I must confess that I have entrée envy. Going to a restaurant with me is an interesting and challenging activity. I never, let me stress never, order the same entrée twice. Variety is the spice of life and I want my life as spicy as possible! Life is much simpler for Jan. She finds a food she likes and sticks with it. She may take a menu and pretend to consider other options but it is totally a ruse. She just cannot take the risk of ordering something that she may not like. And she plays this charade out completely, insisting on ordering last. Inevitably I end up ordering first. I hate to order first. That is when my entrée envy kicks in. I will end up wishing I had everything that everyone else at the table ordered.

It does not stop with ordering food. I have to watch every dish that comes from they kitchen. “Oh, that looks really good.” “I wonder what you call that.” “Is it too late to change my order?” As the time nears for us to get our food, my dilemma deepens. I start watching the kitchen door. When the doors swing open, I begin to salivate like Pavlov’s dog. A singsong melody cascades through my mind, “Here comes our food…Here comes our food! Oh yeah, oh yeah, here comes our food.” Then the unthinkable happens, the tray passes by to another table. My mind explodes with questions. “How long have they been here?” “Weren’t we here first?” Entrée envy should be classified as a mental illness.

Tonight we get to the entrée portion of the Foundations of the Faith. Just as the entrée is the central point of the meal, the atonement is the heart of our theology. The truths of man’s purpose, the creation, the fall, and the awful cost of sin serve to frame the contextual need of the atonement. Humanity is broken. We are unable to fulfill our purpose, being crippled by sin and death. Then in comes the entrée, the heart of the gospel. God so loved the world that He provided a way back to Him. Hope is restored. Man is called into reconciliation. The path has been laid by the sacrificial death and resurrection of the very Son of God. Relationship with the Almighty has been restored!

“Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:18-21).”

With an entrée like that, I never have to be envious again!