Jesus is our peace offering between us and God. Many people believe though, that every time something goes wrong in the life of a believer that it's God punishing them for wrong behavior. God declared a peace treaty between Himself and mankind on the very night Jesus was born. Luke 2:14 (Amplified) says, "Glory to God in the highest (heaven); and on earth peace among men with whom He is well pleased (men of His good will, of His favor)."
As believers, we are men of God's good will and favor because of Jesus. Since it was our Father Who cut the covenant with Jesus, it's unbreakable. Hebrews 6:18 (Amplified) says, "This was that, by two unchangeable things (His promise and His oath) in which it is impossible for God ever to prove false or deceive us, we who have fled (to Him) for refuge might have mighty indwelling strength and strong encouragement to grasp and hold fast the hope appointed for us and set before us."
This covenant of peace was one where Jesus became our peace offering on the cross. When Jesus was accepted by God as the perfect sacrifice, we were received as well. Now, this peace means that we have peace with our Father at all times because Jesus is still (once and for all time) seated at the right hand of the Father on our behalf. Jesus would have to be rejected by the Father before this covenant could ever be disolved.
Because Jesus is our peace and our peace offering, there's nothing that can break it...it is written in God's Own blood. We've been taught over the years that sicknesses, calamities, accidents, and other bad things are God punishing us for our failures or bad performance. Not true!
Do you believe that if God punished us for our failures, then we would never have lived long enough to get saved? We were punished when Jesus was punished. We were judged when He was judged. And, we were justified when Jesus was raised from the dead. Romans 4:25 (Amplified) says, "Who was betrayed and put to death (Jesus) because of our misdeeds and was raised to secure our justification (our acquittal) making our account balance and absolving us from all guilt before God."
When we finally come to understand just what this means in our lives, it will completely change our walk with the Father. As far as God's concerned, when we enter into this covenant, He saw us all as clean as our Lamb, Jesus Who was slain for us. He only sees us through the Blood of Jesus. We are righteous because He is righteous and not because we always do good or even when we do wrong. Our righteousness doesn't depend on us, it depends on Jesus.
Our peace covenant was made secure at the same time our sins were cleansed and forgiven. Jesus was the Lamb Who covered everything that was separating us from the Father since the Garden of Eden. For the most part, we have only learned that Jesus took our sin. What we weren't taught was that when Jesus became our substitute on the cross, He became what I was so that I could become what He was.
Now that I'm God's son, I have peace with Him and His peace reigns in me. People don't understand the true liberty we have through Jesus. We are so free that we don't know how to live in it. Liberty takes some getting used to. I finally realized that my position with God doesn't depend on my good works, but by my faith in Jesus' works.
No matter how good I tried to be or how hard I worked at it, I only proved to myself and to God that I was still trying to be right with Him by my own merits. After awhile, I realized that the only way to approach God was through what He had done in Jesus. The harder I worked on my own righteousness, the further I got from God. Romans 4:16 (Amplified) says, "Therefore, (inheriting) the promise is the outcome of faith and depends (entirely) on faith, in order that it might be given as an act of grace (unmerited favor) to make it stable and valid and guaranteed to all his descendants not only to the devotees and adherents of the Law, but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, who is (thus) the father of us all."
In Romans 5:9 (Amplified) we read, "Therefore, since we are now justified (acquitted, made righteous, and brought into right relationship with God) by Christ's Blood, how much more (certain is it that) we shall be saved by Him from the indignation and wrath of God." This peace should override all of the lies, accusations and condemnation of the flesh and the world against us.
God isn't mad at you. Nor does He hold any of our trespasses against us any longer. He is at perfect peace with us now because of Jesus. We read in Psalm 85: 10-11 (Amplified) that, "Mercy and loving kindness and truth have been met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." Verse 11 goes on, "Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven."
Also in Psalm 34:22 (Amplified) we read where the Lord has said, "'The Lord redeems the lives of His servants, and none of those who take refuge and trust in Him shall be condemned or held guilty.'"
No comments:
Post a Comment