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Jesus Came to Make Peace by the Blood of His Cross

Devotional Banner2015

Jesus came to make peace by the blood of His cross.

For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. –Colossians 1:19-20

Among our most beloved Christmas songs, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” contains some of the most memorable lines. In the first verse, we sing of “Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” While we aren’t exactly sure what we mean by mercy mild, our hearts latch to the promise of peace on earth in the coming of the Messiah. We all long for peace, and the recent terror attacks across the world increase that longing all the more.

We’re told here in Colossians 1 that Jesus came to make peace with us through the blood of His cross. Put another way, Jesus came to disarm us. He came to entreat us to lay our weapons down. And how did He do this? By submitting Himself to an incredible act of violence done against Him. The Christian knows that we were once enemies of God. As much as we like to think that we were for peace, we really were for war (Psalm 120:7). We had taken up arms against God in rebellion. And the story of the cross is that Jesus took our weapons in Himself. Another Christmas song paints the picture well: “nails, spear shall pierce Him through, the cross He bore for me, for you.”

Jesus came that He might take our weapons of war in Himself. And that we would look upon Him whom we had pierced and repent (Zechariah 12:10), knowing that God punished our sin in Christ and made peace with us through the blood of His own Son.

A common metaphor in the Old Testament is the promise that the people of God would beat their swords and spears (weapons of warfare) into plowshares and pruning hooks (instruments of agriculture), and that they would learn war no more (Isaiah 2:4-5). The beauty of the gospel is that though we thrust our spear into Jesus’ bleeding side, He has turned it into a pruning hook. He has disarmed us. He has reconciled us to Himself. He has made peace with us. This is why He came.