Gen 2:16-17  But the Lord God gave the man this warning: “You may eat any fruit in the garden except fruit from the Tree of Conscience-for its fruit will open your eyes to make you aware of right and wrong, good and bad. If you eat its fruit, you will be doomed to die.”  (TLB)

The word for peace in Greek is to, ‘set-at-one’ or ‘to join’. This is the peace that Adam enjoyed with God in the garden of Eden. They were so close in relationship, a razor blade could not pass between them.

But the moment Adam sinned, that oneness, that join, that peace was shattered and broken, and his conscience which had only registered good, now began to register bad. Guilt, condemnation, fear and shame began to operate in his life.

He knew that he himself had shattered the peace with God, and cowered in fear behind the trees awaiting the punishment that would follow - “You shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). But instead of letting the sword of Damocles fall upon Adam’s neck, God’s grace kicked in, He sacrificed animals on behalf of their sin and covered them with the skins (Gen 3:21).

Adam’s sin nature and sin consciousness now passed onto the whole future human race. His rebellion, his shaking the fist at God was now embedded in man; And as we saw in Pt 1 of this Blog, once man loses his vertical peace with God, he loses his horizontal peace with other men.

In fact, by Gen ch 4 Cain slew his own brother Abel out of jealousy, hatred and anger; And we see throughout 2000yrs of history there has been non-stop war, violence and division between the nations. Peace has been a fleeting emotion!

Suddenly, Jesus Christ is born and the angels announce, “Glory to God in the heavenly heights, peace to all men and women on earth who please him”. (Lk 2:14 TM).
But mankind have misconstrued this peace. They think that by working hard and seeking to understand each other, that peace can reign. What a myth!

NO – the peace Jesus came to bring cannot be earned, it can only be received, and only received by those who bow the knee in humility and surrender to God, to His Lordship, by receiving the work of the cross of Christ into their lives.

Christ came to be a peace maker not a peacekeeper, and He gave His life to join God and man together again. In our next Blog we shall be looking at Christ as, ‘Peacemaker’.

Meditation Point:  If Christ has made peace between us and God, have I received the fullness of His peace, or am I still plagued by guilt, condemnation, shame, rejection and fear etc.

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The Grace Revolution

There is rapidly occurring across the earth, a division between Law teaching and Grace teaching. God Himself is doing it. Some of those who still preach a mixture of Law and Grace will first try to be diplomatic and reasonable but under the surface they will carry hatred and envy. They will seek to disguise this in a form of godliness and theological reasoning but God in these days is going to expose the true state of their hearts. This is not a gentle reformation. This is a true revolution.

Those that do not understand this will be utterly dismayed at how quickly this revolution is about to spread. In this revolution the gospel of Grace as revealed in the New Covenant will spread like wildfire.

There will be unhealthy extremes on the right and the left in reaction to this.There will be voices that attempt to gain advantage by appearing to be balanced diplomats  calling for calm but God will sweep these self-appointed voices of reason aside and silence them swiftly. Those with secure, pure hearts will steward this revolution, not panicking at the unhealthy extremes or trying to prematurely balance everything.

For you see, it is not the message of Grace that is causing the extremes or unbalance, but it is the result of an entrenched and deeply established legalism and man’s control surfacing because of the intensifying pressure of the Grace revolution. This revolution will force the mask off every form and appearance of godliness that denies the power of the New Covenant.

This gospel revolution is not to be blamed for the ugliness that will appear in some. It is simply forcing the true nature of legalism out into the open and stripping it of all its disguises so that even the naïve and deceived will see how truly hideous it’s face really is. The camouflage of legalism is being removed so that it can no longer harass from hidden positions that have an appearance of godliness.

The people in these days who fearlessly embrace Grace and remain pure hearted and faithful, enduring hardship and refusing to be polluted by bitterness during persecution, will be partners with the Holy Spirit in seeing entire nations birthed into revival.

(By permission)

Rob Rufus – Hong Kong. 2009.

Book: ‘Invading The Impossible’  ISBN 978-988-18223-3-8

www.newnaturepublications.com

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