137 - Principles for Peaceful Living [B]

Principles for Peaceful Living
Romans 12:18

Open your Bibles to Romans 12. We're closing in on the end of this chapter as we go through a series of commands that all relate to basic core principles in the Christian life. A number of them relate to what we call and have defined as impersonal love and unconditional love. I know that some people have trouble with the term impersonal love. It simply stresses the fact that you don't have to have a personal relationship with the person you're showing love to in order to show love to them. It's not based on a personal relationship. It's based on a mental attitude and a relationship with God. We're directing it toward other people whether we know them or not. We're treating them with goodness and kindness. We're treating them the way we would want to be treated in the same situation and the same circumstances.

Even though this is not a section that is giving a development of impersonal love, many of these principles or exhortations that Paul is laying down here relate to impersonal love. As we come to the passage we're in today, Romans 12:17 says, "Repay no one evil for evil." That is part of impersonal love. Do not react to people. Do not respond in bitterness to bitter statements. Do not respond in anger to angry statements. Do not respond with vindictiveness or vengeance. In other words, seek what is best for them. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men, that is things that are good and are generally held to be good by all men.

Romans 12:18 says, "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men," This is a first class condition, indicating that it is possible because with God all things are possible. Then there's the phrase, "as far as it depends on you". There are many circumstances when we can't control how other people respond to us. We can't control what they think, what their opinions are, and how they react to us. All you can control is your own actions, your own thoughts, and your own behavior. So "if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men."

Now there's a lot of confusion about what the Bible teaches about peace, which is why I want to drill down on this a little tonight. It's important for us to understand that this is a prime directive as part of our Christian life. So the concept of possibility from the word DUNATOS, indicating that which is possible sometimes has the idea of strength or capability or possibility. It emphasizes the individual volition and it really depends on us and how we are going to choose to respond to that situation. The main verb is a present active participle that has an imperatival sense to us that we are to live sensibly and to live at peace with all men. The word for men is the word ANTHROPOS which we could also translate as all human beings and all mankind. So this introduces us to how we do this.

Last time I went back into the spiritual skills. I call them spiritual skills because anything we do that becomes a skill is something we have to practice over and over and over. It may to some degree come naturally but in order to mature that skill we have to practice it over and over again. As we implement these ten spiritual skills or stress busters it enables us to grow as Christians. These ten spiritual skills basically summarize what the Bible teaches about the spiritual life.

In 1 John, John breaks down three levels of spiritual growth: spiritual childhood, spiritual adolescence, and the spiritual adult. These problem solving devices or spiritual skills can be structured according to when they are mastered in the spiritual life. Now that doesn't mean that if you're a young believer that you're not beginning to learn how to implement more advanced skills. You are but you're not really going to perfect them or mature them until you become a more mature believer. Growth is not static. In other words we can lay down a logical flow to how to grow but we don't grow in just that manner. Life is messy. Growth is messy. Learning anything follows a dynamic path and we learn something one day, we learn something else another day.

Sometimes we come to Bible class and we're in a section where we're dealing with more advanced doctrine. Other times we're dealing with more basic doctrine so someone who's a brand new believer may come into Bible class where Hebrews is being taught. They're learning more advanced doctrine. They may not comprehend it too well but they can still take home a lot from those studies. So they're learning more advanced doctrine and then maybe two or three years later they're learning at other levels. This is one reason why I don't teach the same thing every night, one class after another, but I break it up and have different studies going. This way I'm hitting different areas of life at different time. If you just stay in one book and go night after night after night in one book then it reduces everyone to the same structure. There are too many areas of life where we're all dealing with to limit it to the problems that we might face in Corinthians, for example. The same is what Hebrews relates to or Revelation relates to. So by looking at different books and different topical studies, you have a greater chance of hitting people where they're living.

So in terms of spiritual childhood, these are the basic spiritual skills and we have five of them. The first is confession of sin which merely means to admit or acknowledge sin to God the Father. The second is walking by the Spirit. Being filled by the Spirit is a passive thing whereas walking by the Spirit is an active imperative. I'm trying to put these in terms that are used in an active voice because that addresses the volition of the individual believer more directly. We choose to walk by the Spirit. We choose to not walk by the Spirit and that is related to the filling of the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18 and Galatians 5:16.

Then we have the faith-rest drill where we're mixing promises with faith. Then we have grace orientation where we are learning to deal with every issue in life on the basis of God's grace. God deals with us all the time on the basis of His grace, not on the basis of works and we need to learn to relate everything in our life on the basis of grace and not of works. This is important at this level because if you don't get grace orientation down it's hard to develop the more mature areas of love for God and impersonal love for all mankind. Those are grounded upon grace and they're grounded upon doctrinal orientation. So without grace orientation and doctrinal orientation, it's really difficult to develop maturity in the Christian life.

Doctrinal orientation is when we're aligning our thoughts and actions to what the Word of God says. So those three really go together in tandem: the faith-rest drill, grace orientation, and doctrinal orientation. Then as we transition from spiritual infancy to spiritual adulthood we come to understand this thing we call our spiritual sense of destiny which is that we have an eternal destiny. We're in a training camp. It's like we're in boot camp. When we graduate from boot camp in the military, based on how you performed there, you get various assignments. The better you do in boot camp the more options you have. The less well you do, the fewer options you have. So if you do well, you can have your pick of better options, better opportunities, better job descriptions, and better training. That's what happens in the Christian life. We are on a training program to prepare us to rule and reign with Christ in the Messianic Kingdom.

When we are promoted from this life, we go to the Judgment seat of Christ and there we'll be evaluated. On the basis of those rewards then our future responsibilities will be determined. So this is really important. I find this is where many people fail in the Christian life. They start off thinking they just want to learn basic things about Christianity and the Bible. A lot of people come to Christianity just sort of looking at the Bible and Christ as a Santa Claus who's going to solve all their problems. Then when they get out of the problems they're in and they reach a level of stability they began to coast. If we're going to grow, according to James 1: 2-4, we're going to encounter various trials that test our faith. Often this is where people check out. They just fail when they hit those maturity testings so they never quite get beyond this. They just fade out and you don't see them anymore.

Then in spiritual adulthood, we have four skills we develop. One is personal love for God. This is what motivates us because the more we learn what God has done for us, the more we respond to His love with love for Him. That motivates us because on the basis of understanding His love we're then able to love others. That's impersonal love for all mankind or unconditional love. Then comes occupation with Christ when we focus on the Lord. So those three work together in tandem.

The reason I put those last is because when I went through James years ago I realized that when James starts off saying we should "count it all joy when we encounter various trials" the rest of the epistle is designed to teach us how to do that. That's not an easy thing to do. People sometimes flippantly will say, "Well you're going through a tough time so remember to count it all joy." Yes, that's true but it's not an easy thing to do. This is not an elementary skill. It's a more advanced skill because you have to know and understand a lot of reality and a lot of doctrine to have your mental attitude so focused so that no matter what you encounter in life you're able to relax and have joy even when everything you've hoped for and dreamed for is falling apart around you. So this is more of a linear, logical development of the skills that we develop as we grow to maturity.

But just because you've grown to maturity doesn't mean you've fully mastered some of the basic skills. There's a logical structure here so that the more advanced skills are based on the more basic skills but that doesn't mean that you learn them one after another. Some people have gotten that misconception, that first you learn and master one, and then you learn and master another, and then learn another and master it. But that's not how life works. That's not dynamic.

Next we need to see that we have our eternal realities, what we have in Christ that can never, ever be lost. At the moment we trust in Christ as Savior, we're immediately identified with His death, burial, and resurrection which is called the Baptism by the Holy Spirit. We're indwelt by the Spirit and many, many other things that are ours in Christ and we're always in Christ and can never lose that position. But there are also certain temporal realities. Some moments we're walking by means of the Spirit, then five minutes later we've gotten angry. We chose to act on our anger and we're out of fellowship and we're operating on the sin nature. We're out in carnality. The way to get back is to confess our sins, to admit and acknowledge our sins to God which is the first problem solving device. Then we're immediately back in fellowship.

Fellowship is also a dynamic reality. When you have fellowship, when you're enjoying your relationship with someone, that's a dynamic relationship. It's not something that's static. So that's why I emphasize walking by the Spirit. It's a life. It's a way of living. It's why we call it the Christian way of life. So when we're back in fellowship, we're to stay in fellowship. Too often people get in a cycle where they're just going in and out, in and out, in and out, and they're not even making a hamburger. You know, In and Out Hamburgers. Just trying to wake y'all up a little bit. I can tell we've got a slow crowd here tonight. They're just going in and out, in and out, and they're never getting back into fellowship. They're never growing, never maturing and they think that the sum total of the Christian life is confessing sin.

Confessing sin is like getting in your car with a full tank of gas and now you have the key. You can go somewhere. But they spend all their time getting out of the car and then getting back in the car. They may put the key in the ignition. Then they get out of the car and then they get back in the car. They're never going anywhere. They're just getting out of fellowship and then back in fellowship. The whole point is to get in the car, start the ignition, and then drive by means of the Holy Spirit and go somewhere.

These different spiritual skills enable us to stay in fellowship. When we're using these skills we won't use the human viewpoint skills to solve problems which are related to self-centeredness, the sin nature, anger, manipulation, and all these other things we may use in order to make life work. And so we need to stay in fellowship and when we choose to use the spiritual skills we can. When we choose not to use them we're out of fellowship and we're in the realm of carnality and the control of the flesh.

While we're in fellowship that's called abiding in Christ. It's called walking in the light. It's called walking by the Spirit and it all depends upon our volition and we have to trust in the Lord and use these different skills as application techniques in order to stay in fellowship. A part of the whole issue related to the challenge in the Christian life and related to impersonal love for all mankind is to maintain peace in relationships. There are some relationships where maintaining peace and harmony is very difficult. It's not always our fault. It's the other person's fault. We can't control other people. You can only control what you do. They may choose not to value what you value. They may choose not to want what you want. They may choose another course in life but you have no control over that. When they choose those things that are contrary to what you choose, the result is going to be friction, and conflict, and difficulty.

Now a passage that is very close to the one we're looking at in Romans 12:18, we find in Hebrews 12:14, "Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord." This is a much more dynamic challenge and command than what we have in Romans 12:18. There the verb does not have a strong connotation, where here you have the word pursue which is the Greek word DIOKO which is a direct imperative that is used. A direct imperative indicates something that should be a habit. This is something that should always be a dynamic in your life, something you always do. Something that is the standard operating procedure in the Christian life. The word DIOKO has the connotation of moving rapidly and decisively toward an objective. In the military it's when the commander yells, "Charge!" It's a priority and you're pursuing something aggressively. You're not just waiting for things to happen saying, "Well, we'll work out that relationship later."

It's true that sometimes you have to wait for the right time because of certain circumstances beyond our control. But on our part as far as it's possible for us we should make peace in relationships a priority. So the verb DIOKO has the idea of pursuing something, striving for it, seeking after it, or aspiring to something. It's used in 1 Thessalonians 5:15, "See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people." This is a parallel passage very much like what we have in Romans 12.  One another always refers to other believers and all people refers to those outside the body of Christ. So we're to seek or pursue that which is good for all people.

The word translated peace in Hebrews 12:14 is the noun EIRENE whereas we had the participial form in Romans 12:18 which has the idea of peace, tranquility, stability, or something that's calm. Often when people think of peace in the Bible they think that it has something to do with the absence of violence or the absence of war. There are a few places in the Old Testament where the word shalom relates to the concept of a lack of warfare or a lack of violence but usually the word indicates a mental attitude of stability and calm that results in harmonious relationships. It's usually focused on something internal that's the result of that. So it's also used as the opposite of chaos and disorder or violence.

The primary verb that EIRENE translates from the Hebrew Old Testament is shalom and shalom is another one of those words that just has a huge range of meanings. It can be health. It can be tranquility. It can be prosperity. It can be safety or security so peace in the New Testament overlaps with the Old Testament. Remember, many terms in the Old Testament were written by men who their first language was Hebrew or Aramaic and they are using Greek words to communicate Hebrew concepts and Hebrew vocabulary so it's often important that we go back and understand how these words were originally used in the Old Testament before we lock into a meaning in the New Testament. You don't just lock into how it's used in 1^st Century Greek. That wasn't the context of their thinking.

So peace has this idea that emphasizes an absence of strife. This can be peace in terms of your own mindset, an absence of worry, anxiety, and strife in your thinking, when you're all tied into knots and it's difficult to sleep. That happens to all of us at time. We get very focused sometimes and we need to take our focus off the issue and put it on to Christ. 1 Peter 5:7, "Casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you."

That was our memory verse yesterday at the Good News Club and they were tying it back to the story of Joseph. Joseph's brothers became very jealous of Jacob's favoritism toward Joseph, giving him a coat of many colors. Joseph sort of exacerbated the situation by telling his brothers by about his dreams which indicated they were going to bow down to him at some time in the future. That didn't sit well with his older brothers. So they became very jealous of him and they decided that the best solution from a human viewpoint was to kill him. But Reuben came along and said, "No, we're not going to kill him. Let's just sell him into slavery." Of course I just love the whole story of Joseph because when it's all done and Joseph has gone through all of these horrible things and he ends up finally as the number two in command in all of Egypt and his brothers come back there's a reconciliation. There hasn't been peace with the brothers and they're afraid that he's going to repay evil for evil. Instead, because of Divine viewpoint, Joseph says, "You may have meant it for evil but God meant it for good." He saw the hand of God in what had happened that even though things happened that were painful for him to go through God was working behind the scenes. Joseph was in prison for several years. He was falsely accused which is why he was put into prison. His family had rejected him and sold him into slavery. None of these are fun things that you like to reminisce about at Thanksgiving or Christmas or Passover. You have to recognize that the only way to have harmony in these relationships is oriented to God.

That's the great principle of the Joseph story that the only reason they can have harmony at the end is that there's a recognition on their part, the brothers' part, of their sin. They recognize where they were wrong and as a result, there can be a restoration of harmony. But until that happened there would still be problems with guilt and other things of that nature. So we're to pursue peace with all people. How do we do that? How do we live peaceably with all? Well, we have to start with God. In the Christian life, in studying any issue or problem in life, we always have to start with God, or almost always. How do we ground this doctrine in the person, the attributes, and the character of God?

We start by seeing that God is identified in the Scripture, both the Hebrew Scripture of the Old Testament and the Greek Scriptures of the New Testament as the God of peace. This is a genitive. It could be taken as an attributive genitive that peace is a characteristic of God but I think that it's probably a genitive of source that not only is peace a characteristic of God but true, genuine peace only comes from God. That, then, becomes a foundation. The peace that comes from God is a distinct kind. There are a lot of ways we can try to restore harmony in our world in our relationships. Most of the time it's by ignoring problems, overlooking problems, minimizing problems, acting as if someone's behavior if really acceptable when it's not acceptable, and things of this nature.

This is something by way of application that's a tough issue that a lot of Christian families are having to deal with when all of a sudden you have a child who comes out of the closet and they say they are homosexual. Now you have something else in your life to test your Christian faith. How you handle that is going to test your maturity. On the one hand, you need to avoid overreacting and being judgmental and hostile but on the other hand you don't want to minimize your own beliefs and absolutes. You have to walk that narrow path between those two opposites. This is where many Christians fall apart. This is how many people who look at Christianity misconstrue Christianity because they think Christians are going to be judgmental on the one hand and that the only solution is to change your values. Christians have to learn in an application of impersonal love how to show love to a family member and accept them as an individual without compromising the parents' absolute values. Sometimes when you have a child or a sibling or some other relative who is militant about their behavior and this could apply from anything to drugs, to alcohol, and who knows what, that they have to recognize that you have your rules and they have to respect your beliefs just as you may not offend them and get in their face and argue with them about it all the time and make an issue about it all the time so that you can restore the issue to Christ and the cross.

The cross is always the issue, either for salvation or for forgiveness for sin and not to let the sin become the issue. The sin is not the issue. We can look at numerous examples in the life of Christ where he didn't make the individual sin of the sinner the issue or the focal point. He made the issue always the grace of God going back to the character of God. So we have to understand how to do that. Trust me, there are people here who may not be facing it now but they may face it at some point. There's hardly a person here I would guess that doesn't have a situation where you're dealing with this in your own family. I know that's true for me. I know it's true for other people so we have to always exhibit the grace of God. Going back to the discussion of impersonal love for all mankind, you can't show unconditional love for someone if you haven't mastered grace orientation. If you can't deal with someone whose behavior is disagreeable to you and is wrong, you can't deal with them in impersonal love if you can't treat them in grace. So we have to learn to treat people in grace.

Okay, our point is that God is a God of peace. He alone is the source of real peace. We have numerous passages that describe God as the God of peace. For example, in Judges 6:24 after Gideon has recognized that the angel of the Lord that has appeared to him and commissioned him to be a judge and to give the Israelites a victory over the Midianites, he built an altar and called it Yahweh Shalom, the Lord is peace. The writer then inserts this little editorial comment. See, I don't get too many verses like this where the writer will tell a story and then insert his own sort of editorial observation that he's communicating to his readers. He's saying you can still go by and see this altar for yourself. You can reach out and touch it because the event that happened isn't just some myth or legend. It's an historical reality. So often in the Old Testament you have little comments like this as you read through the text.

Romans 15:33 says, "Now the God of peace be with you all."  2 Corinthians 13:11 says, "Finally, brethren, rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you." Again, this says God is the source of love and peace. If you want to know what love is or peace is, you go to God to find out what that is. Philippians 4:9, "May the God of peace be with you." Hebrews 13:20, "Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant." So peace here is also connected to the death of Christ which established the New Covenant which is the everlasting covenant mentioned here. So again we see that dealing with sin at the cross is foundational to what created peace between God and man. 1 Thessalonians 5:23, "The God of peace Himself sanctify you completely." In all of these examples the attribute of peace is God's but He is the source of peace.

Now we come to the second point. The God of peace is the one who blesses those who follow Him with peace. He's the One who blesses us with peace. If we walk with the Lord, if we're obedient, if we stay in fellowship, if we walk by the Holy Spirit, then God is going to bless us with peace. That's verbiage that comes out of the Old Testament. But in the New Testament we come to Galatians 5:21-22, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." What is the third fruit of the Spirit? Peace. That's a production in our life. It's not something we can manufacture on our own. It's something that is a result of spiritual growth, walking by means of the Spirit and then He produces that fruit.

Here are more of the passages that we find in the Old Testament, Psalm 29:11, "The LORD will give strength to His people; The LORD will bless His people with peace." This is in relationship to their internal character, not an external situation where it's being contrasted with war. Leviticus 26:6 is contrasted partially with war but it's a broader context. It's not just talking about war versus peace. "I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down with no one making {you} tremble." So it's not only dealing with peace in a domestic sense, that there are no external or internal enemies, but it goes beyond that. There aren't going to be these sources of problems. God is promising here that if the Jews are obedient to God He's going to make them prosperous.

One of the problems is that if you've got sheep and goats out in the field and you have wild, ravenous animals such as lions, bears, and wolves, then it's not going to be very peaceful for your flock. But God promised that if you are obedient to His Word then God is going to take care of these problems. The wolves and the lions and the bears are going to disappear. God also promised under the five cycles of discipline that if Israel became disobedient that God would bring those ravenous animals back and they would be less protected. Now you can go to the laboratory all day long and you can work on a computer all day long and create all kinds of models but you can't find an empirical cause/effect relationship between obeying Torah and the number of ravenous animals in the land but there are connections. Some connections are even human.

It's interesting that the more our country gets immersed in the religion of the environment and the more we get all concerned about restoring animals and all the different species the worse it seems to be. Now I love the outdoors and I love the fact that people have re-introduced moose and other animals into Colorado that haven't been seen in many, many years. But introducing grizzly bears into places like that or wolves into pasture lands in Wyoming or Montana is a totally different issue. Last year when I was up at Camp Arete, I was driving down the road, went around a hairpin turn, and just as I went around that turn where the brush grew right down to the road, there was a moose just stepping out into the road. We almost had a close encounter. Fortunately we didn't because they're big and that would have messed up the car. But you have people who are restoring and they think it's so wonderful that we have bears and wolves again. It's having a tremendous effect on cattle herds and sheep and goat flocks up in Wyoming and Montana and places like that.

When I was in Preston City there were a couple of instances where there was one lady whose two little kids were out in the back yard playing. She brought them into the house and went to the kitchen sink and looked outside the window and a bear went across the back yard. If she'd been five minutes later a bear would have been in the backyard with her kids. There was another guy not far from where I lived. He went out and heard a commotion near where he was raising rabbits. There was a bear on the rabbit hutch. He couldn't do anything about it. You can't go out and shoot them. You have to call the animal or wildlife officer. He came out and he can't do anything either. He flashed his lights and turned on his siren. The bear looked at him like he was a nuisance and just kept trying to get to the rabbits. Now we're in Texas. You know how we would handle it. It's a totally different dynamic down here. But that's the way it was there. In many states it's just that way.

What we're doing is we're putting ourselves in harm's way in the foolishness of so-called human wisdom as we reintroduce animals that were removed in the past by people who had a Biblical worldview and understood that for you to be prosperous and productive in raising animals you have to remove the threat of these dangerous animals. So God will give peace, not just the removal of external enemies or the removal of domestic enemies, but even the removal of threatening animals.

Psalm 119:165, "Those who love Your law have great peace, And nothing causes them to stumble." This is referring to an internal peace, a mental attitude peace. Proverbs 16:7, "When a man's ways are pleasing to the LORD, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him." This could be enemies of a personal nature or enemies of a national nature. Galatians 6:16, "And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy {be} upon them, and upon the Israel of God." Psalm 34:14 states the same principle, "Depart from evil and do good; Seek peace and pursue it."  This is the same principle we have in our passage and in Hebrews 12 to seek peace and pursue it. Romans 14:19, "So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another."

Our third point is that God commands us to seek peace with everyone. Other passages, 1 Corinthians 7:15, "But God has called us to peace." So this is a standard that God expects of us. This is what we are to be identified by. That's the principle in calling us to peace. 2 Corinthians 13:11, "Finally, brethren, rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you." Don't live creating disharmony with other people. Colossians 3:15, "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts." As I pointed out, this isn't a subjective thing. This is letting the reality of our reconciliation with God, which is also called peace, control our relationships with other people because we are at harmony with God, we need to let that principle be applied in our relationships with other people. 1 Thessalonians 5:13, "Live in peace with one another."

The next point is that God describes the New Covenant as a covenant of peace. It's called an eternal covenant. It's called the New Covenant and the covenant of peace. In Isaiah 54:10 God says, "And My covenant of peace will not be shaken." It's an eternal covenant. Once the New Covenant is implemented when Jesus returns and establishes the Kingdom then there will be peace on the earth, not until then. Ezekiel 34:25 states, "I will make a covenant of peace with them and eliminate harmful beasts from the land so that they may live securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods" Notice this again connects it to wild beasts in the land. I think we can build a whole doctrine of environmentalism, Biblical environmentalism right out of these verses and it would rattle the cage of current environmentalists. But of course they wouldn't pay attention to it because we're basing it on the Bible. Ezekiel 37:26 again says, "I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever."

Now, I've talked about point five already is that shalom in the Hebrew and EIRENE in the Greek indicate the same concept. Passages like Judges 6:23, "The LORD said to him, "Peace to you, do not fear; you shall not die." Here the context has to do with a mental attitude where peace is contrasted with fear, worry, and anxiety. 1 Samuel 16:5, "In peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice." Notice that peace here is related to sanctification. Luke 24:36, "While they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be to you." This is a greeting but Jesus is telling them to have God's peace present in their lives.

Point number six is that peace with God is the foundational message of the Gospel. It's related to the whole doctrine of reconciliation. We are born at enmity with God. We are born in hostility with God. At the Cross Jesus Christ removes that certificate of debt so that peace can be restored. Now one of the first places we see this mentioned in the New Testament is in Luke 2:14 with the announcement of the angels. "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased." If you have a King James Version or NKJ version it reads "to men of good will." But there is an alternate view that I don't believe is accurate is all. It's the view that older makes it better which is not accurate. It's either EUDOKEIA as a nominative singular which refers to a state or condition of being kindly disposed or as a genitive singular. If it's the nominative singular you're saying "good will to men." If it's the genitive singular it's saying to men of good will. So in the first case the angels are announcing that the Savior who was called "the Prince of Peace" in the Old Testament is saying there is peace because God has come and it's God's message of good will to fallen men. He's going to provide peace.

That's a view that confuses some people which probably explains why the word was changed to a genitive. They thought it meant God would only send peace to men of good will. Now think about this. Put your little theological thinking caps on. If God is sending peace only to men of good will, then peace wouldn't be intended for all mankind. Some of you got it. This is a limited versus unlimited atonement issue. If peace is only intended for men of good will, then God has a limited atonement message here. The angels would be announcing that the Savior has come only for a restricted number. But the majority text should read, peace, good will toward men. God is announcing through the angels that the Savior has come and the potential is for good will or a blessing for all mankind which comes through the cross. Just a little added insight there.

Point seven, the only basis for achieving peace is to understand the dynamics of understanding the dynamics of resolving the most extreme conflict of history, which is the rebellion of man, the creature, against God. This is the doctrine of reconciliation. Man has revolted against God and God is going to solve the problem and re-establish peace. We are reconciled to God. God isn't reconciled to us. Passages like Romans 5:1-2, "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God." Our present position is to have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It's a present reality whether you're in fellowship or out of fellowship there's a state of peace between the believer and God. Colossians 1:19-20, "For it was the {Father's} good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, {I say,} whether things on earth or things in heaven." Now when was that peace accomplished? At the cross. Not when a person believes in Christ but there is a dimension of it that was accomplished at the cross once that sin penalty is paid. That's why sin isn't the issue any more. The issue is faith in Christ. We'll see a little bit more of that in the next point. Peace with God is accomplished and we realize it in our present life only because the sin problem was dealt with at the cross. A harmonious relationship legally has been established between the human race and God by Christ's death on the cross.

When someone puts their faith in Christ this harmonious relationship is established individually. Colossians 2:13-14, "When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." How did God forgive us of all trespasses? By having wiped out the certificate of debt. When did He wipe this out? At the cross or when you believe? A lot of people think it happens when you believe but that's not what this text says. It says in the past tense that He has taken our debt out of the way having nailed it to the cross. It happened historically in A.D. 33. It doesn't happen when you believe. When you believe it is applied to you. It happened at the cross. That is what give us peace.

So this is the basis for how we have peace with others. Passages like Psalm 133:1, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brothers to dwell together in unity [peace]!" Understanding God's work of reconciliation is the basis for our peace. In reconciliation we see there are two key elements: grace which solves the sin problem and love which is the source of God's gracious acts towards undeserving humanity as seen in Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." What's the context of Romans 5? Reconciliation and peace. God demonstrated His love so that we could have peace.

In Matthew 5:44, we learn that, love is a volitional act and a mental attitude. We choose to love others. We set our minds on loving. That's a decision we make. We are to love our enemies. We have to make that decision. It's not just a sentiment or a feeling. In Luke 6:27 and Luke 6:32 we're commanded to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us. John 13:34 says it's a new commandment that is given to us that we're to love one another as Christ has loved us. That's how we have peace with one another. Then as we finish, the result of this is that we can have inner peace, inner tranquility, inner stability, even in the midst of turmoil, chaos in our lives when we don't know what's going to happen next, we can relax because God is going to keep us in perfect peace. Isaiah 26:3 which I quote quite a lot, "Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusted in Thee." Other passages. John 14:27, Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful." We have the peace of God. Okay, next time we'll come back and finish up our chapter in Romans 12 and then get into Romans 13 dealing with submission to government. Time for politics as we go into our run-off season here in Texas.