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We had a wonderful time together as a church at our retreat last weekend!
For those who weren’t there, we missed you. For those of you who were: we were blessed with a lot of laughter, fun and sharing of intimate moments. We truly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit with us.
The theme was on the Holy Spirit. We reflected on how the Spirit is with us and shapes us.
The Spirit gives us boldness and confidence. The Spirit gives us insight and understanding of our situations. The Spirit leads us into the wilderness. The Spirit breaks boundaries.
Today, we reflect on the Holy Spirit as well.
In addition to what we reflected on at the retreat, I want to add this: The Spirit restores peace with God.
Paul says this in today’s passage:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1)
What does he mean when he says we have peace with God? And how does the Spirit restore peace with God?
Those are the two questions I want to reflect on today.
When Paul says that we have peace with God, words that come to mind are tranquility and harmony. A sense of calmness and getting along with God.
When God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, they were at peace with God. They were intimate, close and in a loving relationship. They trusted God.
But the serpent came along, and it did something: the serpent cast doubt on what God said. Did God really say that you would die?
It made them doubt what God said. It made them doubt God’s care for them. That doubt created a separation between them and God.
Paul saw our human condition in a similar way. Despite how God created us, starting with Adam, our hearts turned away from God. Paul saw that instead of peace, our hearts were at war with God.
There was also a civil war going on in the human heart. On the one hand, he saw that our hearts desire closeness and intimacy with God. But that same heart is taken over by a force more powerful than its desire to be close to God.
Paul called this force Sin. And the war was not even close: Sin overpowered any desire to be at peace with God.
What Sin does is separate you from God. Not just separate: it tears you away from God.
We see the effects of Sin in this world. People live as if God doesn’t exist. They do as they want. They use any means they want.
Paul saw that the Sin that exists in the world overtakes the human heart. It invades and infects the heart so that it becomes captive and enslaved to Sin’s power.
Sin manifests in many ways. Greed, evil, selfishness. Nowadays, I see many worries, distractions and diversions that take you away from God.
What we see is Sin using the specific context to do its work. It has learned new arts of warfare to take us away from God. Sin is very smart and crafty, like the serpent.
Whatever methods it uses, the end result is the same: it is separation from God. A life apart from God. A heart that is resistant and even hostile to God.
The main message of Sin is this: there is no God who cares about you. Even if there is a God, that God does not care about your suffering and the suffering of the world. So you need to fend for yourself. You need to be in control. You must be the master of your life.
Paul saw that on our own, we are powerless against the power of Sin. That’s why even when we want to have faith, doubt takes over and our hearts resist God.
Left on our own, we are in a hopeless situation, enslaved to the power of Sin.
But Paul saw something in this hopeless situation. He saw God at work. God did not just leave us alone to be permanently separated from God. God sent his Son Jesus Christ into this hopeless situation to restore our relationship with God.
God did this because he loves us. He could not bear to see us suffering on our own apart from God. So God sent Jesus to bridge the huge chasm between us and God. To restore peace between us and God, and peace in our hearts.
Sin resisted this work. It deployed forces against Jesus and crucified him on the cross. But the power of Sin could not destroy the love that Jesus had. Even unto death, Jesus loved us.
That was Paul’s great insight.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6, 8)
Even as Sin was trying to permanently sever our relationship with God, Jesus loved us to the end.
The power of Sin hung Jesus on the cross. As he was dying, this is what he said:
Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. (Luke 23:46)
This could mean his own spirit. But I also think it was the Holy Spirit in him.
At the retreat, we learned that Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus operated with the power of the Holy Spirit in him.
On the cross, Jesus released the Spirit before he died. But the Spirit did not die.
Released by Jesus, the Spirit did two incredible things:
First, it raised Jesus from the dead.
Sin could not win. The Spirit was more powerful than Sin and Death.
Secondly, the Spirit carried God’s love and poured it into our hearts.
God’s love is the antidote to Sin’s power and grip on us. It is more powerful than Sin and the only thing that can loosen its grip on us.
That love was poured into us by the Spirit.
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:5)
The Spirit pours God’s love into our hearts – I love that image.
The Spirit carries the antidote for Sin and pours it into us. The Spirit is the provider of the antidote that breaks the power of Sin. In that way, the Spirit is like the doctor that restores peace with God.
That is the Spirit’s role – it is the doctor that restores peace with God.
When you are physically ill, you call a medical doctor. When our souls are ill from being separated from God, we call on the spiritual doctor that is the Holy Spirit.
Retreat: life before the Spirit, life with the Spirit. Before Spirit: hearts at war with God. With the Spirit: hearts at peace with God.
When you have peace with God through the Spirit, something happens. You change.
The greatest change is that difficulties and afflictions have a different effect on you. Before, they would make you worried, weak and anxious. But when you have peace with God, afflictions and sufferings make you a more hopeful person.
That is what Paul discovered:
And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)
The people of Sioux Valley have been on my mind. Their peace was disturbed by the history of conquest, colonialism and residential schools. It was disturbed by the attempted erasure of their existence. Christians and the government tried to kill the Indian in them. It is a shameful legacy that keeps me humbled. What can we do when we are descendants of that shameful history?
All we can do is confess, repent, and try to restore the original good news that God loves each and every one of us, especially those who feel forgotten and abandoned.
I pray that the people may experience peace with God.
God won the war against Sin through the resurrection. But Sin keeps trying to make a comeback. It tries to sow doubt and tear you apart from God again. It inflicts upon you worries, fears, and overwhelming burdens.
My friends, you were redeemed by the blood of Christ. You are God’s precious child.
When calamities, difficulties and worries come your way, don’t let them separate you from God. Turn to God and pray for the Spirit. Ask the Spirit to renew your faith.
The Spirit will strengthen you. As difficulties and afflictions come your way, you will not be weak. You will become stronger, more patient, more able to endure. You will become a hopeful person.
That is life in the Spirit.
May the Spirit restore, strengthen and renew your peace with God each and every day.
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