Creating One New Man Thereby Making Peace
Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. -- Psa 37:37
I’m not sure Stevie Wonder actually meant for us to take him too seriously when he soulfully belted out, ♫Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing♬.. back in ‘73. Certainly rings with vibes of positivity just as ♫Don’t worry, Be happy♬, go with the flow, or take things in stride does. Remember the positive thinking movement? These mind manipulating mantras stop short of giving any sound reason why we ought to take on this carefree, overventuresome attitude. Leave our minds in the care of the social engineers so we can enter their Brave New World happy, not owning a thing? Really?
I’m not saying we should worry, or become overly anxious about tomorrow, but there’s a vigilent role our mind and affection should play in our lives if we are to become and remain free and independent, altogether emotionally, mentally and spiritually. But that’s not what the god of this evil, present world has planned for us. So he gives us coded and uncoded messages from all the right places so to distract us from ever hearing and receiving the correct message preserved in The Book, the same Book that he has been trying to destroy for the past two thousand years.
Well, the God of Heaven, will make a short work of Satan’s efforts. Six millenia he has been successful at crafting the systems of this world to work in his interest, even as mankind thought they were serving their own interests. But those who seek after God, the Most High God, and learn of him to do his good pleasure, will have the peace that marks the saint as he walks on in this life… and in that life which is to come:
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you. -- Phil 4:6-9
There is so much packed into these important verses and what I want to say about them. So I’ve divided this post into two parts. In this first, I’ll lay the groundwork using bits of my personal story to prove the veracity and trustworthiness of two key phrases that enclose this passage above: Be careful for nothing; but.…and the God of peace shall be with you!
In Part Two, I hope to show evidence from my past forty years in the faith how that it is not God’s will to leave us as members of the Body of Christ, spiritually ignorant, lukewarm Christians, hanging on to a “get out of hell free” card, slipping into heaven by the skin of our hides, only to be found "naked" and ashamed.
We’ll learn that his will and purpose is to perfect our faith in the knowledge of his Word, and grow us up into a spiritual force able to be reckoned with, magnificently suited in the full armour of God and made ready for battle. We need know who and where our enemy is at all times, and fight effectually, until the war is over and peace is established in that forever Kingdom prepared from the beginning for them that love him.
If we who believe are not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of his “prisoner” Paul, but are partakers of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, then we are daily renewed to fulfill a purpose under his workmanship. Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, we become equipped to perform this profitable labor in the strength and wisdom of his might, able to slay dragons, fallen angels, gods who knew not their first estate and, along with Christ, to torment the enemy before his time.
In hyperbolic imagery:
What we are when we put on Christ and learn how to walk in the New Man:
When we are the New Man:
As counterfeit versions:
This New Man will be the subject of Part II.
By the way, it’s been awhile since I’ve written. I’ve been traveling and relaxing with family, playing with my two-year old energetic grandson, and offering to stay and help in any way, in anticipation of grandson no. 2. I was wonderfully surprised to be asked to photograph my grandson’s arrival which, I admit, was great difficulty with teared up eyes... I’m watching my daughter give birth, just as I gave birth to her, twenty four years earlier, even as my mother did with us decades before.
It’s amusing to me how all my (five) siblings were home birthed, but only I considered doing the same with my four, a no-brainer. My British husband was reluctant, but after the first breathtaking experience, there were no more arguments.
I love that my daughter and son-in-law will carry on the tradition of having an interference-free, drug-free, bright lights-free, doctor’s schedule-free ancestral birth in the privacy of their own home, with only the people they love around them. Rockefeller pseudoscience has stolen this marvelous, natural experience from most in the world, and adding insult to literal injury, immediately begin to pressure young parents toward unnecessary and harmful childhood vaccines.
I suppose I could say, I took the unconventional, contrarian path partly because of my parent’s practice and discipline, but mostly because of my stepping into the faith of Christ at the age of twenty-one. Why I believe the gospel of the grace of God when my siblings do not? No idea. I know they’re not comfortable hanging out with me and my unconventional ideas. We all had the same Christian upbringing, even if it did smack of legalism and hell, fire and brimstone preaching. Perhaps, because it was the pure gospel of grace that I received and not another gospel that the Apostle Paul warns against, that I found to be so liberating. It didn’t ask where I’d been or what I’d done, only believe in the merciful work of Christ at the cross, who took my punishment for the sins I had commited and reconciled me back to God, thereby making peace.
I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you unto the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. -- Gal 1:6-8
He says that last part twice in the full context, changing angel from heaven to any man. Perverting the gospel of God’s grace by adding anything to it, such as water baptism, confession of sins, inviting Jesus into your heart, keeping the law, anything that adds any work of man to the free gift of salvation, is a very serious misjudgment: to be accursed and doomed to destruction it says. And yet it continues today as it has for two thousand years.
My dear father was influenced by the seminary trained legal dogmatists and revivalists of his time and taught it in our home. As he aged, he became disillusioned, not having understood Paul’s epistles and the pure doctrine of grace. Frustrated, trying and never able to keep the law as he understood it, he became physically ill — as so many do when burdened by guilt — and took his life. It was another fifteen years before I began to understand Paul’s gospel and mysterie revelation more perfectly. I often think of him and the discussions we could have had together had he stuck it out.
In this doctrine of grace lies the peace that the world is searching for. I’ve got it. But it took many years living with a husband who did not wish to know God, those thirty-something years of gradually growing apart because of my love of the truth and disgust for “conforming to get along,” before I accepted that the ole hubby had chosen not to love me anymore. I understood that, if he did not love God or wonder at the truth, breaking his covenant vows and breaking apart the family wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be.
I’ll leave off this first part with the words I heard, when after a restless night I woke up on the sofa and sat wondering about my future. It was then whilst attempting to clear my head I suddenly heard, in my spirit, an audible voice such as I’ve never heard before nor after say, “It’s okay, I’ll be with you.”
And then the peace. What rapturous, overpowering peace that flooded over me! So wonderfully unexpected, and so charged with assurance and confidence in revealing I would not be alone. He said elsewhere which I’ve read a hundred times:
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. -- John 14:27
But he said those words to his disciples as he was about to leave this earth, because they were troubled knowing what persecutions awaited them. They endured all and left a brilliant testimony of their faith, so sure and so strong because of the peace that their Lord and King had left them. And Papal Rome thought they could stamp it out!
The words I heard from this same Lord and Savior to me has left me his peace, and assured me of all the promises and glory yet ahead:
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. -- 2 Tim 4:8
If it be possible, as much as lieth within you, live peaceably with all men (Rom 12:18)
“Peace is Bolshevism’s worst enemy, which it must destroy in order to realize its plans for world domination. Thus, Bolshevism’s ever-repeated life and death declarations of battle against the whole of the world become all too understandable . . .”
This heartfelt disclosure and declaration touched me and deeply resonated - thank you for sharing your perspectives. The darkest of the manifold perversions, inversions, attempts to distort, destroy and contaminate the unspeakable and miraculous gift of divine life (the life of Christ via His Holy Spirit residing in us as new creations, bathed in grace, love, acceptance and a hope that is not rooted in circumstance or situational detail), the equipping that is ours and the freedom to recognize that our deepest need has been more than met in our Savior/LORD through His completed work on our behalf and even the dark one himself fully revealed and manifested in his terrifying form cannot destroy what is already settled forever - that we are complete in Him, that we are partakers of His divine nature, that the law could not make anyone righteous, but the righteousness of Christ is ours by faith...our "work" is to believe on Him whom God has sent, to bear fruit in due season, to put on the LORD Jesus Christ (our spiritual armor) and in the face of evil, to stand firmly, victorious and unsinged by the fires of lawlessness and deception and death that are surrounding us. You have captured and disseminated real life in your words.