Colossians 1:20b – Part I: War and Peace

… by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Summary: The art of learning often has to do with asking questions. Taking that art to the next level leads us to the questions behind the questions.

In our last meditation, we examined Paul’s statement about Jesus being reconciled to “all things.” By “reconciled,” Paul appears to be saying that God’s relationship with his creation is being restored to the harmony that existed in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned. In this passage, Paul explains how this is possible:

  • Jesus made peace.
  • He made peace through his blood.
  • He shed his blood on the cross.

When we think about making peace, the first question that comes to mind is, “Why?” What happened to disrupt peace?

Sometimes, we know the cause. For example, if someone steps on your toe, it is going to hurt. If they did it on accident, you might let it pass, but if they did it on purpose, then anger and resentment are the natural result.

Many times, we don’t know the cause. Anyone who is married has probably experienced a lack of peace at times. When we think about it, we might discover someone forgot an anniversary or showed a lack of respect. Emotional hurt is harder to discern than a painful toe. The causes can be more difficult to determine, too.

What complicates our relationship with God is that the lack of peace goes back to the beginning of human history. If the Bible did not include a record of those events for us (Genesis 3), we would have no idea of how or why we had offended God.

The problem is that some offenses are worse than others.

If I am walking through the woods and stub my toe on a rock, I might feel anger at the whole world for a moment, but other than me limping for a few minutes, nothing else is going to change. If one world leader offends another, war might be the result, and people who know nothing of the argument that caused the war can still lose their lives or loved ones as a result.

The sins of Adam and Eve seemed like a little thing to them. As the serpent pointed out, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1)

Yet, look at the fallout from their decision to disobey. They were told that they would die (Genesis 2:16-17). They did, spiritually.* Their disobedience resulted in separation from God. Satan also told them that they would be able to “know evil” (Genesis 3:5). It turns out that knowing evil is not a good thing.

What Adam and Eve did was far worse than stepping on God’s toe. They ate the poison apple that filled them with evil, killed their relationship with God, and corrupted their offspring, poisoning the entire human race.

Application: A perfect God has a perfect sense of justice.

Food for Thought: How is sin both a personal problem and a congenital problem?

*Spiritual death is defined as separation from God. God is life (John 11:25, 14:6), and if we are separated from life we are dead.

6 Replies to “Colossians 1:20b – Part I: War and Peace”

  1. The Bible teaches that sin has been passed down through the first Adam and is now genetically part of our makeup (Romans 5: 12 – 21). The Bible also teaches we all choose to sin and experience the resulting separation from God (Romans 3: 10, 23; Ecclesiastes 7: 20; 1 Kings 8: 46; Isaiah 59: 2; 1 John 8, 10). Sin is our problem and Jesus provides the solution.

    1 Corinthians 15: 56 – 57: The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

    Romans 7: 24 – 25: What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

  2. Good comment R.

    Sin is a personal problem because when we are born we lack spiritual discernment, and because we do not recognize God and God’s will for our lives, we all wrestle with our own desires.

    1 Corinthians 2:14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

    James 1:14-16: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death”.

    I don’t really know how to explain the congenital problem of sin, other than through Adam sin entered the world. When Adam sinned the very ground was cursed. The very nature of the world changed.

    Genesis 3:17 And to Adam he said,

    “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
    of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,’
    cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

    We can’t escape the presence of sin in the world. The very composition of our flesh is cursed dust. I find people that want to argue about theories and “what ifs,” the truth is only one man has been born without sin, and He then died for us.

    John 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

    Psalm 51: 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
    and in sin did my mother conceive me.

  3. Great Meditation, Great Responses!
    How is sin both a personal problem and a congenital problem?

    Congenital disorders are also known as congenital abnormalities, malformations or birth defects can be defined as structural or functional anomalies. Medical people tell us congenital, metabolic disorders occur as a fertilized egg seeks to implant and grow in the correct place the uterus, and can be identified prenatally, at birth, or sometimes may only be detected later in infancy, such as a hearing defects.

    We are born as imperfect physical beings as at the cell level, we consist of imperfect human cells of the mother and father which have joined in the womb, and became the functioning human body into which God placed a soul.

    Psalm 139:13, For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

    Genesis 2:7, God made Adam from the dust of the earth and breathed life into his nostrils. In that very moment, Adam became a living soul.

    Following a normal 9 months, the human baby, containing the living soul planted into the body built of congenital abnormalities, cells of imperfect human beings, is born. Without Gods intervention, we are born of sinful flesh and predestined to be sinful creatures, seeking to serve our perfect God, under our own power.

    Romans 3:10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one.

    Romans 3:23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

    2 Corinthians 5:17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

    Genesis 3:15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

    The power over ALL sins is Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit given to us today!

    1 Peter 3:18, For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;

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