Things That Make For Peace - Maynard Force

Things That Make for Peace

Would that even today you knew the things that wake for peace! Luke 19 :42.

These lamentable words came from our Lord the day He wept over Jerusalem. His heart was filled with grief. He longed to bring about a change in the cold hearts of the people, but they rejected Him. He had come to “seek and to save the lost,” but they would have nothing to do with Him. He came to give peace, but they stubbornly refused it. In burning love for these rejecters, He cried out, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.” Let us note especially these words, “the things that make for peace.” There are a lot of things that belong to peace—many more than most of us realize. Let us just enumerate a few of them.

A soul that has peace with God also has joy. How true the promise, “Seek first his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:33). True joy is also one of these additions that accompany peace. It is a joy that is different from that which people in the world experience. It is a joy that is directly from Christ. He himself has said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). This joy always accompanies peace.

Love is another one of the things that accompany peace. We at once love Him who gave us this great peace. He becomes “fairer than ten thousand” to our souls. We never know true love until we are saved. In fact, love is one of the ways by which we know that we are children of God. John, writing to the people in his day, said, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love remains in death” (1 John 3:14). One of Jesus’ commandments was that His disciples should love one another. “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13 :34). In fact, love was to be the Christian’s universal badge. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).

A clean conscience also belongs to peace. Is anything more horrible than living with an accusing conscience? It is a foretaste of hell. Once a tired, weary sinner comes to Christ, he becomes free from the guilt of sin. “For our sake he made him to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ, who can give a clean conscience, “redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Gal.3:13). He longs to give a cleansed conscience to troubled souls. It is one of the things that make for peace.

Hope also accompanies peace. Only those who have peace with God have hope. All others are hopeless. There is no hope for those who remain in bondage. Hope does not begin until the peace of God has become our gift. Then hope immediately springs up within our heart, for “by his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Whereas darkness, gloom, fear and despair once reigned in our soul, now that peace has come, we immediately have hope for the future. Heaven with all its glories looms up before us. With the psalmist, we, too, can cry out, “For Thee, 0 Lord, do I wait” (Ps. 38:15).

The “things that make for peace” are many. In fact, all that Christ has belongs to one whom He saves, “If children, then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17). We arrive at the same conclusion that John came to when he concluded his Gospel: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). So also with the things that belong to peace—they are legion.

Jerusalem and most of its inhabitants rejected Christ, the Prince of Peace. They never got to know the things of peace. Jesus had to say, “Now they are hid from your eyes.” It caused Jesus to weep. Now our turn has come. The Prince of Peace confronts us. Must He weep again? Or will the things that belong to peace be ours?