War & Peace

When President Biden declared Easter Sunday “Transgender Visibility Day,” American Christians took to social media platforms to express their outrage at a blatant finger in the eye to Christ and his church. It is not enough that the White House pushes this LGBTQ+ agenda throughout the year, giving an entire month to celebrate these sins that disorder and destroy. Now, they are trying to re-order the Christian calendar, which has set the rhythms of American life from its earliest days. The agenda is clear: we are at war with the Christian faith and want to see its vestiges wiped out of our society. People hate God. They don’t hate the concept of “god.” They don’t hate certain gods. They hate the God who has revealed himself in the Person of Jesus. The one true and living God.

Hatred of God runs deeper than you might think. What the Biden administration did is obvious hostility, but the truth is that hatred of God is endemic to all humans, including you.

When writing to the Colossians, Paul reminds these Christians about their life before Christ when he says, “and you were at one time alienated and enemies in mind in evil works” (Col 1:21, literal translation). Hostility was not superficial. The “mind” of which Paul speaks here refers to the place where our deepest loyalties and affections lie that control our desires, thoughts, and deeds. Paul does not speak about random thoughts or even the ability to think logically. He is speaking about how we fundamentally see or interpret the world. These are the lenses we look through at God, others, the world around us, and how we relate to all of them. When you whittle all your “Why?” questions down and hit the statement, “That’s just the way things are,” you know what controls your mind.

If you believe that everything that exists evolved apart from God, you answer questions about how something could come from nothing, how this species evolved from that one, and how love, logic, morality, and concepts of justice developed from your fundamental commitment to evolution. The theory of evolution controls the way you interpret the world around you. Evolution is. This way of thinking greatly controls (to a great degree) what you think and how you live.

Our minds in Adam are at enmity with God. We hate God. We hate the way God made us. We hate the way God puts his world together. We hate God’s purposes for us and the world. We hate God’s wisdom. We hate God’s commandments. Hatred of God is the nature of sin, and sin corrupts us from conception. We weren’t neutral toward God. Our minds were in opposition to him, and the works that we did advanced disorder in our own lives and the world around us (the “evil works” of 1:21). Were it not for the restraining grace of God, not only would we be celebrating perversion with the Biden administration, but we would also be immersed in it ourselves.

“But now.” That’s how Paul begins Colossians 1:22. God has not left us in this state of enmity. Instead, he has reconciled us to himself in the body of Jesus’ flesh by his death. Jesus’ body was a real human body, and because of that, he can represent us as a new Adam. But in his body also dwells the fullness of God (Col 1:19; 2:9). This body in which the fullness of God dwells is a body of flesh. Flesh speaks of the corruptible nature of man. God took on not just a body but also a body that was in the likeness of sinful flesh so that he might take the condemnation for sin that we deserved (cf. Rom 8:3). God did for us what we could not do for ourselves, loving his enemies to the point of death so that we might be healed and guiltless so that we might be reconciled to him.

Reconciliation includes the transformation of the mind. Jesus doesn’t reconcile us in a way that leaves us in fundamental opposition to God, only eliminating the final consequences of our sins. Reconciliation brings peace where there was enmity. Through the work of Christ Jesus, our minds are transformed so that we think God’s thoughts after him (Rom 12:1-2); we see God, the world, and ourselves the way God intends us to see them. He saves us from what kept us alienated and enemies: the sin that controlled our minds. He gives us a new mind or a new heart.

The depth of our problem in sin reveals the greatness of God’s grace. We didn’t have a few little maintenance issues that needed tweaking but were fundamentally sound. We were corrupt and actively hostile towards God, deserving his vengeance. Remnants of that hostility remain in us, but our fundamental allegiances have been changed. God, by his Spirit applying the work of Christ, is continually working on those remnants of enmity.

All this theology should turn to doxology. When you realize the depth of your sinful condition and the love God demonstrated towards you, how could you not praise and give him thanks?