Perfect Love Drives Out Fear
(We Have Peace with God)
Read: 1 John 4:7–19;
Romans 5:1–11; Ephesians 2:14–22
My dad was a Sherman
tank operator in the Second World War. He lied about his age in order to be
accepted into the military in 1943, was sent for training in England and then
was sent over to Europe to follow up after the D-Day invasion of June 1944. He
did not see any actual fighting, but he saw the consequences of the Nazi
occupation and the battles as the Allied forces drove the German army back into
Germany. The things he witnessed, even in his back up role, he would not
discuss. He didn’t want to recount them and he didn’t want me to have those
images in my head. War is hell—injury, fear, uncertainty, trauma, hate,
unspeakable suffering and death.
Although my dad’s
division were not engaged in actual battles, he lived with the reality that at
any time they could be attacked by the enemy. In a tank battle, dad and his
crew would have been at an incredible disadvantage—he was operating a Sherman
tank which, compared to the German Tiger tank, was a toy with a pop gun for a
weapon. One on-target shot from the German tank would have ripped a hole in his
Sherman’s armour and obliterated the entire crew.[1]
A Sherman Tank & Crew in Europe, June 1945
I don’t know where dad
was when he heard the announcement of the Nazi surrender and thus the war’s
end. But I can imagine his relief and joy in knowing the peace had been
secured. The enemy was completely defeated. He would soon return home and live
his life in the peace and prosperity of mid-20th century Canada. But
imagine, if you can, that my dad refused to accept that the war was over and
insisted on continuing the fight, searching to find and engage the enemy in
battle. He would spend the rest of his life tense, anxious, angry, hateful, fearful
and emotionally more and more unstable and uncertain of his future.
Either the NT passages
you read (above) are true or they are not. If they express spiritual truth (i.e.,
spiritual reality), then God has won the victory and has ended the war. We have
been reconciled to God (and to each other). And thus we have (present tense;
not “will have”) peace with God by means of God’s love and grace. Jesus has
won. We can live in spiritual prosperity and peace.
Most of us, who
identify as Christians, say we believe that, but our day-to-day lives often
betray us and instead show that we still believe we are in a war for our souls’
salvation. Jesus may have won a battle, like D-Day, but the war rages on. There
is no peace and prosperity—at least not in the here and now. We act as if our
peace with God is something we must each still earn. If and when we win enough
battles on our own, then and only then will we be for sure be reconciled to God
and experience true peace.
As my dad returned
from Europe in 1945, there was healing that needed to happen and rebuilding
that needed to be done. There was work he (and all others) had to do to build
on the peace that had been sacrificially won. But the war was over. Dad no longer
had to live with the moment-by-moment fear that a Panzer Division of Tiger
Tanks would ambush he and his crew. The Nazi threat was completely over. Their
weapons of war rendered powerless—those still in existence were unmanned and
decommissioned, mere museum artifacts and thus no longer a threat.
John Felushko – Nov 1977
No comments:
Post a Comment