Peace with God part 1
This kind of goes along with what I was Ranting about last night. That double mindedness that so many people see to have. Thinking God's against them. "Why does God hate me?" Or, at best, that its the flip of a coin. He loves me, He loves me not. We think its behavior based. We think God deals with us the way we deal with each other. That's one of the biggest things I've noticed about "theology" (or the study of God): We tend to create God in OUR image instead of realizing that we were created in HIS image. Or, rather, what we THINK our image is. Its impossible to see yourself clearly without seeing God clearly. That's why the light of the world needed to shine. His light of love lets us see clearly. His light of love shines to reveal things in divine order. We spend so much time trying to "get right with God." Trying to find peace with God. Because we think we don't have it. Because we think we aren't right with Him. We spend so much time trying to be someone we're not because we don't understand who we are. Look at Romans 5:1, "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Let me emphasize "...we HAVE peace with God..." That's not something we need. That's what we have. So we don't need to pick flower petals. We don't need to try really hard to be someone we're not. We don't need to GET peace with God. We don't need to GET right with God. He made us right with Him through the cross. And, really, I'm not convinced that we were ever "wrong" with Him, if I can say it that way. I'm not convinced that God was EVER against us. This idea that He was "out to get us," in a negative sense... I don't buy it. But He DID get us. On the cross. In the best way. When Jesus was lifted up from the earth He drew us all into Himself. And He planted Himself in all of us. We were conformed to the image of God's Son. His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. You can't be more at peace with someone than for them to love you and be well pleased with you. And if you notice, we have this peace through faith. We already have it... and we experience it when we believe it. One more memory verse for tonight: "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). On the cross Jesus became sin... and then died. So that sin might die. So that DEATH might die. And because sin and death were cast into the lake of fire (the second death), we were able to experience the new birth. Again, we were made in the image and likeness of God in the beginning, and then conformed to the image of His Son on the cross. We were dead in our trespasses and sins before the cross, and then made alive through the cross. We were at war (in a sense, and this is where I think I'm going with this Rant series) with God and ourselves before the cross. And now, because of the cross--because of our faith IN the cross, in the blood of Christ, in Jesus... in love--we are at peace with God. And at peace with ourselves. The war is over. Love won. And now love reigns!