by Cesar Vigil-Ruiz
Editor’s Note: You can listen to the class and download the handout.
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (Romans 12:18)
Sande continues to write in this chapter of “three dimensions to the peace that God offers to us through Christ: peace with God, peace with one another and peace within ourselves” (p. 44).
Peace with God
What brings peace with God has to do with what the Gospel is. We are all sinners who have strayed away from and fallen short of His perfect standard that leaves us separated from Him: “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (Isaiah 59:1-2). The good news is that God did not leave it there; He offered a way of salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16): “By sacrificing himself in our place on the cross, Jesus has made it possible for us to have peace with God” (p.45). What Sande writes here is very important, and worth quoting in full:
Believing in Jesus means more than being baptized, going to church, or trying to be a good person. None of these activities can erase the sins you have already committed and will continue to commit throughout your life. Believing in Jesus means, first of all, admitting that you are a sinner and acknowledging that there is no way you can earn God’s approval by your works (Rom. 3:20; Eph. 2:8-9). Second, it means believing that Jesus paid the full penalty for your sins when he died on the cross (Isa. 53:1-12; 1 Peter 2:24-25). In essence, believing in Jesus means trusting that he exchanged the records with you at Calvary—that is, he took your sinful record on himself and paid for it in full, giving you his perfect record, which opens the way for peace with God. As you believe in Jesus, accept his gracious gift of salvation, and draw closer to him through the power of his Spirit, the study of his Word, the privilege of prayer, and the fellowship of his church, his peace can fill every part of your life (ibid, author’s emphasis).
Peace with Others
This type of peace is also called unity, which is “the presence of genuine harmony, understanding, and goodwill toward people” (p.46). This is what immediately follows after having obeyed the second great commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39).
Peace within Yourself
“Internal peace is a sense of wholeness, contentment, tranquility, order, rest, and security…Genuine internal peace cannot be directly obtained through our own efforts; it is a gift that God gives only to those who believe in his Son and obey his commands (1 John 3:21-24)” (p.46).
Jesus’ Reputation Depends on Unity
What unity shows in the life of a Christian community is that you are not of this world, but you are sons of the Most High God (Matthew 5:9). What Sande continues to point out in this chapter is the direct relevance of our Gospel witness to our unity in our relationships within the body of Christ. It is a witness to a watching world that our kind of peace is deeper, purer, and more satisfying than the cheap imitation that is constantly portrayed in the media or at the theaters. Disunity in the church is a poor witness to our call for non-believers to come to Christ and be changed, when we don’t show it ourselves. In Jesus’ high priestly prayer (specifically verses 20-23), he had this in mind. Jesus prayed that his followers would get along with one another. This was so important to him that he tied his reputation and the credibility of his message to how well his followers would display unity and oneness” (p.48). In the oft-quoted passage (Matthew 13:34-35), “The love Jesus commands us to show to one another has little to do with warm feelings; in fact, he commands us to show love even when it is the last thing in the world we feel like doing (Luke 6:27-28)” (ibid). It becomes so important to Jesus how we relate to one another, that to enter into a church to offer worship to God would not please Him if we knew we were not right with a brother (1 John 4:19-21).
The Enemy of Peace
In thinking of our conflicts, we must not forget the lover of conflict, Satan, which means “adversary.” Among many things Satan does, what he loves to get involved in is our tension with one another:
Satan promotes conflict in many ways. Among other things, he tempts us so we give in to greed and dishonesty (Acts 5:3), he deceives us and misleads us (2 Tim. 2:25-26), and he takes advantage of unresolved anger (Eph. 4:26-27). Worst of all, he uses false teachers to propogate values and philosophies that encourage selfishness and stimulate controversy (1 Tim. 4:1-3). (p.51)
What Paul describes (in Eph. 6:13-18) as weapons in our arsenal that we readily have to withstand Satan’s power are:
- Truth
- Righteousness
- The Gospel
- Faith
- Scripture
- Prayer
Even though we shouldn’t blame Satan for all the conflicts that arise among us (since we must take responsibility for wrongs we have personally committed), we tend to overlook the role Satan plays and the influence he has in leading many astray (especially when Scripture reveals this to us).
Strive like a Gladiator
In passages like Romans 15: 5-7, 1 Corinthians 1:10, Galatians 5:19-22, Colossians 3:13, 15, and 1 Thessalonians 5:13b-15 show us is that the New Testament epistles have a heavy emphasis on obeying God in your peacemaking. In Ephesians 4:1-3, Paul uses the word that is translated “make every effort” in the NIV (“eager” in ESV), which means “to strive eagerly, earnestly, and diligently” (p.52). It’s to be done with the same rigor as that of a trainer of gladiator would use when sending men into battle: “’Make every effort to stay alive today!’” (ibid) This is not a passive exercise of pretending things are ok yet never dealt with, or forced to be dealt with in a cold fashion. Peacemaking is the means to an end—Christlikeness, or a display of the Gospel, and neither is easy to show.
We also need to avoid the idea that unity is equal to uniformity. That isn’t the position of Paul in Eph. 4:7-13, since many in the church have a different set of gifts or talents, which is how God distributes His gifts, and that we can hold, as Rom. 14:1 says, different views on “disputable matters” in the NIV (“opinions” in ESV). However, it must not be done in a way which, if you remember from FOF, can grieve (Eph. 4:30) or quench (1 Thess. 5:19) the Holy Spirit.
Lawsuits among Believers
Peace and unity among Christians is so essential to our witness for Christ that God commands us to take unresolved legal issues to the church rather than to the civil courts. Many pastors have neglected to teach regularly on the this passage, so most Christians are completely unaware of this command or believe that it no longer applies. Worse yet, many churches deliberately ignore this passage and do nothing to help their members settle their legal disputes in a biblical manner (p.54, after quoting 1 Cor. 6:1-8)
Having lawsuits among professing Christians not only shows a lack of peacemaking promoted in the church, but also a lack of help for Christians in their conflicts, as well as a further black eye to the church’s testimony of Christ. What Jesus has taught about conflict in Matthew 18:15-20 should serve as a launching pad of loving confronting among the body. With lawsuits, relationships can be seriously damaged, whereas the church can more readily provide and foster forgiveness and reconciliation to one another. What lawsuits resolves are issues of “awarding damages, transferring property, or enforcing a contract” (p.56), not the root cause of all conflict: our sin. Once that is dealt with, material issues become more easy to deal with.
By going to the church, our witness of Christ and His power to change sinners can draw more attention to Him than anything else. It is an evangelistic tool at our disposal: revealing the life-changing power of the Gospel to do what the world tries but simply imitates: real peace. Peace with one another, which comes from a peace with the true God of Scripture, and leads also to a peace within, since it’s birth from a peace outside us, and that’s the only peace that lasts.