin.  When we devote our life to him, truly he begins to restore the original beauty and holiness we were created with.