CHRIST HAS FREED US TO SERVE

Peace is a very big matter globally today, and it is a must that peace efforts have a strong biblical basis to succeed. Only the biblical framework furnishes us with the complete template. The creation shows humans made in God’s image from which we get human rights, or the dignity of each individual. Humans were also made for community which negates the individualism of identity politics. Paul put it like this, “Christ has freed us to Serve”. In the Torah property is privately owned but is used to lift the poor and heal the community. Spirituality means social care. There is a balance between “left and right,” a morality that shares wealth and a sexual morality towards family and community. God deals with our self-centeredness, the “pharaoh” inside us, so we live for each other. This is how the individual battle for dignity is won. This is how we are freed. It’s a theology that bases around creation and not the self, a theology of life, all our lives and not just my own, the lives of our children and the life of the environment.

The teachings of Jesus about forgiveness, reconciliation and self-giving that redeem relationships and communities from hostile pasts are crucial to a new creation of peace. The vertical and horizontal parts of the cross, showing not only that God holds nothing against us, but that we should treat each other the same way. Restorative justice rather than punitive justice, that come from a right understanding of the cross. The way God punished sin was to put himself in the middle of it, to take the evil we did to him, and then to forgive it, freeing our hearts from its guilt. He allowed us to punish sin in him, to free us from it. He punished sin by exposing it by his cross, redeeming our conscience by his death which exposed his forgiving love. That the divine should do this is the greatest guide in the universe towards peace. This shows us the principles of rebuilding ravaged communities. The only way we can reconcile earth, is to know earth is reconciled to a loving God. Our self-giving towards each other exposes our collective sin and reveals God’s love for a new world.

The resurrection of Christ: the vindication of self-giving. The hope of justice when we don’t take justice into our own hands, but trust in the one who made all things. The new values of the new kingdom, in which women, even a former prostitute, were the first to herald the new heavens and new earth by declaring, “He is risen.”. This herald came from no one important, but from the least of society then. 

This is God’s way. This way will make our lives new. The resurrection showing the result to our communities when we live by the cross: our communities begin to bloom with love and heal, when we die to ourselves and live to one another. The hope of eternal life by the resurrection of our own bodies from the dead, the final victory of righteousness and justice. This display of God to his creation through Christ is the true peace and only upon this ground can the church follow the ways that bring peace to our own lives and communities. It’s essential that CFM has a forum in which this truth of Christ can be taught for us to build on. This is the only sure building..