[AI translation] We all know this verse. We've heard it here many times. It is a blessing formula that we use to end our services. The Apostle Paul also writes at the very end of his letter to the Thessalonians. It is also the way we end every meeting. And now it begins with this, we begin our worship with a blessing. Would that the power of our Lord's blessing through the Word could truly permeate our whole meeting! For perhaps there is nothing we need so much today as this blessing of God. On the basis of this word, I would like to share some very serious and responsible information about a current problem of all mankind, which will be discussed in all Hungarian Reformed and Lutheran churches this Sunday: the question of war and peace. I ask you to listen to it as a message prayed out from God, so that this word may then become a real blessing in our lives for the good of this world.1) The apostle says: "May the God of peace sanctify you from all things..." Let us not go any further for the moment. Let's get stuck right into this phrase: "the God of peace". These two words together - God, peace - go together. God seems to think it is so important to let people know this that it is used so often in the Bible: "God of peace". God is so much a God of peace that to know God is to be reconciled to Him, to accept His offer of peace to us in Christ. Let me make this clearer with an example. Once, a very wicked man, who had sunk very deep into a mire of the most terrible sins, was saved and lifted up by a believing Christian. He began to speak to him of God's punishing wrath, of the judgment, of the condemnation that was coming if he did not repent. Every word remained a pea vomited on the wall, bouncing off a haughty, hard heart. Then this Christian man asked God to show him a word in the Bible that could break this hard heart. And on that day, these very verses were in his reading order. (Is 43:1-4) When he read it, he was frightened and thought: this cannot be the right verb! God cannot say such a thing to such a reprobate sinner! But then, fearful and humbled, he obeyed, and went to his debauched friend, and said to him, "I bring you good news today. Jesus says: " "Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine... Because you are dear to me, you are precious, and I love you". The man's eyes filled with tears and with infinite bitterness he asked, "Is this true? Is not God angry with me, can he not love me who have sinned so much against him? "Yes!" said his friend, and he began to tell him about Jesus, who was the visible witness of the good news that God had forgiven and loved even a bad man like him. And then this hard-hearted man was broken, cleansed.
Isn't it in this that we really know God, isn't this the greatest experience of God, that we suddenly marvel at the unspeakable good news that he has reconciled us, even though we did not deserve it? For all that this precious name 'Jesus' means is nothing less than a great message of peace to the world, a declaration in bloody reality that God has signed and made peace with us. He is not angry, He does not accuse us of having rebelled against His law, of having disobeyed His commandments, of having transgressed His law. He does not reproach us for having committed the greatest offence against Him, for not trusting Him, not listening to Him, not following His will, and thus being His enemies in the literal sense of the word. But behold, He is willing to forgive, to forget everything. He conquers His enemies by offering them His friendship, pointing to the cross and saying: look, this is how much I really want to be reconciled with you, this is how much I really love you, this is how infinitely dear you are to me! The punishment of your peace is here. Yes, that is how much God does not want destruction, punishment, death, that is how much God does not want anyone to perish - even if they deserved it - but really wants them to live, even to live forever. That is the God of our God. That is how truly God is a God of peace. That is the gospel.
2) And this has very concrete, practical consequences. Once a person has come to know and accept God's offer of peace in Jesus, he can no longer be anything other than a man of peace. A man who confesses the God of peace as Lord can only and under all circumstances be a man of peace in this world. This is why we must emphasise this so strongly, because today, when the question of war and peace is such a problem in this world, it is not as clearly in the public consciousness as it should be. Do not be afraid to say, always and again, in the strongest possible terms before any forum, that you, the children of the God of peace, cannot but be men of peace.
There is no doubt in anyone's mind what Jesus would say to nuclear war, to bombing planes bringing destruction and death, to smoking ruins! The destruction of all that is good and beautiful, the orphaning of millions of little children, the oppression of hundreds of thousands of people. No one can doubt that Jesus would have a word for the unleashing of the animal instincts that lurk in man, for the immense evil and suffering, degradation and degradation that a total war in the modern sense would bring upon us!
Someone said: if war breaks out once more, it will never break out again... Because that could easily mean total annihilation, something that could destroy our entire culture, our future - and the world. There is no doubt that Jesus has only one word for all this: No! And you too, in the name of the God of peace, have only one word: No! And for the Church of Christ, the only word for all wars is No! A Christian man cannot say that he will settle matters with an atomic bomb here or there - just not where we are! Jesus, whose very essence is to have mercy on man's misery, his sin, his curse, would not for a moment endure in a church that could bargain with war, that could stand idly by and watch life being wiped out.
Stanley Jones, so much invoked by Christianity today, said: 'If war is right, then Christ is wrong, and if Christ is right, then war is wrong. If Christ is right in this world, then war must go. But if the war remains here, then Christ must go. Christ and war are incompatible. It is not possible for them to coexist peacefully. If I have to choose, I choose Christ. So I reject war." You can't help it! Never, never, never leave any doubt about yourselves as to which side you are on in the question of war and peace, for you, the God of peace, can naturally and self-evidently be men of peace!
3) But it is not enough to say no, to protest against all war. That is what the world is doing today, thank God! We, the children of the God of peace, must go even further. We must get to the root of all warfare. This is the most important task of the Church of Christ in this matter: that is, a truly radical fight against war - because it is the radix, the root, the deepest root of warfare, that must be fought. And this root, this source - according to the Word - is in the whole soul, the whole spirituality, the whole spiritual habitus of man and of humanity. It is interesting to note the statement made by a famous cultural historian a few years before the Second World War: 'We live in an obsessed world. And we know it. No one would be surprised if madness should one day erupt into a frenzy from which poor European humanity would fall back into torpor and confusion, while the machines still thundered and the spirit had moved. More wealth, more progress, more culture, more technology, more culture, cannot help us. What is really needed is an inner purification. The spiritual nature of man must be changed. A new spirituality is needed." (Huizinga: In the Shadow of Tomorrow) But then there was no atomic age.
The war was, after all, nothing more than a conglomeration of a million tiny psychological processes: distrust, selfishness, hatred, lust for power, racial prejudice, envy. War is the conglomeration of all these and their flowing into a swirling river. It is the spiritual explosive that only needs an unconscionable buoy to cause the fatal explosion. And this dangerous explosive is stored in the hearts of individual men. Let us say, in the hearts of all of them. Therefore our fight against war begins here: in the heart. Because it is natural that the danger is not in the atom, but in the human being. Nuclear power in itself is neither good nor bad. It is neither divine nor diabolical. It is simply a force of nature. The danger is not from it, but from man. The real problem is not a question of technology or science, but of man's moral conduct and responsibility. The ultimate questions are not decided in laboratories, but in the moral attitude of men. The big problem now is whether mankind is mature enough to use the atomic energy it has learned to use correctly. It is a question of mentality. It is about the spiritual struggle for a new, better, more responsible spirituality. It is about a new spirituality that fills individuals and peoples.
4) Do you already feel the relevance of this request for blessing: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you from all things"? Martin Luther translates this word "from all over" in the German Bible as durch und durch (through and through). I could say it in a pestilent way: may the Spirit of the God of peace pass through you, through and through you. So every part of us, our thoughts and emotions, our nerves and reflexes, our instincts and desires. Durch und durch! (Through and through!). So that there remains nothing of that certain spiritual contamination, that spirit of envy, hatred, selfishness, lust for power, which provides the spiritual charge, the atmospheric explosive for war.
So long as two good friends can become enemies, so long as husband and wife cannot live side by side, so long within the same people there will be no cessation of drilling, of spite, of hatred, of ill-will towards one another. Until then, the spiritual powder of war is always ready to explode, threatening the life of mankind. Therefore it is important that the God of peace himself sanctify us from all things, and that our whole being, both body and soul, be preserved pure and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The most effective contribution you can make to the fight against war is to surrender yourself to the Spirit of God to wash you, to water you, to sanctify you, to fill you and your environment - durch und durch! From everything.
And we have something else quite specifically Christian to do in this matter. To ask for the same blessing, this sanctifying blessing of the God of peace, for other people, for the whole world! Prayer must be not only a devotional exercise for the believer, but a serious service, a determined spiritual struggle. The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians, "For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against powers, against the world judges of the darkness of this life, against the spirits of wickedness which are in high places." (Eph 6:12) It is against these powers that make war that the people of Christ wage spiritual warfare. In this prayer warfare, I truly hope that all of us who only pray will do our part day by day. Because if not, then what is the point of your prayers, what on earth do you pray for? Today, if one does not undertake this spiritual battle against the corrupting forces of the world by your regular prayer service, one had better stop praying. Not to use today this most powerful weapon with which to fight against the defilement of the soul for the purity of the spiritual atmosphere is a sin. Beg, beg, beg that the God of peace may sanctify this whole world - durch und durch!
How timely is this blessing? It is up to us to truly bless this word of God in all our lives for the good of this world.
Amen
Date: 4 June 1961.
Lesson
Ef 6,11-18