A world at war is the necessary result of human restlessness and
enmities. "From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not
hence, even of your lusts, that war in your members?" Envy, malice,
greed, hatred, deceit,--these are the begetters of strife on earth.
A world at peace can come only from the cooperation of peaceful human
spirits. Therefore we must commence to learn what peace is, by seeking
it in our souls through faith.
Christ promised peace to His disciples at the Communion in that little
upper room in Jerusalem, nineteen hundred years ago. Evidently it was
not an outward but an inward peace. He told them that they would have a
lot of trouble in the world. But He assured them that this could not
overcome them if they believed in Him and in His Father God. He warned
them of conflict, and assured them of inward peace.
What are the elements of this wondrous gift which Christ gave to His
disciples, and which He offers to us?
I. First, the peace of Christ is the peace of being divinely loved.
Nothing rests and satisfies the heart like the sense of being loved. Let
us take as an illustration the case of a little child, which has grown
tired and fretful at its play, and is frightened suddenly by some
childish terror. Weeping, it runs to its mother. She takes the child in
her arms, folds it to her breast, bends over it, and soothes it with
fond words which mean only this: "I love you." Very soon the child sinks
to rest, contented and happy, in the sense of being loved. "Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to
be the propitiation for our sins." In Jesus Christ God is stretching out
His arms to us, drawing us to His bosom, enfolding us in the secret of
peace. If we believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, He makes us sure
of a Divine affection, deep, infinite, inexhaustible, imperishable. "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." God, who "spared not his dearly-beloved Son, but delivered him up
for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"
"Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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