PEACE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 27, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 35.

THE word in the Greek comes from a root meaning “to join, to make one.” In the English it comes from a Latin root, signifying “a pact, or a bargain.”

There is war between the natural man and God. But God is not at fault. The universe is His; for He made it. He created the heavens and the earth. Without Him there was nothing made that was made.

Surely, He had the right to give the law to the universe and those who people it. Receiving from His hand all that is good, they should render to Him reasonable, hearty service.

But man failed to do this. He yielded to the enemy, and Satan and sin became incarnate. The God-given mind of man became a carnal or fleshly mind. And “the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Rom. 8:7.

It is not God who is enmity against man. Satan would have us believe that He is. From the earliest days of sin he has endeavored to induce the race to believe that God hated the sinner. Many of those who believed in the existence of a Deity, and were bound to serve Him, Satan has made to endeavor to serve Him from fear or for the hope of selfish reward, but never from love. And yet, through all these ages, God has been pleading the living love of eternity.

He loves the sinner. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love,” He speaks to us through the weeping prophet. Through His Son He declares: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Through an apostle: “Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Surely, the One of whom these things are livingly true does not hate us. He has no enmity toward us. He wishes only to save us. “As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways; for why will ye die.” In the appeal is the storied love of the Infinite.

It is man who is the enemy. It is man who is against God. It is man who is fighting against God. It is God who has fought the battle for man.

The trouble came when sin was given rule in human flesh. Man left the ranks of God, and joined the ranks of the enemy. The banner of Love came down; the banner of selfishness flaunted over him.

But in this work man has found no peace. He has sought it in various ways; he is seeking still. He pursues it in the haunts of pleasure, and dissipation, and lust, and comes back weary, heartless, hopeless, from the quest. He struggles for it in the mad ambitions of the world, fame, power, fortune, and gains added strife and perplexity. He fasts till he is a skeleton; he walks long journeys on bare hands and knees, till they are raw and sore; he elevates both hands, with fists clenched, till the claw nails grow through the palms, and the joints of shoulder and arm become solid bone; others worship such an object, and do a thousand other things to mortify the body, and satisfy a mind at strife, and all to get peace.

But peace does not come in this way. It can only be gotten where righteousness is, and that abides in God. The apostle tells the story when he says, “Grace and peace to you.” Grace is God’s love to the sinner; peace is that which love brings.

Over and over peace is presented in the Word not as something which we must seek and struggle to get, but that which God brings to us as something already obtained. And so it has been. The Son of God took upon Himself our flesh, lived the life of God in the flesh, brought the mind of God into the flesh, and so forever united Himself to humanity. He therefore is “our Peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity.”

His absolute righteousness kept Him at peace with God; and He offers to all sinners that same righteousness, spotless and unstained, to cover all their sins; that same mind which dwelt in Him to do God’s will; that same life in which is the power of an eternal overcomer.

The peace which Christ our Peace gives is a condition, not a thing. It does not come by seeking it, but by yielding to God and His holy law in Christ Jesus. To all who give up the sin and believe on Jesus is the righteousness, the justification, the making just or in harmony with God, given. Rom. 3:20-31. “Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” When the heart is yielded to Him, whatever may have been our condition, there is peace; and, if held there by living faith, there is the peace that passeth understanding.

“O soul without gladness, or comfort, or rest, Passing down the rough pathway of time, Make the Saviour your Friend ere the shadows grow dark, O, accept this sweet peace so sublime. “Peace, peace, wonderful peace, Coming down from the Father above, Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray, In fathomless billows of love.”