Break up or Make up? Dr. Mrs. Lilian Stanley passage from the Bible that highlights the efforts taken by Christ to bring about these two parties, widely separated by centuries of enmity, to embrace one another.
“ For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit,”( Eph 2:14-18).
“ I am sorry,” is probably the hardest sentence to pronounce. There are two dimensions in reconciliation one towards God and the other towards man. To get reconciled with God is very easy because we don ' t see God and we know He is too loving not to forgive us. But reconciliation with another person churns our stomach because he is not God, he is a human being with human nature.
There are many lessons for us in this passage. When two people are not able to make up, Christ is hurt at the lack of peace because He Himself is our peace. When we stubbornly refuse reconciliation we are wounding Him. He is Jehovah-Shalom, the God of peace( Jdg 6:24).“ Seek peace and pursue it,” says the Bible( Psa 34:14).
Jesus taught us that if we come to church and suddenly remember a grudge that a friend has against us, we must leave our offering right there at the altar, leave immediately, get right with the friend and then, and only then come to offer to God whatever we had brought for Him.
In other words, Jesus said that our relationship with man should come first before we ever try to get closer to God. This is exactly what the apostle John taught us too:“ If anyone says, ' I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And He has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother”( 1Jn 4:20-21). There is no glossing over the truth.
If there were two people in the world for whom it was impossible to love one another, it was the Gentiles and the Jews. But the Bible says, Christ made them shake hands. It was not a fake reconciliation but a genuine oneness. Let ' s see a
When the Prince of Peace was born on earth, peace on earth was proclaimed( Isa 9:6; Lk 2:14). But today we hardly see peace anywhere on earth. It is not because God has failed but because man has failed to play his role. There is no peace between countries; countries are torn apart by civil wars; there is hatred between States in India; community clashes are an everyday affair; the number of estranged couples has reached sky-rocketing proportions. In other words, man hates man. Sadly, the same state exists among believers too.
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