WHY DOES IT MATTER?
For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.(Colossians 1: 19-20)

From the outside looking in at Christianity, I suppose someone could ask why it matters whether or not Christ came at all. What's the point? Believers say that Jesus was one with God and that He "died for our sins", but what does that mean?

That's the point that Paul is trying to make with this statement: that God's intention is to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth to Himself. Reconcile - to draw together again, to restore to unity and harmony. We are given independant existence as God's creatures, free will to choose the nature of our relationship with God. But because of His love for His creations, He desires to be in harmony with us, to be at peace together.

I know many people who do not have good relationships with their parents. I was blessed to come from a loving home, where there never really was a doubt that our parents did love and care for us. And yet, even the best of parents will still run into spots where a child will be feeling unloved and neglected. I had my bouts of that. Being the "middle child" of four engendered a feeling that I was overlooked. I had it down to a standard song, in fact: my older sister was special because she was the first-born, my brother was special because he was the ony son, my younger sister was special because she was the baby - so where did that leave ME? I sometimes felt "outside" of things. I was "out of harmony."

I think everyone at some point or other has that feeling of being "out of harmony" with family or those others close to them. And that experience represents in small scale the possible chasm between ourselves and God. For those who come from seriously abusive families, there is possibly a feeling of outrage at the idea that the gap between their parents and themselves could be considered "small". I know some "children of abuse" who utterly reject the nature of their parents (usually the father) who were sorry excuses for human beings. They probably feel the gap between themselves and their abusive parent to be distances of light-years. How is that small?

First off, God is not an abusive parent worthy of being rejected. As we have seen in other selections for this Advent progress, He is a God who makes promises and delivers on them. Whatever our trials, He has plans for us, good plans. And He loves us. That is why He desires to be brought back into harmony with us. But He is also God and we are not - that gap is beyond light-years of distance.

So, He came to be with us in the person of Jesus, to dwell in Jesus and thus dwell among us as one of us.

But look again at what Paul says: it was the Father's good pleasure to do this, to seek this reconciliation, this united harmony.

Not need. Not requirement. Not demand. Not consumption, Not hunger. Not loneliness or incompleteness.

It was and is God's pleasure to come into harmony with us.

Pleasure.

Pleasure in all things in heaven and on earth. A love so complete there is peace and harmony, the most utterly complete experience of those qualities in the reunion.

Why does it matter that Christ came into the world? That's why. To be brought close to, even to dwell within, the source of love and peace and harmony.