I was listening to this in worship & I remembered a pastor at school drawing on the blackboard the picture of Jesus as the bridge. Mankind on one side of the chasm and God on the other with no way to get to Him. But then Jesus comes and is the bridge between the two. The memory, like the blackboard, was in black & white. Then in vivid colour I saw 2 edges of coastline, 2 cliffs, opposite each other and a large wedge of earth came down from the sky into place between the two. It came into the gap and filled the gap fully, there was no separation. I felt like God was saying that yes Jesus is the bridge but He is so much more. The bridge is inadequate & insufficient to describe Jesus.

Jesus is the bridge between man and God but when I think about a bridge over a chasm I automatically think of a rickety old swing bridge that sways from side to side. I’ve walked across some swing bridges and they terrify me. In the back of my mind I am thinking what if this thing breaks? what if I loose my footing and fall through the gaps? what if it swings and I fall off the side? What if, what if?

But Jesus comes and fills the whole chasm! There is nothing to fall in to anymore. You can’t fall off or through the bridge in to the abyss of sin & death below because Jesus has come in and filled the abyss. He has squashed sin and death below Him, He totally fills the place so that you can walk over to the other side on solid ground. Sure you may trip along the way, you may make mistakes, but you pick yourself up and keep walking. You haven’t fallen into the abyss, you have fallen on Jesus. You get up and keep going.

Another way the bridge picture falls down for me is in that there is only 1 point to cross over. Yes Jesus is the only way to the Father and He is the narrow gate but the bridge means we have to find the bridge to cross over when in actual fact it is God who runs to us as soon as we turn to Him. From where we are standing, if God is west of us, as soon as we turn west, if we keep walking, with Jesus filling the whole chasm, we will hit Jesus and so God. If we turn to the south instead then we are heading in the wrong direction and so Jesus can’t be our way to God. When we turn to God, wherever we go facing Him, Jesus is there to meet us. With Jesus filling the chasm we can walk across at any point along the whole length of the cliff. There is no point to find our way to cross over. The bridge implies that there is work to find it but with Jesus as the full interface, we meet God where we are, there is no working to find the right entry, we are always able to come across.

The bridge is good but Jesus is so much more than the bridge. He has closed the distance between earth and heaven. Nothing can separate us from the love of God because Jesus has squashed the abyss of sin and death below Him.