God's Plan For Unity and Peace

“the miracle of self-giving love”. Savage goes on to say, “each member of the Godhead, in a perpetual flow of boundless affection, lavishes himself on each of the others such that belongs to one belongs to the others.”

Why was it not good for man to be alone?

The wreckage of relationships

Hope in the gospel

I had the opportunity to preach through Ephesians a couple years ago. The theme that emerged from that letter is that God Redeems Broken People and a Broken World. The Scripture proclaims and our personal experience testifies that we live in a fallen world with fallen people. As such we will have relational difficulties. And these relational difficulties are not left at the door of the church. In fact, because of its intimate nature, sometimes relationships within the church, with their conflict and struggles can be the most painful. I would venture to say that there is not a person in here this morning that is not currently engaged in some sort of relational difficulty: either someone else is causing you grief, you are causing someone grief, or a mixture of both. We are fallen people in a fallen world and as such our relationships are messy.

And in the midst of these messy relationships we have questions. How does a worker that has give 30 years of his life to a company deal with his feelings of anger and resentment when he is told that he will be laid off and not receive his pension? How does a wife of 20 years deal with the feelings of betrayal that come from her husband’s adulterous affair? How does a loving mother deal with the pain of her son’s rejection? How does the dedicated follower of Christ deal with the rejection that comes from being over-looked for key positions within the church? How do you deal with overhearing someone gossiping or slandering you? When people sin against us how do we deal with it? As believers we have a gut feeling that we are supposed to engage in forgiveness but what does that look like? Does it mean to overlook the offense? Does it mean forgetting? What does it mean to forgive?

And it is not only questions about dealing with our hurts that we have to deal with. What do you do when you’d rather shave with a cheese grater than be around that person that annoys you? You know you should not have those feelings but that person seems to know how to touch every last nerve. Or what do you do when you get the feeling that you are that annoying person? What do you when you are convinced that someone does not like you? Or what if you know someone does not like you and they have good reasons to not like you—what do you do when you’ve been a jerk? What happens when someone will not forgive you?

Relationships are really tough and they are really tough within the church. Let me give a few brief words that describe our relationship problems. Miscommunication. Avoiding conflict out of fear. Anger. Defensiveness. Gossip. Lying. Envy. Lust. Isolation to avoid hurt. Smothering to avoid loneliness. Superficiality. Argumentative. Controlling. Hurt feelings. Slander. These are likely present among us.

It wasn’t always this way

Let’s go back to the time before creation. Our unity and our relationships are grounded in the unity that God has within the Trinity. Before time even began God existed. And He existed in perfect unity as three distinct persons yet one perfectly united Being. A quick jaunt through the gospel of John shows that this tri-union is sustained through what Tim Savage calls, “the miracle of self-giving love”. Savage goes on to say, “each member of the Godhead, in a perpetual flow of boundless affection, lavishes himself on each of the others such that belongs to one belongs to the others.”

Hope in the gospel

Mankind was to be tasked with imaging God and of spreading His glory. Tell me how in the world could man reflect the community of the Trinity without being in a community himself? How is he going to spread the earth with God’s glory if he is not able to populate it with fellow image-bearers? And so God gives to man a wife. And here we have the first human relationship.

Then we turn to .

Immediately after the man and woman eat of the fruit we see brokenness. Chapter 3:7…”and they knew that they were naked (guilt, shame, fear). And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths (self-atonement…the only time in the Garden that man has had to ‘provide for himself’). Then we see man’s relationship with God. Rather than intimate fellowship it is marked by fear, hiding, and lying. We see the blame game crop up for the first time. Adam blames God and his wife. Eve blames the serpent. And then we read of all the curses. Pain in childbirth, a fight between man and woman for authority, unfulfilling labor, a broken world. The result of the Fall are broken people in a broken world. And we still are living today as broken people in a broken world.

Rebellion resulting in broken relationships is the story all throughout the early part of Genesis. Even in Noah and Abraham and other “heroes” we still see this fracture. It seems as if humanity is caught in a spiral of rebelling that leads to more and more brokenness. Turn to any place in the Old Testament and you will find this spiral of broken relationships.

You are likely here in the hopes that you’ll be given some help for broken relationships in your world. We see from and 2 that we were created for shalom—peace. And we see from on into our lives that this side of total redemption we do not yet live in absolute shalom.

Hope is found in the finished work of Christ and his continuing work of rescuing humanity and destroying the works of the devil.

Saving peace

, :1-2

Is all conflict bad?

If you are in Christ you do have peace with God. You do have shalom. is yours. He does cause His face to shine upon you. He does turn his face toward you and give you peace. We have peace with God in the here and now.

Destructive conflict vs. Constructive conflict

God ordains conflict (, )

1 John 3:7-10

God purposes peace

But this conflict is meant to lead to peace. I’ve always appreciated this quote, “God’s purpose, then, in every sermon we preach, in every word we counsel, is to reconcile people to himself so that they might live at peace.”

Saving Peace leads to relational peace ()

Robert Jones in his book Pursuing Peace shows 4 things that this text calls us to:

We must pursue peace as our Christian duty

We must pursue peace with everyone. (We cannot ignore even one relationship or dismiss any invidiual).

We are urged to pursue peace and leave the results to God. (If it is possible…)

We pursue peace in light of God’s mercy toward us in Christ.

Illustrated with magnets

Eschatological peace

When God redeemed you He placed you into a new community. Let’s look at this with a couple of magnets. Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector.

How might he be using this for constructive conflict? How might we turn this into deconstructive conflict?

Eventually we will have complete shalom—total peace. Conflict will be over. We will be living in full peace with God and full relational peace with one another. But we are not there yet. We are brought into this relationship and set towards redemption. In the here and now are we living in redemption (towards ultimate shalom) or rebellion (which destroys shalom)?

Three truths this side of a Redeemed Eden

1. We are sinful, therefore, conflict is inevitable

2. Deconstructive conflicts are sinful, therefore we must resolve them

3. All conflicts are opportunities, therefore seize them

a. Draw near to God

b. Be more like Jesus

c. Minister to others

God is in the process of bringing shalom. May we follow the God of peace in pursuing peace and long for that day when it will be accomplished.

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