Restoration Is the Goal--April 29, 2026

Restoration Is the Goal--April 29, 2026

"[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, having died to sins, we might live for justice; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your lives." (1 Peter 2:24-25)

Nobody walks through the halls of the hospital telling the patients to feel guilty for being sick or needing surgery for their broken bone. The focus is on healing whatever it is that is hurting.

And no self-respecting shepherd attempts to lecture the sheep who just got rescued after getting separated from the flock. The important thing is finding what was lost.

The goal in both situations is simply restoration. There are no hidden threats, no unsolicited guilt-trips, and no dredging up the past to beat somebody when they are down.  Rather, the hope of good physicians, nurses, and shepherds alike is to move forward with helping their patients or their flock to be whole, well, and where they are supposed to be. The past doesn't get hung around anybody's neck like the proverbial albatross from the old poem. There is no need for that.

And of course, that's what First Peter is saying about Christ, who is the "shepherd and guardian of our lives," too.  Christ has found us when we were lost, healed us when we were sick, called us to back to life when we were Lazarus in the grave.  And at no point is Jesus' plan to keep weaponizing the past against us, rubbing in how many times we have failed, or belittling us with guilt or shame for not measuring up.  Jesus has taken our sins from us, not so he can keep digging them up and reminding us about how bad we are, but in order to free us from their power.  He has healed us, even at the cost of his own life, absorbing the worst of our rottenness, violence, and cruelty in the cross and refusing to throw it back at us.  And he has found us, even if we have gotten ourselves lost again for the millionth time, because sheep keep needing to be sought and rescued.  Jesus' goal has always been to restore us, in whatever ways we have needed it.

That's an important part of the story, too.  Jesus' heals us with a purpose: so that we might be more fully alive--or as he says in John 10, "that they might have life in abundance." Much like the hospital staff is focused on getting the patient well enough to thrive once discharged, Jesus' goal with us is for us to be holy, faithful, good, and loving, like him.  We are meant to live for "justice" (or "righteousness," which is the same word in the original Greek); that is, we are meant to be done with the old crooked, selfish, and cruel ways that were killing us. And we are instead nursed along to live in new ways--ways that look like the character of Jesus. God's goal with us is always for us to be moving forward, not to berate us for our failures to move fast enough or to harangue us for the ways we've messed up in the past.  

Sometimes we church folk forget that. Sometimes we get it in our heads that we should be collectively miserable in order to show God how sorry we are for our sins, rather than seeing sin as the old dead-end we have been pulled out of because God's intention is for us to be led into joy.  Sometimes we can get so ingrained with the "I once was lost" part of the old hymn that we forget the good news "but now am found," or we hold other people down with the baggage of their past rather than celebrating when they have started over. Plenty of folks have heard, "You'll never be anything more than a no-good rotten sinner," so often and so intensely that they cannot dare to believe the news that God in Christ is relentlessly committed to our being healed and found. But here it is in the Scriptures: you have been claimed. You have been found.  You have been healed. We are moving forward from there.

Do we mess up again? Of course.  Do we get ourselves lost repeatedly? Without a doubt.  Do we have relapses of the disease in our lives we call "sin"? To be sure.  But when those things happen, again, it's worth noting that First Peter here doesn't start wagging his finger with the intention of making us miserable. He doesn't bully or beat us up with a recitation of infractions from our Heavenly Permanent Record. He helps us to look at the present moment and ahead of us, with gratitude rather than fear or shame. That is, after all, the point of forgiveness--that we can start over, leaving the record of our past wrongs behind us, and going in a new direction. Sometimes we forget that God isn't merely some traffic officer hiding at the roadside and looking for reasons to pull us over and issue a citation, but rather God is actively seeking for us to thrive and grow. God isn't merely an impassive judge doling out sentences for rulebreakers but rather, God is the One who keeps going to great lengths to turn us around and restore us when we have made a mess of ourselves. And that is the God who has claimed us to belong to the family of Christ.

That changes how we face the day ahead, doesn't it? We don't have to be hung up on our failures and infractions; we are freed to start new today, knowing that God isn't trying to yank us back to wallow in our past. God is moving us forward toward restoration.

Lord Jesus, make us new today, and bring us into fuller joy by making us like you.