When we’re asleep and dreaming, we enter into an altered reality. There may be elements of real life in our dreams—for example, people and places that are familiar to us—but what we dream is not real.
When Jesus first came to earth, it was as if the whole world was asleep and dreaming. What seemed real, wasn’t. For example, some people were convinced that God was pleased with their religious devotion, even though they had no love for other human beings. At the same time, there were some people who were sure that God did not care about them at all because of some sin or failure in their past. All of these people were wrong: what they thought was real was only a dream.
Jesus came to wake people up from their deep, dream-filled, and yes, illusion-creating sleep, to make sure that they could tell the difference between what was real and what was not real. If we still believe things like one group of people is superior to another group, or revenge is the same as justice, or the goal of life is to make money, or we have no need for God in our lives, then we are just proving that we are still dreaming—and Jesus’ work is not done.