My Peace
Unknown Author
Table of Contents
My Peace
The Lord here addresses His disciples.
The last chapter consisted of parables spoken to the publicans and sinners that drew near to hear Him in the Presence of the murmuring Pharisees and scribes. They had for their object to show how the sovereign grace of God makes the lost to be saved; and in this the mind and temper of heaven in contrast with the self-righteous of the earth.
Now we have a weighty instruction for disciples. It is no longer sinners shown the way to God, but disciples taught the ways which become them before God, and this in view of the judgment of the world, more particularly of the elect nation. The Jews were now losing their special place. The peculiar privileges of Israel had wrought no deliverance for themselves or for the earth. Contrariwise they had caused the name of God to be blasphemed among the nations. They had been untrue to God; they had been ungracious and even unrighteous to man. The Lord accordingly sets forth in a parable the only wisdom which suits and adorns those who understand the present critical condition of the world.
"There was a certain rich man which had a steward, and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods." This had been done by man of course in general, but by the Jew especially, as being the most favored and therefore under a more stringent responsibility. He was not only a man but a steward. There was a trust reposed in the Jew beyond all others; and most justly was he accused of wasting his master's goods. What had he done for God? He ought to have been a light in the earth; he ought to have been a guide of the blind; he ought to have been a witness of the true God. But he fell into idolatry when God was displaying Himself in the temple in the Shekinah; and now lie was about to reject God Himself in the person of the Messiah, His Son-a still more profound and gracious display of God. Thus he had altogether lost his opportunities, and wasted the goods of his master. He had brought shame on the law of God, and the living oracles into contempt through his own vanity and pride.
Hence, in the parable, the master called the steward, and said unto him, " How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward." The Jew was about to sink down into the level of all other nations, just as in the Old Testament times we hear that God had pronounced him Lo-ammi as set forth in Hosea. Then the last hope was gone, when not only Israel was swept away but Judah became faithless to the true God. This was confirmed when the returned remnant in the days of Christ proved no better-rather worse. There was a feeble body which represented the Jews that returned from Babylon, and it might have been a nucleus for the nation; but, instead of this they were more and more hardened against God, till all ended in their rejecting the Messiah and the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.
" Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed." He had no power; for the law rather provokes evil than gives good. But what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. On the other hand the Jew was ashamed to beg. He was unwilling to take the place of a lost good for nothing sinner, entirely dependent on God, looking up that God might do and give what he could not. Alas! the indomitable pride of the Jew rose up in rebellion against God's sentence of his impotence.
" I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship they may receive me into their houses." This was prudent, and the precise point of earthly wisdom in the parable which the Lord commends for our admonition. Well for the Jew, had he adopted it! " He called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill and write fourscore."
Thus plainly the steward assumes the title to sacrifice the present in view of the future. He acts with the utmost liberality with his master's goods. No doubt it cost him little or nothing. Nor is it the honesty of the step but its prudence which his master commends. He reduced the debt of the first one half, of the second considerably. He thus bound by his favor and leniency these debtors to himself; that, when he was turned out of his place, they might receive him into their houses. " And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely." There is no ground to suppose that the parable makes light of his dishonesty. He is especially branded as the "unjust steward." Such really was the position and character of the Jew; they were all unrighteous in the sight of God. But had they done what the steward does when about to be discharged? No! He looked forward to the future, and acted at once upon the conviction. Were they not, on the contrary, absorbed in the present? Is not this the great snare of men, and of the Jew as much as others, to sacrifice the future for the present, not the present for the future "And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the sons of this age are in respect of their own generation wiser than the sons of light." They look onward, though it be only on the earth, for they have a keen sense of their best earthly interests; but for the soul, for heaven, for Christ's love, for God's nature and will, men are apt to allow the smallest of present advantages to blot out all just thought of the future. This is an important consideration for our hearts as disciples. What the Lord is insisting upon is that the present-so fugitive and fallacious-is not the real prize for us; that the future -the eternal future-is the thing to consider, and that it should govern the present. For we cannot walk rightly as disciples unless filled with the sense of what is to be; not carried away by what is. What is it that spoils the testimony of disciples now? That they are living chiefly for the present moment. II circumstances guide, what can one be but governed by what is wished? This ruins-not merely the sinner as such, but the disciple-because he is only living for himself and the circumstances of this life. It is impossible to glorify the Lord thus. Let us hear His will and wisdom in this parable.
The unjust steward, as here portrayed, though bad in other respects, was wise in this, that he looked out steadily at the future; so that, when he lost his stewardship, he might be received kindly by the men whom he had befriended. For this it matters not that the goods were his master's rather than his own; indeed, we may see the deepest wisdom in the parable as it is, when we come to the application to our own practical conduct. For the only means whereby we can thus look out for the future is by reckoning what people- what self-would call ours, the resources of our master. We have nothing whereby to secure the future, except we use all as belonging to God. But this is the victory of faith; that instead of looking with a natural eye at the present moment, we resolutely contemplate the future, and act accordingly. Then, instead of seeking to hold fast what we have for ourselves, we learn to use all freely as in truth belonging to God. So assuredly those do who gain that which is future and eternal. Hence we find the Lord applies the illustration thus: "And I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." Are you thus making to yourselves friends by the mammon of unrighteousness? Instead of keeping money as something precious, treat it as what it really is.
Observe that the Lord gives here an ignominious name to the objects man covets-money, property, and everything of the kind. He calls it, not only mammon, in itself a word of ill omen, but " the mammon of unrighteousness." He heaps plentiful disdain upon it; just as the apostle Paul counts all that man values most, even religiously, as the vilest refuse which should be kept or thrust out of doors. This is a great point; for Saul of Tarsus had not always been disposed thus to sacrifice the present in view of the future. His place as a Jew, his tribe, his family, his earthly thoughts and feelings, his personal advantages, he once estimated as much every way to cherish. But when he viewed them in the light of Christ and of that glory to which he was hastening, he counted them but dung. Who would ever think the earth at its best an object to look back on, when they have the glory before their eyes? Who would talk of getting rid of dung as a great sacrifice? Certainly everything, yea in religion too, of which men are apt most to boast, Paul calls dung; such he counted them, and so to the last, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. Was not this really to act in the wisdom of the steward, not in his injustice, but in his looking out and onward In Paul's case it was heavenly wisdom; and the love of Christ was its source and spring.
The meaning of the words " that they may receive you" is simply " that ye may be received into everlasting habitations." Just so the apostle says " That I. may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection from the dead." This answers to being received into everlasting habitations when all that is of earth fails, To be received there is what should be of concern to the heart that loves the Lord and His will. There is no stress to be laid on the form of the phrase "they may receive you." This has misled not a few. Literally this might hold good on earth, as we see in verse 4, but spiritually it simply means " That ye may be received." Compare Luke 6:38; 12:20; the first wrongly rendered in the Authorized Version, the last rightly. God alone receives into heaven: no one else has a title to receive there. The expression alludes to the parable, but it is used with the utmost vagueness. It is a virtual impersonal-that reception may be given you into the everlasting tabernacles.
Let us not over-estimate these sacrifices of the present; but imitate the apostle who shows how little he values the best things that earth honors. So our Lord Jesus here says, " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much," The smallest thing affords a sphere in which one can glorify God; but there must be the disregard of the present in the light of the future. It is something to be generous in money matters; it is very much more to love the Church, and be devoted to the Master, suffering with Him and for Him. But there are countless ways in which He may be magnified. " He that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." Yet, as all know little things constantly test our reality. Many a man might not be dishonest about a thing of great value, but he might make too free in what is petty. There cannot be a greater fallacy than decrying a severe judgment formed about moral failure in matters of little pecuniary value, as it were making much ado about nothing; whereas it is in small things often that a man's true character is best known.
" If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" The true riches cannot be entrusted where the heart has been false in that which is so trifling in the Lord's eyes as " the unrighteous mammon." Nor is it only that present honor and riches are not "the true," but the mere counters of the hour; there is the further consideration: " if ye have not been faithful in that which is another's who shall give unto you that which is your own?" Present property is not strictly one's own. The whole course of the Christian here is really that of one acting for another, even Christ. We are servants in trust for the Lord. The Christian ought to regard his time, his money, his abilities, his property, as the goods of his Master; and his business is to serve his Master, faithfully carrying out His will. This is of immense importance; because covetousness consists in endeavoring to make earthly things your own which God has not given. The wisdom of the disciple is to count what appears to belong to him as really his Master's.
Now it is easy to be generous with another's money. Count your riches another's and act with all possible liberality in faith of the future. We should thus judge by faith what we have to be Christ's and then be as free with it, as the unjust steward was with his master's goods. Those who enter heaven are not men hard and grasping as if by possessing more than is needed a man's life consists of his substance. No doubt the natural spirit of man cleaves to what it counts its own (and perhaps particularly of the Jew), as if the present moment were of all importance. But the true wisdom is to be like the steward in his steady resolve to secure the future by acting freely with what belonged to his lord. When the glory comes, we shall have what is our own. What a wonderful truth! That the wide scene of Christ's glory in which we shall reign with Him will be ours. Then we shall bear power and glory without abusing it; now we can only safely use what we have by counting it Christ's and using it according to His will.
"No servant can serve two masters." If I have not Christ for my Master, I shall make myself so; and the moment we set up our own will, we find ourselves in Satan's service, for the fallen will is Satan's slave. " No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will cling to one and scorn the other." In the first we find the stronger case. With a man warm in his feelings everything is apt to be extreme. The other case supposes a person of feeble character. But in one way or another, whatever the character, to attempt this double service is fatal. " Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Alas! mammon is the real ecumenical idol; it is the object of widest homage-not only in the world, but, grievous to add, in christendom. By its own confession (witness the popular prize of that title) mammon now reigns supreme in the hearts of men generally throughout these lands professing the name of the Crucified, who most of all despised and denounced it,
My Peace
John 14:27.
There are two characters of peace presented to us in this verse. " Peace I leave with you" is not the same thing as "My peace I give unto you." Peace we need in every form. Peace we need first of all for the conscience, and the Lord would set the consciences of His disciples happy and free before God. Now this was one, and indeed we may say the main object of our Lord's coming here-specially of His death. As we are told elsewhere, " He made peace through the blood of his cross." And so in the fullness of this peace, when He rises from the dead, first He says, " Peace be unto you," a peace that so suffices, so overflows, that our Lord repeats it a second time in connection with the mission on which He was sending them out. "Peace be unto you. As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them: and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained."
The first blessed peace is between God and our souls, peace as regards the old war which we kept up against God when we were enemies. But this is not everything. When we have found it, know it, rest in it, it is absolutely necessary for the well-being of our souls that we should know Christ's peace. This at once shows the difference. Christ never needed the peace which we did as having been at enmity with God; and yet was it His to enjoy peace, after a sort, which had never been before. Therefore He adds, not merely, " Peace I leave with you," but, " My peace I give unto you," the peace which He ever enjoyed, which reigned within Him and lit up all around Him.
And it is remarkable as confirming this that in Col. 3, where you have the expression, "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts," it really is "the peace of Christ." "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body." He, the Head of the body, was always in the perfect and unbroken enjoyment of this peace: not as if He had ever been out of it, or needing to have it made for Him, but as One whom nothing ever agitated. He might suffer, sorrow, groan, weep-all these He knew: but yet in all these His peace abode. No doubt at the cross there was a wholly different experience. We cannot speak of peace there. But that which He tasted there we are never called to know in the slightest degree. We could not even approach that furnace heated seventy times seven, where every question was solved between God and His beloved Son as to our sins. There was a suffering there which was altogether peculiar to itself, before which all others must be silent at God's word; the great and solemn judgment of sin was to take its course between -God and Christ, and that hour abides isolated and alone forever. But, excepting such a scene and season which thus stood apart from all others, as respected Christ in His ordinary dealings with God (whatever might be the zeal of His heart which ate Him up), there was one thing which never changed. That zeal was not always in exercise, but was always surely there so as to meet whatever required it to be called out. But all was in its just place, because there was One that waited upon God and that drew on the infinite resources of God for each moment. "I live," as He said, because of "the Father." Thus, whatever the zeal that might occasionally burn with indignation against those that defiled the house of His Father, whatever the tender compassion that yearned over sorrow, whatever the rebuke that convicted His disciples of their unbelief, and whatever the righteous displeasure of His soul that tore off witheringly the pride and hypocrisy of men who put on a cloak of religion, there was one thing that never failed, for it never was absent but was in full mighty flow in His soul; and this was His peace. What a thought that such is the peace which He gives to us!
Jesus " leaves" peace with us as a last legacy that comes to us from His death, peace the righteously won portion for the soul that believes in His name.
But "My peace" seems to be a deeper and more personal boon, not procured by His work only, but fresh from His own heart which was ever filled with it to over-flowing. It supposes the peace that He has made for us by the blood of His cross and left to us; but it follows on and puts us wondrously in communion with Himself, enjoying now the peace He Himself enjoyed, although it were of all things as marked and characteristic as any other perhaps which could be named. Let the peace of Christ (not here of " God") rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. He gives to us His peace, He the Lord of peace, who walked in it as none else ever did, tried as only He was or could be. 0 may we treasure His peace!
There is another scripture to which I would briefly advert-2 Thess. 3:16, "Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means."
We hear repeatedly God giving Himself the title of the God of peace. "The Lord of peace" is a much more unusual expression. I do not think they mean exactly the same thing, however closely. connected. " The God of peace," points to Him as the source of it. He alone could be. Peace is what a sinful creature least of all knows. How could he who is at war with God? The wretched pleasure of a fallen being is change. To this he has recourse as his miserable diversion from facing the true condition of his soul, his past life, his present state, and all that lies before him. He is afraid to look at things as they are; he dreads to search too closely into himself; and he shrinks back from the God that he knows he has despised, and for whose presence he is unfit. What a change when that God is known to that soul as the God of peace! And yet it is not that God is changed, but the soul. For God is the God of peace, but that soul only knows Him to have become so to himself by a new creation and by redemption. He is delivered from his former self and hence is placed in Christ-the one who has banished all his evil and brought him into His own good. It is impossible that God could be other than the God of peace, for He has through Christ's redemption on the cross completely put away all with which otherwise He must be at war for the one to whom He displays Himself and has given the very life of Christ to be his life. God could not but love and value and delight in what is of Christ. What can be simpler? And it is God who effects this great change-not by His own changing, as if the Creator were a creature variable like ourselves-but Christ, and no longer self, makes all the 'difference. Let us hold this fast, rejoicing that we have nothing to put forward before our God- nothing to boast in for our soul-but that now we have Christ whom once we despised and abhorred.
But then "the Lord of peace" is another phase of the truth which has its own blessed importance. It is not God who has made peace through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and who can therefore afford to be the God of peace to him that has Christ. But "the Lord of peace " directs us to Christ Himself. It is not that He is our peace only, which is very true, and the Epistle to the Ephesians tells us that Christ Himself is our peace. An astonishing manifestation of what grace has given us in Him. He is the Lord of peace also. By that I understand that He is not only the Lord of us and of all, but that He is the one who knows how to bring about peace—the one who is above all the circumstances that tend to disturb. Elsewhere we read of this peace. In the very chapter that was read to us, the Lord Jesus says, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you"—that is, He has left peace as the fruit of His death. But then He gives us the same character of peace which He enjoyed Himself. The peace that He has "left" is the peace that we receive by the faith of Him. The peace that Christ gives is peace in communion with Him after that we have received peace through His death. And a wonderful thing it is that such hearts as ours should be capable of such communion with Him in that which is naturally so contrasted with our own condition. And the reason is this, that we know that God now has replaced the first man by the Second, and the more simply we apply this to our own souls, the more calm we are amid things that tend to trouble. We can count upon Him. If they are things quite outside our control, in whose hands are they? We know that they are in the hands of God, and our God is the God of peace. What we have to guard against is our own will, our own nature being acted upon, for we ought not to be governed by circumstances; we are brought into the light of the presence of God, it is there that we walk, and the believing this and resting upon it as the truth of our God for which we have nothing to show but His word is precisely the point of faith for us day by day. What a deliverance from everything like deceit or from crooked, or unlovely, or ungenerous, or unchristian-like ways, which we shall be sure to fall into if we lose sight of Him. We are never so if we are consciously walking in the light; but when we are not, then self is sure to show itself in the various forms of fallen Adam. We have the Lord of peace to look to, who is at the helm and not only preserves the ship but controls the elements. " The Lord of peace himself," for we count not upon circumstances, not upon people; for those we count most upon we often have the deepest sorrow from. And it is well for us to learn this profitable lesson, that God will not allow us to make an idol of anything or any one. We have God above everything; and not only that, but we have a man above everything—a man who loves us perfectly—a man at the head of the universe, glorified and set over all the works of God's hands. That man is our Lord, and our Lord is the Lord of peace. " Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means." What a blessing Surely it is in His power, and faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it.
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