NO CHRIST, NO PEACE

This is a common saying; we’ve all heard it before. Yet we find it difficult to live with this basic truth of life. Those of us who call ourselves Christians are just as guilty as the unbelievers. All over the world men and women are looking for peace. People are involved in many practices that are said to give them peace. Some of these practices are:
Transcendental Meditation: This is a way of the human being trying by his own effort to fill his mind with peace through thinking about peace.
Yoga: This is another form of meditation which people do to try to be in harmony with themselves.
New Age Religious Philosophies: These are new teaching coming out based on the principle that there is no God and man is capable making himself happy. Some of these people have been preaching on TV of late.
Charms, Amulet’s, Talismans, and Idols: We are well aware of these as they abound in our communities.
Doing good: There are those who think that doing good will give them peace.
All these lead to one thing: people who follow all these end up disappointed because in the end they destroy themselves. They fill themselves with demonic spirits that control and drive them towards the wrong.
There are those who even go for the ugly and unthinkable just to give peace to themselves. They sacrifice their fellow human being just for peace. But the more they struggle for peace, the more it eludes them.
Today we are being reminded once again that there is nothing in the world that we can do to get peace for our troubled souls, except in Christ Jesus. Jesus before he left this world said one thing to his followers. In John 16:33 He says “I have spoken these things to you so that you might have peace in Me. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”
Who is Christ?
Jesus is the son of God. He is God. He owns the world and everything in it. He died on the cross willingly so that those who believe in him will have peace.
What is peace?
The peace Jesus is talking about is not worldly peace that does not exist. It is peace that surpasses all other kinds of peace. It is total, complete in itself. It can only be found in Jesus. Only those who accept Jesus Christ will have this kind of peace.
In Luke 10:5, Jesus told his disciples he sent out that when they enter a house they should greet the people with peace, and if there is a man of peace in that house he will accept them.
The kind of peace Jesus is talking about is not just absence of fight; it means prosperity, wholeness, physical and spiritual. That is what is we find in 3 John 2 “Beloved, in regard to all things I pray that you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.”
But we must know that physical prosperity depends on spiritual prosperity. And there cannot be spiritual prosperity without Jesus. It is only those who accept the message of Christ who will have peace. Christ and his message are one and the same.
The disciples Jesus sent did not go to the Gentiles, they went to the Jews, yet we can conclude in the words of Jesus that not all the people of who are called by the name of God accepted the message of Christ.
Today, it is still the same. Not all the people in the Church accept the message of Christ. Some are in the Church for other reasons apart from Christ; and the message is clear to them: No Christ No Peace.
The peace of Christ comes with humility. It does not come with pride. We see that in Galatians 6. Those who have the peace of Christ seek the good of their fellows, while recognizing the fact that they are human and capable of making mistakes. Those who make much noise about how good they are end up discovering that they are nothing. But when you have Christ, no matter what you are, you still have peace.
Let us conclude this message with John 3: 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.