For He Himself is our peace …through the cross
thereby killing the hostility1
God is hostile toward hostility. That sounds oxymoronic, but His perfection requires Him to counter what would destroy the objects of His love. Here is the problem: what would destroy us resides in our hearts and minds. So, God’s hostility was willingly absorbed by His perfect Son in our place. How did our loving Maker counter evil? Through sacrifice out of faithful love.
This gives us a compelling reference as we find ourselves surrounded by growing hostilities and self-destructive demands. The human nature’s bent on affirming its self-centeredness and realizing its own passions plays out in many forms that manifest the deceitful darkness of the human heart and are contrary to the mission and the mind of Christ.
Self-reference is the problem. Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee, though they eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see. Absent God (though many claim to have an idea of Him) we demand others see and do things “my way.” This is a sinister blindness, for we do not know that we are blind.
Our task as the church – the pillar and ground of the truth2 – is to remain firmly grounded on God’s self-disclosure. We are ministers of reconciliation because the Creator has shone in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.3 He alone is perfect in power, in love and purity. So, when our context is an ocean of self-affirmation, or self-identification, our mission is one of bold compassion in the lifeboat of God’s grace. Pulling anchor from the character and purpose of God would render us equally lost in the morass of human schemes and ideologies, which – history has testified – cannot remedy the plight of the human condition.
Let this be the message resounding from the banner of your life: We plead with you, be reconciled to God.4 Proclaim on Christ’s behalf because he took the hostility of God’s wrath to rescue us from it.
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1 [Eph. 2:14, 16]
2 Timothy 3:15
3 2 Corinthians 4:6
42 Corinthians 5:20
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