World War I ended on November 11, 1918, when the Armistice was famously signed at the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month. Roughly seventy-one years later, November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell as the symbolic end of the Cold War. The week is one wherein we remember those who know these dates, the burden of military need and responsibility, and yet choose to serve in the protection and preservation of the unalienable rights of the American people.
What are unalienable rights? Our forefather’s held God equipped each individual with dignity and worth as His image-bearers. Unalienable rights are those aspects of our personhood and dignity that cannot be removed or taken away. As humans, we see this truth as the compulsion to put an end to atrocities and war. Armistice day exists to celebrate the acknowledgment of fighting for good, for peace, and to preserve the dignity of others—and to finally see the laying down of aggression.
Another biblical idea comes to mind in the conversation of unalienable rights. How could we ever see an end to our own sin and guilt, or the Babel-like wall we build between us and Almighty God? The day Christ spoke those words, “it is finished,” is the day the Lord extinguished His wrath upon the Son of God, Jesus the Christ. That day is the day we who receive saving faith also acknowledge a righteousness not our own, nothing within us (Phil. 3:8–9). Only the holy Creator could take our unalienable sin from us and place it upon Jesus (2 Cor. 5:19–21). Only through the righteousness of Jesus Christ can we be brought beyond the wall of hostility, and now receive the undeserved peace, the satisfaction of true freedom before the Father (2 Cor. 5:17; Col. 1:19–22).
May our Christ be praised that we were drawn from the wrong side of the war, made holy, blameless, and forgiven through the only One who can do such a gracious work.
Pastor Chris
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