For he himself is our peace

Ephesians 2:13-17 (TNIV) -

13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace,16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.

My thoughts -

What does it mean to say that Christ is our peace? We have talked before about how we, in our sin, were God's enemies. Paul is saying here that, in the cross, Jesus made himself a "dividing wall of hostility" between the two warring parties, between us and God. Jesus has reconciled us to God and "put to death (our) hostility".

That is a neat image. We don't like to think of ourselves as being enemies of God's. That's a terrifying position. Yet that's where we were until we had our intermediary Christ come and forcibly make peace through submission to God's will and death on the cross. In that we received the grace that can lift us out of our selfish, sinful nature and do God's will. He became our peace with God. He ended our conflict.

Paul also says here that Jesus "preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near". What does it say of us, the recipients of peace with God through Jesus, that we have historically waged wars in Jesus's name? How are we doing in our following in the example of our Lord and Savior?

Jesus inserted himself as a buffer between two warring parties and became a sacrifice so that there could be peace. We seem to be too eager to continue in our blood lust, to continue to wage our wars, and to even go so far as to invoke that which Paul calls our "peace" as the reason for the war. I've never seen what's so holy about a Holy War. It seems like an oxymoron to me. And if you think that Holy Wars ended with the Crusades take a look at the Middle East right now. We can say that they started it, or we can say that this isn't a "Holy War", but something else, and yet we still have a nation that wants to call itself a "Christian" nation invading others and we have religious leaders here at home invoking Christ in it.

So maybe I'm taking Paul too literally, then. Maybe he means that we have some kind of metaphorical peace in Jesus. How's that working for us? Do we still squabble amongst ourselves? Are there still factions and feuds? Some peace we have. I know, maybe I'm just asking for too much. We're only human, after all. We can't be expected to be perfect, right?

But what good is grace if it doesn't help us overcome the limitations of our own fragile, sinful humanness? Are we expecting peace only in heaven after we've died? After we're all dead I'm sure the world will be quite the peaceful place. There will be none of us left fighting in it. But can Jesus be our peace now? Can we strive to receive grace and do God's will and overcome our own selfish, sinful nature now? Do we have to wait until are bodies have died? Are we so corrupt in the flesh? Is grace really powerless? Can we find no peace here?

Are we even trying?