October 25 I Sunday

Jeremiah 6-8

1 Timothy 5

“For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.”

—Colossians 1:19-20

A common understanding many people make is the assumption that most people are basically good, but there are a few who mess it up for us because they are evil. But from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives a diagnosis of humanity exactly opposite of that assumption. He says, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” 
(Matthew 7:11). The point from Jesus’s statement is that we are basically evil, but we can do good things.

Specifically, our heart is evil, as the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah writes, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NKJV). This is why Jesus rarely talks about symptoms, because we can produce all kinds of symptoms when the heart is a can of worms. The fact that we are all evil is such a sobering diagnosis that we cannot begin to accept unless we know there is a solution. Most of us do not accept the diagnosis because we do not believe there is a solution.

What is the solution? Despite our inherent evil ways, we can have peace with God. Paul tells us, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” 
(Romans 5:1-2, NKJV). The solution is the Lord Jesus Christ. Peace with God is where we have recognized that we are alienated from God, separated from God through sin and Christ is our only substitute to satisfy the just wrath of God, imparting His own righteousness onto us. The cross of Christ is the pivotal moment in history whereby all God created was reconciled to Himself.

This is also where our basic conflict lies. If we are not reconciled to God, synchronized with God and living in dependence on God, we cannot make sense of life. We are created to live in the light of knowing Him. Otherwise, all we can accept is that we are just a lonely mass of atoms coming together through some fluke, giving us something called “life” and “self-consciousness.” 
We exist but we do not know why or what is the point of it all. However, through peace with God, we have purpose, meaning and significance.

Although we are evil, by placing our faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, we are clothed in His righteousness and have peace with God.

Prayer: Dear God, thank You through the cross of Christ that I have peace with You. Thank You for giving my life purpose, meaning and significance.