Finding Peace

This week I wrestled with making a decision that would have brought significant changes to my life. I pondered the best choice, trying to factor in each component – my financial state, the future, how it would impact my personal happiness, and what it would mean for my current relationships. For two days my mind was occupied with the issue, restless, without peace. Then finally, the matter was settled by circumstances beyond my control. Relief!

Most of us have come to those kinds of crossroads in life, haven’t we?
And no one likes living in that kind of limbo, lacking serenity.

There is a choice I made long ago that provides me with the deepest peace.

It was and is and will always be the most significant choice of my life. I responded to the invitation of God’s Spirit to trust Christ Jesus as my Savior and was granted peace with God and life everlasting.  

This Good Friday finds me worshipful, grateful for the amazing goodness of God that we can know through His Son, Jesus. Come with me to a passage that captures the essence of what happened at Golgotha that Friday so long ago. Golgotha was a hill outside Jerusalem where the Romans took Jesus to be crucified. The name is Aramaic for "place of the skull."  

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.”  (Colossians 1)

We who were separated from God by sin, guilty, and captive of the Evil One needed rescue. The chasm was too great to be closed by any attempt at morality or goodness. God loved His creation and took the initiative. He gave Jesus who was the “God-man,” fully God, yet fully human, bearing “all God’s fullness.”

For what purpose did HE come to this earth? The Scripture says “to reconcile all things” to God. That is what happened at the Cross. He was the Last Sacrifice for sin, the offering of His life is the Way for us to know peace.

Ponder that today! Because of Jesus you and I are now “holy in (God’s) sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”  This is the Gospel of Christ.

Good Friday is the heart of the Good News of God, a message received by faith which changes everything about us, making us, once again, God’s own children. Have you trusted Him?

The rest of the story was told on the First Day of the Week, when the Empty Tomb was found with the assurance that we, like Him, will live forever in the home of the Father.

Take this word from the Word with you in your mind and heart today. Spend some time “near the Cross” and let the peace with God become the foundation of life, the peace of God.

“Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God.

For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. That is why he is the one who mediates a new covenant between God and people, so that all who are called can receive the eternal inheritance God has promised them. For Christ died to set them free from the penalty of the sins they had committed under that first covenant.”
(Hebrews 9:13-15)

Wonderful peace! Amen

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For the whole world!

The reality of suffering and evil that exist all around me are too real to me today. This globe knows millions who live among the devastation of war. Thousands die when strong men order missiles and bombs to fall. National leaders care little for the people of the street who live with the results of their decisions. Greed drives nations and causes ordinary people to suffer in poverty.

Closer to home, bullying bosses make life miserable for their employees,
families divide when petty people choose to fight and hate.
Oh yes, my sins are real to me, too.

So, on this first day of Holy Week I can identify, in a small way, with the tears of Jesus after His raucous welcome into Jerusalem on what we call “Palm Sunday.” Luke says that “as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace.”  (Luke 19) He saw the awful sorrow that would come on that city’s people in years ahead, something that they might have avoided if they had accepted Him as their Messiah.

On this week’s journey to the Cross and onward to Resurrection Sunday, I want to feel something of the weight of sin so that I will better worship the One whose sacrifice changes everything for those who believe Him and accept His grace. Peter tells us that “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2) Those are such wonderful words, even more meaningful against the backdrop of human depravity.

Think about that, my friend. Jesus knew the depths of evil that terrible day. He carried the sin of slave traders, war mongers, child-abusers, and murderers. He carried sins less dramatic to us – jealousy, pride, greed, lust, and apathy about spiritual matters – that most of us experience. No wonder His anguish caused Him to groan and cry out.

Crucifixion was a horrible and cruel way to execute a person, but Jesus’ cries went beyond the suffering of His body. He, the Perfect One, felt the guilt of the whole world in an unimaginable moment when He took it all on His shoulders and gave His life to make a way for us to be right with God, our Creator-Father.

John’s words cannot be read casually as we think of that. He says, “And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”  (1 John 2)

Let me offer three thoughts about our response to the Cross of Jesus.

First, let’s worship with true wonder.
“That God should love a sinner such as I, how wonderful is love like this.
Such love, such wondrous love!”  says the old hymn. If we rush too quickly past the ugliness of the Cross in our hurry to know the joy of Easter, we will not worship as we ought. Our salvation becomes all the more rich when we ponder the depths from which Christ Jesus has lifted us.

Second, let’s choose to live in His grace and with grace towards others.
We need not live in guilt or shame when we remember the Cross, because what He did there is finished, the work of atonement for sins complete. The inspired writer of Hebrews contrasts the yearly sacrifice of the first Covenant with the final sacrifice of the New. We learn this – “But he (Christ) has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,  so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”  (Hebrews 9)

My sin, your sin, the sin of the world was paid for, in full, at the Cross, by the sacrifice of the Final Lamb, whose shed blood was sufficient for the redemption of the world for all time!

So, third, let’s become messengers of Life and Hope!
Christians should NOT be known for their condemnation of others. We should be the most hopeful people in the world! Our message is not about death, it is a word of life. Paul says “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. 

And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  WE live in peace with God, and we lead others to know that peace, too. In this work, evil is defeated. The broken are made whole. Those who suffer are comforted. Oh, what a Savior.

So, this Holy Week, may we live soberly, pray to know the cost of our salvation, even while we anticipate the great promise of the Resurrection that brings us to life eternal in the home of our Father. Amen.
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