What Are You Fighting For?

If peace means freedom from distress, then we, as Christians, should be fighting for peace every day. We should be spending our time, energy, and money to bring peace to as many people as we can. The peace we have in Christ needs to be shared in our world, but how do we do it?

In light of all the sorrow, anxiety, and pain we see today, achieving peace in our time appears impossible.

The phrase “bringing peace” sounds like such a big task. Bringing peace to our world, a world filled with as much unrest and upheaval as it is, seems unattainable. In light of all the sorrow, anxiety, and pain we see today, achieving peace in our time appears impossible.

When we think about peace in our world, our minds often jump to the horrors of terrorism, disunity within governments, and even enslavement. We think about how perfect life would be without these earthly struggles. While these are not invalid thoughts and concerns, have we stopped to think about if this is as far as peace can go? Is peace limited to earthly things? Is blindly adopting our culture’s idea of peace the best kind of peace to seek after?

It’s important to understand that the peace that is culturally acceptable isn’t wrong. The peace that culture has deemed as acceptable would eliminate the violence, lies, bondage, and manipulation we see today. And that’s very, very good.

But there’s a deeper peace that we as Christians need to be fighting for. This is peace that not only has everything to do with life here on earth, but also has everything to do with life in eternity. The peace I’m talking about is the peace between God and humanity.

We have peace. True, real, everlasting peace. Peace that enables a once human sinner to be accepted by an incomprehensibly righteous God.

The reality is that the God of the universe is a God of justice (Deuteronomy 32:4, Psalm 89:14). This God of justice can never go against His character (2 Timothy 2:13), which means that He will not excuse sinners of their sin, and every human is a sinner from birth (Psalm 51:5, Romans 3:9). Because of the countless sins from humanity that are against God’s righteousness, His wrath is coming (Romans 1:18, Colossians 3:5-6).

Naturally, there is no peace between God and humanity.

But, our God of justice is also a God of love (Psalm 145:8, 1 John 4:8). Purely based on His own initiative, He chose to make a way for sinners to be saved from His wrath (Romans 3:23-26). Through the sacrifice of Jesus, any sinner who believes in Him will be saved because Jesus took upon Himself each sinner’s debt and paid it in full (Hebrews 10:12-14). His death eliminated the distress that exists in each of us, sinners, as we relate to God.

We have peace. True, real, everlasting peace. Peace that extends far beyond mere human reconciliation. Peace that enables a once human sinner to be accepted by an incomprehensibly righteous God.

This is the peace that we, as Christians, ought to be fighting for with all of our strength.