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Receive Your Christ Peace: Pt 2
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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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