2010-04-07 - Jehovah-Shalom

Ephesians 2:14, "For He Himself is our peace."

From time to time, we come upon phrases like the one above, and I thought before I take a moment and look at Christ as our peace, I would give a quick summary of some of these phrases. I think we can reflect, to our advantage, on each of these. But I thought it might be helpful to have some of these phrases all in one place, for reference.

These are all names from the Old Testament, attributed to the Lord who is our help, protection, and hope. Jehovah-Nissi means, "The Lord is my banner." We are probably familiar with Jehovah-Jireh, which means, "The Lord is my provider." When we fall into sin, we are right if we call the Lord Jehovah-Tsidkenu, "The Lord our righteousness." The Lord is all our righteousness. Any righteousness we have we have isall from Christ. We also have the comfort of Jehovah-Shammah, "The Lord is there." Lastly, we have the one we started with and will focus on today, Jehovah-Shalom, "The Lord of peace." He is the Lord of peace, and there is no lasting peace outside of Jesus Christ.

We all struggle with the power of sin. It is something that we have to encounter every day. Writers, in days gone by, would talk about how the power of sin was the greatest conscious struggle for the Christian. Secondary to that. they would say that the guilt of past sin was also a struggle with many believers. Today I think the order is reversed, and it is not good that it is so. I am sure there are some who primarily struggle with the power of sin, but today I find in my interactions with others, that they mostly struggle with the guilt of sin. I think this is because they have not previously struggled with the power of sin, but rather yielded to it, and so today, I think many skip a step -that in days past they didn't. We don't struggle with sin, until we have a nagging conscience. We don't take the first steps of fighting sin, before we yield to it, so rather than struggling with the power of sin, as in the past, we are more prone to struggle with the guilt of the sin(s) to which we have given ourselves over unto.

While the above generalization (and generalizations are dangerous) is not intended to be "one size fits all," it does lead me to consider with you the place where we find peace from the guilt of sin. It is not in ourselves. Let us make clear that salvation is not found in what we are, but in Who God is. Our Lord is the source of our comfort. We must look to Him alone, to Jehovah-Tsidkenu - "the Lord our righteousness." He alone makes us righteous and acceptable to the Father.It is not even our looking to Christ that gives us peace. We cannot have peace, if we fail to look to Christ, but the peace comes from Christ, not from our looking unto Him. Every aspect of our salvation is firmly grounded in the Lord. This is why Christ is our peace. This is why we know our Lord as Jehovah-Shalom. He alone is our peace. It is in Christ, alone, that we have peace with the Living God.

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

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