An Unalienated Peace

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:19-20 NRSV)

Here’s what made you alienated from God, and why you need peace through Jesus’ blood: If you take the idea of right and wrong, and figured out that right and wrong is just a standard whereby “right” is to be in good standing and to be “wrong” is to fail to conform to this so-called good standing, then nothing is wrong except the method by which one is trying to conform to that standard. Here’s what I mean by that: you can be good for the sake of being good, but it is impossible for you to be bad for the sake of being bad, you are bad because you found it useful to yourself to be bad – it is a way and a mean, not a disposition. Human nature is alienated from God because we are bad—that is we find it useful to be offensive to protect us from vulnerability. You see all the things that enable a bad person to be bad are inherently good things like resolution, cleverness, good looks etc and so forth. Therefore we are enemies of God because instead of trying to get to God straight by being good in following the laws given in the Bible, we’re sitting here trying to be gods in our own rights. We’re trying to control our universe and therefore are offensive when we are found in fault with ourselves. This is why we need forgiveness. This is why Christ has to redeem us—because his intentions and actions were both Good and of God through and through. Let me break down a reality for you because I know you’re thinking that you and I are not really evil so that we would be condemned as enemies of God for any practical reason. Am I right? Yeah, I know, like what in the world that was so bad did you do that you deserved that label? I mean, you read the Bible and find a lot of people way worse than you—for example you got this guy who was after God’s own heart named “David” who was admittedly lazy according to God’s word, and decided he wasn’t going to go conquer more land through springtime warring and instead peep on a wife of one of his generals, then have an affair, get her pregnant and cover it up like a g-man and kill her husband. But you, the worst you ever did was download some copyrighted music off of a file sharing website. Hardly any reason to be an enemy of God, right? But that’s exactly why we need to be forgiven– the intention to be in good standing is absent. Through Jesus, God is pleased to forgive despite all the weird, craziness we are wrapped up in. He wants to give you an unalienated peace despite the messy and complicated act of reconciliation which is forgiveness. Will you accept this peace that comes from reconciliation?