A favorite verse of mine is found in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” Sadly though, we are in a war. The war is very old. It goes back to Eden when Satan challenged Eve’s faith and said, “Did God really say…” and it will continue until the day that Jesus returns to take his bride, the church, home with him. The war continues and we are the battlefield. We suffer as “simul Justus et peccator! We are simultaneously saints and sinners. All of us were born into this world as sinners. It is our nature. Often, I hear people talk of sinful behaviors stating “well it’s human nature” to which I reply yes you are right and human nature is sinful! When we are born, we have no battle with the world. We are sinners and the world is full of sin. Because we have no battle with the world, we think we have peace. But if we really have peace, why are we so worried? Why is there so much anxiety in this world? That peace that we think we have is only the quiet of the grave, the emptiness of spiritual death. It is not peace so much as it is a dreadful quiet in which we are alone with our fears and anxieties. God rescued us from this situation. He himself put on human flesh and came into this world. He was born and lived his whole life without anxiety, without worry, without any sin whatsoever. Because he had no sin of his own, he was able to take our worries and anxieties, in fact all our sins, onto himself. When God poured out his wrath on sin, it struck his Son and tortured him as he suffered a beating, crucifixion, and death. Jesus took the brunt of God’s wrath in our place. He converted the shame of death into a triumph of life as he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven and rules with the Father and the Spirit.
