AT PEACE WITH GOD
AT PEACE WITH GOD
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is His peace. His peace is real and lasting.
He made this peace available to us by enduring the
Passion and the Cross. This is the pivotal event of all
history we are commemorating this week.
Only in the Cross of Christ are we able to see the love of
God that passes all understanding. This is why St. Paul
says ‘ I am determined to know nothing among you
other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified’. This is Who
God is. God is Love.
The Cross of Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior established
the peace between God and man. We are brought into
right standing with God through the forgiveness of our sins.
We now stand in awe of Him, in gratitude to Him, in love with
Him. Our righteousness is totally based on His holiness.
The wholeness of our identity is based on His integrity.
His faithfulness is the basis of our faith.
We have to realize that apart from His righteousness we have no
basis for security in our fellowship with Him.
‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ so the love of
God is based on the reality of God Who is Holy, Perfect and
Wholly other. On the other hand the heart of natural man is ‘full of
deceit, lies and desperately wicked.’ This gaping canyon between God
and man has been scaled by The God-Man Jesus Christ Who is Wholly
Divine and Wholly Human. Without Him this peace is unthinkable.
He is our peace. He has broken down the wall of hostility.
The love, adoration and awe we feel towards Him must be based on
the healthy fear of the unfathomable distance between God and men.
Any so called mysticism, intimacy and romantic idea that discounts this
unfathomable distance disregards the Holiness of God and the Goodness
God.
It is the Goodness of God that leads us to repentance. Repentance from
dead works, repentance from delusion and deceit.
If people think they are OK and not so bad after all, they are living a lie.
We have to start out by admitting like St. Paul “What a wretched men I am”
and confessing that “in me nothing good dwells” and agreeing with our Lord
that “there is only One that is good.” In the human sphere “there is none
that does good, no not one’.
After we realize who and what we are with no delusion, deceit and conceit
are we able to esteem and appreciate the enormity of God’s Goodness
which leads us to repentance.
Man have “imprisoned the truth in unrighteousness”.
In other words, because our deeds fall far short of the glory of God,
because of intrinsic human sinfulness humanity has tended to cloud
the truth and obscured the reality of who we are and Who God is.
Thus a false God, who is No-God has been substituted for the True
and Living God.
To realize the Peace of God which passes understanding we need to
admit our sinfulness and admire God’s righteousness.
We can have peace with God only through faith in Christ Jesus our
Redeemer and His Blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus introduces us to the Fullness
of God, His Salvation, our Union with Him, the Reconciliation wrought
at the Cross, by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and celebrated at the
Holy Communion.
HALLELUJAH! THANK YOU LORD JESUS FOREVERMORE!