Ephesians 1:14

The thief does not come except to steal, to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

We were made for connection—and Jesus came to restore what sin had broken.

A Vision Built on Connection

At the end of 2012 I was invited to teach a new class at Calvary Chapel Bible College called Church Planting. I had to laugh when they asked, because I've never taught it and I haven't even planted a church. I was given the privilege in 2008 of becoming the pastor of this church, but it was planted years before that—a solid, healthy, established church. Still, over the last several years, through the Calvary Church Planting Network, I've had the privilege of ministering to many church planters going out into the work.

Every year when I teach that class, I spend considerable time on vision—developing and implementing it as a pastor. Every organization—a school, a business, a church—needs a clear, stated, understandable, and implementable vision. Vision defines what an organization is about and directs what it does. So when I became pastor here, the question of our vision was very big on my heart.

Twelve Simple Words

Like any Bible-believing, gospel-preaching church, we're focused on preaching the gospel to those who haven't heard it and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. But our stated vision is a little more than that. If you've been here any length of time, you've heard it: life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. Those twelve simple words define who we are and direct what we do. Over the next three Sundays I want to spend time on this vision as we step into the new year.

A little background. When I became pastor in 2008, the church was called Calvary Chapel of Escondido, and our stated mission was three words: win, disciple, send—borrowed from Horizon Christian Fellowship in San Diego. We tweaked it to know, grow, go. Then in 2012 we changed our name to Cross Connection Church. In 2014 I taught a series called Life in Connection. A few weeks later I was visiting my friend Daniel at Crossroads Church in Vancouver, Washington, and I mentioned "know, grow, go." He asked, "Do you like that vision?" When I told him about the Life in Connection series, he stopped me and said, "That sounds like that's your vision."

Driving away, those words came to mind: life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. Why do we exist? To live life in connection. Connection with what? With God, one another, and the world. How? Through Jesus. In those twelve words we answer why we exist, what we're doing, and how we do it. Jesus came to make that connection possible.

The Abundant Life Is the Connected Life

In John 10:10 Jesus speaks of a thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The sad reality is that every human being lives a robbed life—robbed of what God created us to know and experience. But Jesus says, "I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly"—a fuller, more satisfying, enduring, ultimately eternal life.

The more I teach through the Bible, the more convinced I am of the first point: the abundant life is the connected life. Life in connection with God and one another is the abundant life. From the very beginning of creation, we were fashioned to live that connected life.

Created in the Image of the Triune God

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void... and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters... Then God said, "Let there be light." (Genesis 1:1–3)

In these opening verses we're introduced to the Creator God, to God the Spirit, and to God the living Word. We're introduced to the doctrine of the Trinity—one God who exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Throughout the six days of creation, God speaks everything into being, and at the end of each day He beholds it and says, "It is good."

Then comes the sixth day:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness." (Genesis 1:26)

Who is the "Us"? The Father, the living Word, and the Spirit—the triune God living in community, experiencing oneness and connection. We were created uniquely. In a culture that says we're just animals who evolved "from the goo to the zoo to you"—I didn't make that up, I stole it—Scripture says something far different. God did not say "Let Us make zebras and goats in Our image." He said it about you.

To be made in His image means we are like God in certain ways—not perfectly, but truly. Like Him, we have intellect, emotion, and will. Like Him, we fashion, form, and create, manipulating our environment and making new things. No other creature does that. And one way He formed us in His likeness was to be in connection with Him and with one another.

It Is Not Good to Be Alone

And the LORD God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." (Genesis 2:18)

Among all the good things God created, here is the first negative. It wasn't evil that man was alone—it was incomplete. So God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, took from his side, and fashioned woman, bringing her to the man. From one He made two, for the purpose of joining them together as one.

This is the second point: we were created to live in communion with God and community with one another. That's God's original intent. We were made for connection. In fact, the first command God ever gave humanity, in Genesis 1:28, was "be fruitful and multiply"—make more, because you're not to be alone.

Sin Brought Disconnection

Like any great story, the greatest story ever told has a problem—and it arrives in Genesis 3. God placed man in the garden and said he could freely eat of every tree except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

Why did God make that tree? Because for genuine relationship to exist, there has to be the option of not having it. God did not create us as robots, automatically connected with no choice. So He gave the option. And death is separation—disconnection.

The serpent, the deceiver, came to Eve and questioned God's word. She saw the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise. She ate, and gave to her husband. Immediately their eyes were opened. Where before they were naked and unashamed, now fear and shame entered. They tried to cover themselves. A separation came between husband and wife, between human beings—and a separation between humanity and divinity. In Genesis 3:9, God came into the garden asking, "Adam, where are you?" The connection was lost.

This is the third point: sin brought disconnection. This is the condition all 7.4 billion of us live under, and everyone ever born.

Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin... and thus death spread to all men. (Romans 5:12)

That separation, division, and disconnection is what we all experience—yet within each of us remains a residual desire for connection, a yearning for communion with the divine and community with one another. This is why religion is so huge among all peoples. Even those who call themselves non-religious—the atheists, the agnostics, the "nones"—are religiously committed to some philosophy, trying to find connection to something deeper. Carl Sagan, one of the great spokesmen of the last fifty years, spent his life searching for extraterrestrials. There has to be something more. It's in all of us.

This is why we look for ways to connect—why something like Facebook is so big. If Facebook were a nation it would be the largest in the world, with 1.6 billion users a month. We yearn for connection in the smallest ways—even just tapping the "like" button. Every human being is yearning for connection.

Jesus Came to Restore the Broken Connection

Here is the good news, point four: Jesus came to restore the broken connection. If you know Jesus today, you have the answer everyone is looking for.

For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17)

The one who sinned, bringing death, was Adam. The one who brings grace and righteousness is Jesus. As through Adam's offense judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation, so through Jesus' righteous act the free gift came to all men resulting in justification of life (Romans 5:18–19).

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly... But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6–8)

Picture the person hanging from a ledge, fingers about to give way, without strength—and at just the right time, someone reaches over and grabs them. That's what Christ did. At just the right time, He died for the ungodly. "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son"—reconciled, reconciliation, the word Paul uses again and again.

The Only True Reconciliation

We hear that word everywhere today. Researchers say we're living in one of the most divided times in our nation's history, second only to the Civil War—socioeconomic division between the haves and have-nots, the 99% and the 1%, and racial division at a height. People ask, "How do we bring reconciliation?" Some say redistribution of wealth. Many in 2008 hoped a new president would bring racial reconciliation—and almost eight years later it's even worse. People are asking, "Where is the one who can bring reconciliation?"

It's Jesus. Look around this room. There are people here who are incredibly wealthy and people who are unbelievably poor—and you wouldn't know which is which. There are different races, cultures, and languages, and God breaks down the middle wall of separation and brings us together as one in Christ. We laugh at the United Nations—established in the 1950s to bring the nations together with peace accords and resolutions—because sixty years later it hasn't worked. Some call it "the United Nothing." Only the gospel brings true reconciliation in Christ.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation... that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. (Ephesians 2:13–16)

This is why we changed our name to Cross Connection. It's a simple way to preach the gospel. Someone asks, "Where do you go to church?" "Cross Connection." "What's that?" "We've been brought back into connection with God and one another through the cross of Jesus Christ." He came and preached peace to those far off and those near, "for through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father." You are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Laying Hold of the Connection

He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13–14)

How do you lay hold of this communion with God and community with one another? By accepting the free gift of eternal and abundant life through Jesus—trusting in Him alone for salvation.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses... by grace you have been saved. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. (Ephesians 2:4–9)

Six Ways We Strengthen Our Connection with God

So how do we maintain and strengthen the connection Jesus has won for us? Point five—six things we do as Christians and as a church.

Worship. Why do we gather and sing praise to God? Because God inhabits the praises of His people, and in that place of worship we connect with Him.

Prayer. Is there any better way to connect with God than to speak directly to Him? Through the name of Jesus we have direct access to the Father—no priest, no saint, no medium needed.

Scripture. God speaks to us primarily through His Word, so we strengthen our connection by studying the Scriptures.

Generosity. God loves a cheerful giver. Giving to one another, to the body of Christ, and to those in need is one of the ways we connect with God.

Baptism. Jesus gave the church two sacraments, and baptism is one. He was baptized Himself (Matthew 3) and commanded us to baptize disciples (Matthew 28:19). We practice full-immersion baptism—going down under the water in identification with Jesus, buried with Him and raised to walk in newness of life.

Communion. Regularly we partake of the bread and the cup—the bread reminding us of His body broken for us, the cup of His blood shed for us—which makes it possible for us to be connected to God and one another.

Why do we sing, study, pray, baptize, take communion, and give? All of it is for the purpose of living life in connection with God. And I'm convinced that's the abundant life. There is no greater joy than to be in the presence of almighty God.

Closing Prayer

Father, I thank You for Your grace. Lord, You made us to be in communion with You and community with one another. As we discover over the next couple of weeks what it means to live life in connection with one another and with the world, draw us closer to You. Jesus, we thank You that You came to give us life more abundantly, reconciling us back to You and to one another. Enable us to be ambassadors of You this week with the ministry of reconciliation in a world in such desperate need of peace and connection. May the connection we experience here not be a faux, fake connection—just tapping the "like" button—but genuine community of the body of Christ.

And Lord, I pray for any here who still feels far off because of sin, who has never received Your forgiving grace. Draw them by Your Spirit now, that they would put their trust and faith in You. Jesus came and died on the cross 2,000 years ago so that you could be brought near and into the family of God.

If that's you today, would you pray out loud with me: Dear Jesus, I feel far away. I recognize that I have failed and that my sin has separated me from You. Thank You for coming and dying on the cross so that I could be brought near. Please forgive me of my sin. Help me to turn to You in faith and to follow You with my life. In Jesus' name, amen.