Cosquer Cave in southern France is an intriguing feature of the landscape. The cave has two chambers connected by narrow passageways, totaling well over three hundred feet. More than half of the cave lies below sea level, and one chamber measures 177 feet tall from the submerged floor to the ceiling.
Several things are interesting about the cave, but its most famous feature is the 574-foot entrance tunnel, which opens 121ft below sea level. Professional scuba divers discovered the entrance in 1985, and it took the combined efforts of several divers six years to install enough guide lines before they found the cavern within. Three men died in the effort.
100 feet underground, 600 feet from the open sea or the cavern’s opening, with only one path into or out of the cave. How dark would that be if your headlamp failed?
Cosquer Cave is a fitting picture of the relationship between God and man and the way Jesus works out our salvation.
Reconciliation: Personal
Reconciliation is like that entrance tunnel, in a way. If someone is offended, only they can forgive or overlook the offense. Imagine wronging your coworker, and everyone else at work sees how terrible you feel and how hard you’ll work to avoid the mistake again.
Restored relationships follow a path as exclusive as the entrance to the Cosquer Cave. From one person to another — from God to man.
The Tunnel: Path
John writes, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all,” and we have sin to confess to a God who is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us.
Sin — anything thought, said, or done that violates God’s law — is a defining mark of all humanity by nature (Eph 2:3) and by choice (Romans 3:10-23). God said so, and who is so bold as to call Him a liar? That sin has driven a wedge between each person and the God who gave them life. Separated, alienated, like friends at work who don’t talk anymore.
But worse. If a difficult human relationship is a 600-foot underground tunnel, then the separation of sin between God and Man spans the Pacific Ocean ad nauseam. So high is his holiness, so frequent our transgression. So cut off from life and light, we face death and darkness.
Only God and each individual person can reconcile their relationship when the two parties meet somewhere along the gap between them. There’s no other way.
The Pioneer: Propitiation
It took a team of divers moving deeper and deeper into the underground tunnel of Cosquer Cave, and placing a succession of secured guide line reels to discover the inner chambers.
Jesus Christ, God Almighty, righteous and holy, took on flesh and swam the distance between God and man. If you offended your brother so severely that he justly and understandably cut you out of his life for a decade… how incredible would it be to see him make the first move?
But Jesus not only made the first move, but He also died in our place. He entered not only our estrangement but also our condemnation on the cross; God raised him from death and darkness to life and light again. He traveled from God to man and back again.
Union with Christ: Personal
“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1–2, ESV)
John says that this righteous one, Jesus, who comes to reconcile, is our advocate and our propitiation. When a friend is offended, an apology is often enough to satisfy their hurt and restore the relationship. God is so offended by humanity, and so just in his indignation, that only the fairness of death — the removal of life’s gift freely bestowed and tarnished — can suffice. You couldn’t pay such a debt any more than you could swim the entrance tunnel of Cosquer Cave without oxygen.
Jesus offered such a death to the Father on our behalf, like an elder brother making a younger brother’s mistake right with the elderly neighbor whose fence was broken.
God, in Christ Jesus, by undeserved grace, reckons our debt of death paid in the death of Jesus. His favor restored. He comes to the Father, as an advocating mediator, and presents his own death as sufficient payment. Is that fair? No. But who are you to tell Jesus what he can spend his riches of a righteous life upon?
He chose to spend it on you. And not you only, but all who call upon him for mercy. He is both the justly offended and the justifier of the offender — the offended one who reached out first, and the one who satisfies the offense to make things right. Don’t take his kindness lightly; trust him to make you right with God… there is no other way to be right with God.