Hebrews Chapter Twelve, Peace

 

Hebrews 12:14a Pursue peace with all people,

 

Pursuing peace with all people seems to be a lost cause—or a forgotten one—in our modern culture. When Paul was arrested and brought before Felix, he told the governor, “I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men,” Acts 24:16. Elsewhere we are commanded, “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men,” Romans 12:18. Why? In short, people are not our enemy. “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood,” Ephesians 6:12.

The goal of being at peace is a pursuit, the writer explains. But there are parameters to this pursuit. In Romans, Paul explained that it was determined by, “as much as depends on you.” Christians are to make genuine overtures toward peace with men, no matter their profession or worldview. This does not mean agreement or surrender. What this does mean is that the saints are to obey the royal law that does no harm to one’s neighbor, which is the Biblical expression of godly love, James 2:8, Mark 12:31. Paul adds, “Let all that you do be done with love,” 1 Corinthians 16:14.

 

Peace involves a lack of hostility between parties. Paul’s phraseology indicates that we may extend the olive branch of peace, but it can only be extended so far, and there will certainly be those that do not accept it. Modern ideology incorporates the vacuous notion that agreeing with anything someone does is love and acceptance.

 

To insert an extreme example that reveals the folly of this idea, consider criminals. A child molester, serial killer, or extortionist are people made in God’s image and we are to love them; that is, we are not supposed to seek their harm maliciously and treat them with the care and fairness we desire. But we do not, and cannot, accept choices they make that are blatantly evil or harmful to themselves or others. That would be tantamount to acknowledging that a Christian has a light view of sin. Jesus our Lord explained the reality of this genuine difference when He told His disciples, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you…that in Me you may have peace,” John 14:27, 16:33. The peace the world pursues is the way that seems right to a man, but ends in death. Genuine peace comes from the God of peace, with whom an errant soul must make peace. Until the fear of death and judgment is allayed, we can never know the peace God offers. “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked,” Isaiah 48:22. True peace originates in God and settles in us, when we come to terms with who our Lord is, and what He has done for us. The ephemeral peace the world promotes comes and goes, unstable as water. Even if we, as Christians, were to pursue it, we would be chided, ridiculed and jeered for our unabashed hypocritical compromise. And while a man may attain the peace God offers, there is no appropriation of the peace the world puts forth, because said peace is incapable of sustaining itself.

 

Pursuing peace with all men cannot happen in a vacuum. A monastic lifestyle, championed by Roman Catholic Monks and Nuns, is contrary to what the Bible teaches about how the saints are meant to live. One can’t pursue what one has sworn off the pursuit of: namely, interaction with other human beings. Does the Bible not state that Christians should avoid unbelievers? No. Nowhere is it written that the saints are meant to remove themselves from the world. Rather, it is written, “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you need to go out of the world,” 1 Corinthians 5:9, 10. The takeaway here is that the saints are to be in the world, but not of it. Jesus our Lord says that we, born again believers, are not of the world, just as He is not of the world, John 17:16.

 

The world, defined in this context, is the unbelieving, Christ rejecting world with Satan as its spiritual head, Ephesians 6:12, 1 John 5:19. We are sent out to be lights; we are the ekklesia, the called out ones. Where are we called out from? The world system Satan erected, of course. We are salt; Christians are meant to preserve peace and love our neighbor (literally all mankind) as ourself. Refraining from interaction with the unsaved runs counter to Christ’s command to go into all the world and make disciples. Who are we making them from, if not the world languishing in sin’s poisonous embrace? We were once this way as well, hateful and hating one another. So we are to be peacemakers, as far as other men do not attempt to coerce us into betraying our Lord’s will and purpose. Then we must stand, with all humility but also adamant determination, against those that oppose what God ordains as good.

 

There is another type of peace we are to pursue, easily as difficult. That would be peace between brethren. Jesus explained that an errant brother must be excommunicated from the church, should he refuse to relinquish his sin, Matthew 18:17. Why? Sin tempts us, Hebrews 12:1, James 1:14, Jude 23. A fellow believer can influence another saint like no other can. If a weak Christian sees another saint sinning, it may warp their view of what God says is true, and embolden them to emulate such conduct. That is why, for peace to reign in the church, flagrant, unrepentant sinners are to be excommunicated, as the adulterous man was in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 5:5, 13. Pursuing peace within the church necessitates doctrinal and moral purity and congruity. I list doctrinal purity first, because without sound doctrine, moral purity can be determined by popular opinion or personal sentiment; neither of which have any relation to truth.