Chapter VI, Part II [Phil. iv. 7], Concluded.
Observe, as we pass on, the phraseology of the verse. It is that of promise. Sweet is the sound of “the peace of God” when uttered at the close of Sabbath worship; when spoken after the heavenly Communion Feast. But there it is a benediction, a holy invocation; here it is more, it is a promise; not “may it,” but “it shall.” Such a thing then as this peace of God there is, and is meant to be, in the experience not of some but of all watchful believers, of all who “stand in the Lord,” their strength. It is guaranteed to them. They are invited humbly to claim it, and to possess it, under the Covenant of peace.
Yes, remember this, busy and burthened disciple; man or woman tried by uncertain health; immersed in secular duties; forced to a life of almost ceaseless publicity, social, ministerial, or however it may be. Here is written an assurance, a guarantee, that not at holy times and welcome intervals only, not only in the dust of death, but in the dust of life, there is prepared for you the peace of God, able to keep your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus.
It is no dead calm, no apathy. It is the peace of God; and God is life, and light, and love. It is found in Him, it is cultivated by intercourse with Him. It is “the secret of His presence.” Amidst the circumstances of your life, which are the expression, as we have recollected above, of His will, He can maintain it, He can keep you in it. Nay, it is not passive; it “shall keep” you, alive, and loving, and practical, and ready at His call.
It can, it shall, keep “the heart” – that word of such wide and inclusive significance in Scripture; the inner world of will, and affection, and understanding. It can keep “the thoughts,” sweetly controlling, tempering, attuning, the actual outcome of the heart in articulate purposes and opinions. Yes, it can work miracles in these things.
In closing, I recur to our Ephesian chapter, and to that one detail in it touched on already, “the preparation, the equipment, of the Gospel of peace.” I have pointed out that this puts before us the believing combatant in his strong, firm, calm appropriation of peace with God, and, let me now add, of what goes with and springs from peace with God – the peace of God, keeping the heart. Thus in the very centre of the imagery of conflict is imbedded the imagery of peace; not only clinging to the eternal Rock, but rather an untroubled foothold upon it.
Here is peace indeed. “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” but, coincidently, “in Me ye shall have peace.” A Buddhist in China, converted to the Faith not many years ago, confessed his new-found Lord by saying to his friends, whenever he could, “Jesus Christ is peace to-day.” Even so for us now, in our circumstances of to-day, Jesus Christ is peace. In the conditions of our actual path, in the things which lie like snares hidden in the grass of a quiet daytime, amidst our petty but perilous temptations to selfishness, to temper, to evil speaking, to vanity, to frivolity, to impure thoughts, to unfaithfulness or untruth in act and word, Jesus Christ and our communion with Him is peace. The things around are the conditions, the materials, of real assaults, and therefore of real conflicts. But they may be met from within by “Him who dwells within,” with the victory of a real, a sacred, an unruffled peace. “We wrestle; therefore stand fast in the Lord.”
Be on the watch, for it is war-time. Be above all things on the watch, then, over your peace in Christ. Stand in Him; arm with Him. Against all circumstances, clothe yourself in Him. All this requires, as we have seen,* the blessed diligence of secret prayer, of loving and adoring converse with the Word of God, of faithful use of all the means of grace. But it means the using of them in the right direction, for the right end, so as to keep us “in touch” at all times with that living Lord who is both the victory and the peace of His people.
Then shall we have peace, and shall manifest it, and diffuse it in the very hour of conflict. “He shall not suffer our foot to be moved; He that keepeth us shall not slumber.”
* Chap. I.
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