Put On the Shoes of the Gospel of Peace

On the cross, Jesus becomes the lightning rod for human hostility. All the violence, all the accusation, all the envy, the hatred, the fear, the the endless scapegoating gathers into him, strikes him. And instead of returning the charge, he absorbs it, he grounds it, he takes all of our hostility into himself, and hear this, redeemer, it dies there. [00:29:27] (38 seconds)  #CrossAbsorbsHate

This matters because the gospel of peace does not remove us from the battle. It keeps us from becoming like the battle. The peace of Christ does not mean there will be no conflict. It means that conflict is no longer Lord. The peace of Christ does not mean there will be no hostility around us. It means that that hostility does not have to rule within us. [00:36:19] (23 seconds)  #PeaceNotPassivity

Peacemaking says, let's bring this out into the light of Christ. Peacekeeping avoids wounds. Peacemaking enters wounds with the medicine of the gospel. Peacekeeping says don't rock the boat. Peacemaking says Christ is Lord of the storm. If rectification is God setting wrong things right, then peacemaking is not a side project, it is central to who we are, Redeemer, because Christ set the world right by making peace. [00:42:01] (31 seconds)  #PeacemakingHeals

Do you see what that means? Like, the church's peace isn't a decoration. It is defiance. Every time people who should have stayed enemies become the one family in Jesus, the powers are put on notice. Every act of forgiveness in this body of Christ is a small act of rebellion against a kingdom of accusation. [00:34:34] (24 seconds)  #PeaceAsResistance

Paul says, in this present darkness, you probably should not trust the ground either. You need shoes. And yet, many of us walk barefoot all the time. We walk into conflict barefoot. We walk into our family system barefoot. We walk into social media barefoot, we walk into criticism barefoot, hard conversations, and a divided world barefoot. It's no wonder we're so tender and reactive and defensive and easily wounded. [00:46:02] (31 seconds)  #WearTheGospelShoes

And this is a little window into the gospel. We do not walk into the peace of God wearing our adequacy. Christ gives us what we do not have. He gives us his righteousness, he gives us his peace, he gives us his spirit, he gives us access to the father, he gives us a place in the household of God. And wearing what he has given, we then walk into a life we could not enter into our on our own. [00:31:49] (26 seconds)  #ClothedInChrist

Peace is the fruit of rectification. Rectification, we talked about this last week, is God's commitment to set wrong things right. And in Jesus, God sets things right, not merely by punishing evil out there, but by entering into the hostility right here in this place, in the human family, in the body of Christ, at the cross, and he makes enemies into his family. [00:33:04] (23 seconds)  #GodSetsThingsRight

This is combative terrain, and that terrain trains us in certain ways. It trains us to be guarded. It trains us to be suspicious. It it trains us to quickly take sides. We are constantly being formed to ask, who is against me? Who is a threat? Who needs to be corrected or dismissed, exposed or defeated? And when that becomes the air we breathe, we do not just disagree with people, we become disagreeable combative people. [00:24:17] (31 seconds)  #HostileCultureHardensUs