06. Chapter 6: Conflict And Peace
Chapter VI CONFLICT AND PEACE Eph 6:10-18; Php 4:7. The title of this chapter presents a contrast, but it is a contrast full of harmony. The Peace and the Conflict of the believing Christian are things intended, in their true idea, not to take each other by turns, but to be intertwined, to bear habitually upon one another, to make the secret of one tenor of life, and that a life of chastened happiness. Let us look into the matter, in a brief study of the conflict and of the peace in question.
I. THE CHRISTIAN’S CONFLICT
Consider this first, and in the light of the passage quoted at the head of the chapter; with the recollection that it is a subject not only of importance, but of vital importance to every disciple. It is indeed “our life” (Deu 32:47).
1. The Ephesians passage asks to be read with full remembrance, first of itsconnexion. Have you ever remarked that connexion?To many readers, I believe, this picture of armour and soldier calls up the thought of dark and terrible eternal strife. It suggests, perhaps, the resolute confessor of Christ bracing himself to meet Satan in his open wrath; on some day of persecution, with its tribunal, its prison, its scaffold, or its fire; or at least at some time of peculiarly vehement and angry temptation of other sorts; amidst which the saint is solitary and terrified, and almost forcibly overborne. But as a fact the passage comes in, naturally and in sequence, to close and crown a long series of directions how to live at home, how to please the redeeming Lord in the sphere of home duties. Husband, wife, child, parent, master, servant — these are the words which have led up to the thought of the armour, the conflict, and the dark foes who press round the believer in the field. Is this unnatural?It is indeed surprising for the moment, but not unnatural. I appeal to the heart of my reader, taking it for granted that for most of my readers the lot is cast, wholly or partly, in the life of an English home, or in some life closely akin to it; and I ask, is not home too often the scene of our greatest spiritual failures, our most manifest inconsistencies, our least resistance to the enemy, and accordingly his greatest successes over us?It is a deep fact, a far-reaching fact, that just where the path looks most commonplace and easy the enemy of our spiritual life is likely to set his most subtle ambush. Where we are habitually least upon our guard he is habitually most upon the watch. And then, on the other hand, this scene of so much possible failure is therefore capable, through grace, of being the scene of delightfully frequent and fruitful victory, victory of that gentle, humble and unobtrusive kind which is the truest and the strongest after all.
2. Thus much about the connexion. Think next of the enemies presented to our thought by St. Paul. What are they, who are they? In our Baptism we were dedicated and sealed to a manful warfare against an unholy triple Alliance — “the world, the flesh, and the devil;” and we shall have to deal with all the three even to the end. But the present passage isolates, as it were, the third member of the alliance, and deals with it alone. It presents us with the fact of personal spirits of evil, under their great head and chief, actively at work and at war against us. In one respect, such a view includes within it the remembrance of the world and the flesh. For the personal evil powers, assuredly, to a degree greater than we ever realize, organize and energize the attack, from whatever quarter it comes. Diabolus, in the pages of that wonderful book, Bunyan’s Holy War, knew how to attack from without, both by assault, and by parley with weak or treacherous inmates of the Town of Mansoul. But not to pursue this thought, we have as a fact a host of unseen personal spirits put here before us as our foes. They are indeed real persons, not figures of speech, say the contrary who will. True, they are an awful mystery, but a mystery not greater in kind than is the existence of evil men who live, as many do, to tempt others to evil. In anywise, to the Lord and to His Apostles they were “a living, dark reality. ” In the Word of God the Christian’s conflict is seen to be one not merely “with flesh and blood,” that is to say with frail mortal m en, withstanding and tempting, but against this dark throng of unseen assailants, working personally, and working earnestly, in quiet as well as in alarming hours, for his spiritual loss and woe.
3. Observe next the precise and definite aim of these adversaries. It is to dislodge you, Christian, from a point on which you stand, on which you are set and stationed by your Lord. You see yourself here as a soldier, but not as a soldier on the march through a hostile country, nor as running the errands of your Captain, but as posted upon a vantage-ground in the field. The strategy of the enemy aims above all things at getting you to leave it. We all know how the day of Hastings was lost, and the history of England changed for ever, by a failure — not to manoeuvre, to march, to charge, but to stand, having done all to stand, within a vantage-ground. Every day brings for the soul its field of Hastings. Forewarned, let us secure victory. Let us stand, withstand, having done all let us stand.
4. Remember next what thepoint of vantageis, from which we are to pray and watch that He who keeps us “will not suffer our feet to be moved” (Psa 121:3). The tenth verse of our chapter informs us; all-important information!It is nothing less than “the Lord. ”“Stand fast in (not only near, but in) the Lord, and in the power of His might. ”Weigh the words well. Let them not pass as a mere sacred phrase, a mere formula of the religious dialect. They are concerned with the central facts of our spiritual life and power. “In the Lord” lies your secret, our secret, of love, and peace, and joy; of victory and progress; of heavenly temper in earthly duty; of all we need for life and work in His name. Unionwith our glorious Redeemer and Head, wrought in us by that Holy Spirit through whom we were born again; communion with Christ Jesus, wrought in us by that same Spirit as He leads us on; all this lies hidden “in the Lord. ” The phrase, in the present connexion, speaks specially of the life of communion with Him, union realized and put into use; communion not only at His sacred and happy Table, but in all ways and at all times of definite spiritual contact with Jesus Christ. This contact, this “keeping in touch” (John 15:4), this abiding in Him is practically, our strength and vantage-ground; and to draw us from it, into the plain, into the vale of Siddim full of slime pits, is the strength and advantage of the enemy. Let him drive us or entice us thence, let him meet us out of contact with our Lord, and he will have the victory, whether it be on a day of persecuting terror or on a day of amplest home comfort and charming surroundings. Let us stand then, and be strong, in the Lord. Let us keep our communion with Jesus Christ clear and full. Let us, not now and then, but in a blessed growth of habit, carry all our needs to Him and draw all our power from Him. Let us remember the power of the little word “now,” and do thisnow. Nothing is too great for our Maker’s strength; nothing is too small for His attention.
Keep the vantage-ground, and “put on” — what lies always ready upon it — “the whole armour of God. ” Every piece of that panoply means, in effect, Jesus Christ believed in and brought to bear upon the foe. Observe this not least in the case of the soldier’s shoes; “the preparation,” that is, the equipment, “of the Gospel of peace;” the arming of the Christian’s feet with that strong appropriation of “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” which gives foothold indeed as we stand upon the Rock. But against every variety of need array yourself with Jesus Christ. He is both fort and armour. And He has overcome, and we in Him. The enemy who surges around us is real, is fierce; but he is only fighting on after defeat; a beaten, a broken, army. Let us stand where we are already set, and use what we wear, and be calmly confident of success, with glory for its end.
II. The Christian’s Peace As we turn to this delightful branch of the subject, let us read again the language of Php 4:7 : “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep (lit. , shall garrison) your hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus. ”The harmony in contrast, of which I spoke in the first words of the chapter, is suggested, is explained, by that quotation. We have just been contemplating a battle-field, and its critical point, held by the Christian, assailed by his spiritual foes. We look at it, so to speak, from the outside, and it is a fort, an entrenchment, surrounded by a tide of battle. Here we are given a view of the interior, and we see its defender, its maintainer, amidst that angry tide, nevertheless in peace, kept in peace, garrisoned and sentinelled with peace. Occupying a position in its nature impregnable, and using weapons in their nature impenetrable and infallible, he stands, he resists, he engages the foe with the sword, yet in the strong tranquillity of the possession of advantage and the certainty of victory. Like Elisha inDothan, he sees the Syrians, and knows that they are no vision of a dream, but formidable invaders, bent upon his mischief (2Ki 6:17). But he sees also, with the eye of faith, a living circle of fortification and garrison between him and them; chariots and horses of fire; the peace of God, the God of peace. To lay aside the military imagery, suggested probably in both places to St. Paul by the Roman soldiery with whom he was so long familiar — he was actually chained to a Pretorian when he wrote these words — the Philippian passage reminds us that the believer’s triumph in daily life over temptation, over the power of the enemy, is intended, in the plan of God, to be an experience full of peace. Fluctuations in success there may be. Nay, in the mysterious fact of our imperfection here, our imperfection of reception, there not only may but must be a falling “short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), occasions very many for profound and tender confession of sin. But this is no part of the plan of God. From the point of view of His provision, there is planned for us and offered to us nothing less than a continuous deliverance, a calm unbroken standing on the hill of victory, a long experience of peace passing understanding, keeping the heart and mind in Christ Jesus. “Change” inthesethings is not “ourportionhere,” in the sense of an allotment from above. What the external Shepherd prepares, apportions, and allots, is “a table, in the presence of our enemies” (Psa 23:5).
One of the most tranquil and happy deaths of which I have ever heard was that of a young English officer in one of the battles of the Soudan. He was struck by an Arab shot, and expired in the midst of the square, walled in by his men, while the savage assailants beat upon their ranks in vain; yielding up his soul there in the deliberate calm of faith to the Lord of Life. Some parable we may see in this of what may be the quiet intercourse with Jesus Christ enjoyed by the inmost heart of the Christian while temptation flies thickest around him, so that he meets it in and with the Lord. This chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians is full of suggestions in that direction. “In the Lord” is its key-note also, as well as that of the message to the Ephesians. “Stand fast in the Lord”; “be of the same mind in the Lord”; “rejoice in the Lord”; “the peace of God shall keep you in Christ Jesus. ”
Observe, as we pass on, the phraseology of the verse. It is that of promise. Sweet is the sound of “the peace of God” when uttered at the close of Sabbath worship; when spoken after the heavenly Communion Feast. But there it is a benediction, a holy invocation; here it is more, it is a promise; not “may it,” but “it shall. ” Such a thing then as this peace of God there is, and is meant to be, in the experience not of some but of all watchful believers, of all who “stand in the Lord,” their strength. It is guaranteed to them. They are invited humbly to claim it, and to possess it, under the Covenant of peace.
Yes, remember this, busy and burthened disciple; man or woman tried by uncertain health; immersed in secular duties; forced to a life of almost ceaseless publicity, social, ministerial, or however it may be. Here is written an assurance, a guarantee, that not at holy times and welcome intervals only, not only in the dust of death, but in the dust of life, there is prepared for you the peace of God, able to keep your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus.
It is no dead calm, no apathy. It is the peace of God; and God is life, and light, and love. It is found in Him, it is cultivated by intercourse with Him. It is “the secret of His presence” (Psa 31:20). Amidst the circumstances of your life, which are the expression, as we have recollected above, of His will, He can maintain it, He can keep you in it. Nay, it is not passive; it “shall keep” you, alive, and loving, and practical, and ready at His call.
It can, it shall, keep “the heart” — that word of such wide and inclusive significance in Scripture; the inner world of will, and affection, and understanding. It can keep “the thoughts,” sweetly controlling, tempering, attuning, the actual outcome of the heart in articulate purposes and opinions. Yes, it can work miracles in these things. In closing, I recur to our Ephesian chapter, and to that one detail in it touched on already, “the preparation, the equipment, of the Gospel of peace. ”I have pointed out that this puts before us the believing combatant in his strong, firm, calm appropriation of peace with God (Rom 5:1), and, let me now add, of what goes with and springs from peacewith God — the peaceofGod, keeping the heart. Thus in the very centre of the imagery of conflict is imbedded the imagery of peace; not only clinging to the eternal Rock, but rather an untroubled foothold upon it.
Here is peace indeed. “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33), but, coincidently, “in Me ye shall have peace. ”A Buddhist inChina, converted to the Faith not many years ago, confessed his new-found Lord by saying to his friends, whenever he could, “Jesus Christ is peace to-day. ”Even so for us now, in our circumstances of to-day, Jesus Christ is peace. In the conditions of our actual path, in the things which lie like snares hidden in the grass of a quiet daytime, amidst our petty but perilous temptations to selfishness, to temper, to evil speaking, to vanity, to frivolity, to impure thoughts, to unfaithfulness or untruth in act and word, Jesus Christ and our communion with Him is peace. The things around are the conditions, the materials, of real assaults, and therefore of real conflicts. But they may be met from within by “Him who dwells within,” with the victory of a real, a sacred, an unruffled peace. “We wrestle; therefore stand fast in the Lord. ” Be on the watch, for it is war-time. Be above all things on the watch, then, over your peace in Christ. Stand in Him; arm with Him. Against all circumstances, clothe yourself in Him. All this requires, as we have seen,
Then shall we have peace, and shall manifest it, and diffuse it in the very hour of conflict. “He shall not suffer our foot to be moved; He that keepeth us shall not slumber” (Psa 121:3).