WE are coming to the end of our volume, and can speak only of a few verses out of the many that remain on the subject of peace. We shall do best to look at the practical and experimental side of the subject. Most gracious are the divine teachings respecting peace which we find in the last chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians. In effect vs. 6 and 7. say to us, Give God your cares, and God will keep your hearts with His peace. Do not worry about anything, but in everything make known to God the special things that you really need by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, then God will put into your heart, as a garrison, His peace through Christ Jesus. Perhaps nothing like a well-garrisoned heart proves to others that the believer has been to God, and is walking with God. How differently do some of God’s people bear their trials from others; some have their hearts kept by the peace of God, others are in confusion or overwhelmed, for in the day of trial we find that we cannot keep ourselves, Let us seek for grace to carry out the exhortation of vs. 6, for then we shall not lack the blessing of vs. 7. We say, seek for grace, for no one can in his own strength fulfill such an exhortation, but God will give the grace where there is true waiting upon Him.
Then again says the apostle, in effect, in vs. 8, Occupy your mind with things in which God has pleasure, and, in vs. 9, practice them, then you shall have the blessed nearness and companionship of the God of peace. If our children occupy themselves with things we approve not, we cannot have companionship with them. Our practical state of heart is in question in these verses, and the blessings they propose to us will be ours so far as we, by grace, carry out the conditions on which the blessings will be realized.
St. James gives us, through the Spirit, a solemn yet sweet word on peace (ch. 3:18) ― “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” Read the whole chapter. What a searching word it is to us!
Men guide great ships with a little rudder, and direct powerful horses with a very small bit; but who is he that has a helmsman’s hand upon his tongue? A child by dropping a, little lighted match may burn down a Forest, and by the fire of the tongue the prosperity of whole communities of men is consumed.
Oh, these our untamable tongues! Men tame lions and other wild beasts, “but the tongue can no man tame.”
Ah! how this unruly evil shows us what we really are in our spiritual progress. How the secret state of our hearts is laid bare by the tongue! Our very mouths have each in them that which is “full of deadly poison.”
What a call is this for prayer to the Lord to set His watch at the door of our lips! The very mouth that has opened to let out the glad throng of words of praise to our God opens again to send forth its dark utterances against our fellow men. The contradictory tongue is a marvel of misery.
But let none of us be deceived, the secret of an unruly tongue is a low state of soul, a carnal condition, a wisdom that is earthy, animal, devilish―not by any manner of means of God. But heavenly wisdom, that which comes from above, is first pure―it is the result of nearness to God Himself. God is holy, God is light: in Him is no darkness at all. The first thing then in this heavenly wisdom is its pureness. Meekness of wisdom, not smartness or overbearing ways, characterizes the truly wise, that is the heavenly wise! How lovely is this wisdom―peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated; how wealthy―full of mercy and good fruits; how holy―without partiality, without hypocrisy! Blessed are the peacemakers; happy before God are they “that make peace.” They sow righteousness in peace, and the result of such sowing is holy fruit.
If there is any one practical thing more to be sought after than another by the Christian it is “the wisdom that is from above.”