Emnity...

Conflict between adversaries is not unfamiliar to us.

Too many of us have seen -- maybe been part of -- marriage breakdown.
Each side makes their lines in the sand, and in some cases only a counselor (optimistically) or a judge (less optimistically) can help them untangle the deadlock and move forward.

Job Action is the same problem on a larger scale.
In my own city, a transit strike was held just before Christmas, because (in the words of the strikers) that was when they would have the most leverage. Management gave what they said was the best offer they were able to give. After that, neither side was willing to budge, both sides waged a media war, and the citizens of the city were left to sort out the fallout. Ultimately, only after the government was threatening back-to-work legislation, did both sides finally agree to arbitration. This was not resolved by two parties seeking understanding, but by an independent party deciding the way forward between them.

International news provides a still more serious scale of the same dynamic.
You could point to many different armed conflicts, but let's choose the perennial one that Western Administrations have been seeking to mediate for my entire lifetime: Israel.

Both sides cry foul, and say that the atrocities the other party are justification for any number of retaliatory responses. Israel points to their historic position in the land, and the borders spelled out in the Bible. Palestinians point to more recent history, to pre-1948, in which there was no Israeli state.

To complicate matters, the duly-elected government in the Gaza Strip is Hamas, internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. Their stated aim is the destruction of Israel. "We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity," senior Hamas figure Fathi Hammad said... *

To make matters worse: “We will never recognize Israel,” senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan said before he was killed by an air strike in Gaza during the recent fighting. “There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination.” *

This is the most entangled of the three examples here, where there is continuous conflict, deep distrust, and several generations of blood feud to stoke old hatreds.

Nevertheless, every US presidency since Carter (if not earlier) has endeavoured to cobble together some sort of an Accord. Some Roadmap to Peace.

Is this a fool's errand? Perhaps. But this is a small conflict with an uncomplicated solution when measured against another one:

Holy God v. Sinful Man.

But surely, you think, it isn't as bad as all that!

Are you really so sure?

Let's scan through Proverbs:

Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent—
the LORD detests them both. (17:15)

It is not good to be partial to the wicked
or to deprive the innocent of justice. (18:5)

We take the Cross so very lightly, as though it is only proper that God dust our sins under the rug, and take us back. We take his Love for granted, as though it is a safety net that should catch us, whether or not we wish to be caught. Our view of God is so impoverished.

We would hold in contempt people who believed that the dog you curse at, kick, and chase out of the room when you are angry should still come and lick your hand when you call it.

And yet our Western approach to God comes uncomfortably close to that paradigm. I'll do as I please for now, God, but I might need you later...

THAT is the hostility still resident among people who profess Christianity, to say nothing of the truly impenitent.

We weren't some lovable Hollywood-styled rogues who just needed rough edges smoothed over.

His redeeming us ran more counter to reason and good sense than you or I finding a rabid dog foaming in the ditch, and taking him home to live among our family.

His Holiness loomed over us like a guilty verdict, and the closer He would approach to us, the more wild we would become: deny, deflect, accuse, attack, evade, escape. These are our responses to His presence. Not honor, adore, worship, thank, praise, as is His due.

In placing Sin on the Son, he was protecting His own Virtue. He MUST punish sin. Imagine the worst sins you can think of, maybe Holocaust, or mass murder. Maybe infanticide, or pedophilia. Cannibalism? Torture? Rape? Idolatry? Blasphemy? Brain-washing legions of others to do these sorts of things? Have a few suggestions of your own? Add them up. Mix them together, put them with this list, and pour their guilt into a single person.

How mad would a good person be at such a one?

What would the Wrath of a Good God be at such a one?

Now imagine such a one who took that Wrath, but was Himself Innocent of all charges.

Such is Christ.

Such is His Love.

Such is the seriousness of His commitment to us.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men...

4How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

15For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant

Let us come boldly to the throne of Grace, knowing He loved us First, even in our hostility to Him. Let us confide in Him our weakness, knowing He sympathizes with our weakness, yet is without sin. Let us take comfort knowing he is our Advocate with the Father.

But mostly, let us consider the distance Christ moved us.

Our position, without a mediator, was more hopeless than failed marriages, job action, or international conflicts. We stood eternally guilty before a Just God.

He Ransomed us from certain, and justifiable destruction.

Let us never fail to praise Him.