Peace On Earth - The Peace of Christ is a Very Different Kind of Peace!
Posted: Thursday, December 16, 2010
by David Robert Ord
Namaste Publishing.com
After the death of Julius Caesar, the Roman Empire was ravaged by warring factions. But Julius' great nephew Augustus Caesar brought peace.
There stands to this day in Rome a monument to the Pax Augusta that came to fruition under Caesar Augustus.
Augustus became known as a "savior." Indeed an inscription calls him "savior of the whole world," because of the peace he brought to the Empire.
The Priene inscription of Augustus states: "The birthday of the god has marked the beginning of the good news for the world." Ever heard words like these before? That's right, they are in Luke's birth narrative.
The inscription regarding Augustus is reinterpreted by Luke and placed on the lips of the angel, where it now reads, "I announce to you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people: To you this day there is born in the city of David [not Rome] a savior who is Christ and Lord."
The feeling of not being at peace is a sense of life spinning out of our control. But it is not circumstances that we need to control, so much as our anxiety about them and reaction to them.
Unlike Caesar Augustus, who rescued the Empire from its troubles, Jesus doesn't rescue us from life's difficulties. Rather, he shows us how to be at peace in the middle of life's traumas and tragedies. It's not an external peace he brings, but an internal peace. It's peace in the heart, peace of mind.
Jesus brings us peace by awakening us to our true nature, of which he is the reflection.
When we allow the peace of our Christ nature to flood our consciousness, we don't lose control of our lives to circumstances. Neither do we give our power to anyone else—not Caesar, and not Jesus.
As we recognize that the Christ is our savior, we become aware of the same nature that was in Jesus in ourselves. It's this sense of personal empowerment by the divine within us that saves us from our disquiet, anxiety, and lack of peace.
To acknowledge Jesus as savior and lord is to find the nature he discovered in himself within our own selves and take command of our lives. This is what it means for the Christ to be "lord" of our lives. We become like Jesus in every way—in charge of our lives as he was in charge of his, guided only by the divine within.
Caesar is lord, the Empire said. Jesus is Lord, his disciples responded. But the lordship of Jesus is radically different. Instead of exercising lordship over us, he reflects to us our true being and brings us into an awareness that we can be lords and ladies of our own person.
We are empowered to take charge of our lives instead of allowing someone else to define us. We find ourselves at the helm of our lives, charting our own course true to our essence, which is the image of God, instead of blindly following someone else's standards.
Augustus changed people's external world. But while changed circumstances may somewhat improve lives, none of this touches the basic anxiety we each have about our humanity.
Jesus doesn't change our circumstances, but the salvation he brings us empowers us to change ourselves through the indwelling power of the Creator who is present in all of us as the essence of the Christ.
Luke's story of the birth of Jesus shows us that when everything goes wrong in life—when there is no room in the inn, we are far away from the comforts of home, and we have to endure the stench and the flies and the cow dung and donkey dung and the discomfort of a manger—we do not have to become anxious. We can be at peace. We can accept. And we can be joyful.
The salvation Jesus introduces us to is salvation of the most radical kind. It is a calm, a peace, a contentedness, a freedom from anxiety and worry and fear, right in the middle of life's worst struggles.
It is a sense of peace and good will—a good feeling of ourselves in relationship to the universe. It ends the fundamental anxiety we all experience.
This Article has been viewed 837 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)The peace Jesus refers to is not a personal peace within but rather a peace throughout the world. One man cannot be free until all men are free.
I've been watching international news lately and seeing how many countries are spending on defense, and how many wars there are and others being prepared for. It's a world gone completely mad. But amongst all this madness it is still possible, as you say to find peace, to accept and find joy. That's beautifully put, thanks.
"As we recognize that the Christ is our savior, we become aware of the same nature that was in Jesus in ourselves. It's this sense of personal empowerment by the divine within us that saves us from our disquiet, anxiety, and lack of peace." "To acknowledge Jesus as savior and lord is to find the nature he discovered in himself within our own selves and take command of our lives. This is what it means for the Christ to be "lord" of our lives. We become like Jesus in every way—in charge of our lives as he was in charge of his, guided only by the divine within."Uhmmm.... New Age doctrine? What changed my life is that one evening I felt convicted of my sinful lifestyle, and asked God to forgive me based on the vicarious death of Jesus Christ on the cross. As a result I was born again, and I experienced peace with God, and experienced the power of God to transform my life into that of a new man. ~mogama~
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.