[AI translation] Nowadays, the world is beginning to program with ever greater force a word that is often found in the Bible, a word whose true meaning God teaches us in the Scriptures. That word is peace! We know that a week from today, on the first day of Pentecost, the ambassadors of our towns and villages will gather for a great peace meeting to express the will of the whole country for peace in a united resolution. This Sunday, our Reformed congregations across the country are preparing for the great feast of peace to raise awareness of the importance of peace in souls. So, on this Sunday, in preparation for Pentecost, in every Reformed congregation in Hungary, including ours, we are teaching about and praying for the service of peace to which God is calling the church and all its members.In the Word we have read, the Apostle Paul states very clearly that "God is not a God of revocation, but of peace" (1 Cor 14:33). It is as if the apostle were saying to them: 'Corinthians, have you forgotten that you represent God, the God who is reconciled to the world in Jesus Christ, in this world? Have you forgotten that you call yourselves children of God? It is by your conduct and behaviour that the world should know who God is and what God is like! But "God is a God of peace", and you are a people of quarrels, of withdrawal! Do you not see what shame you bring upon the name of your God?! Seek ye therefore the way of peace, for that is worthy of the sons of the God of peace! Let the teaching of the Word speak to us now!
1) First of all, it reminds us again what kind of God our God is: "not a God of withdrawal, but a God of peace!" So he is not a God of withdrawal. The word translated in our Hungarian Bible as "recant" even means in the original: disorder, disorderly state, unrest, disorder, unevenness, strife, strife, strife, rebellion. So our God is not a God of this. I would even dare to say: Satan is its god, its lord, its author, its inspirer, its worker. Disorder, confusion, war, is not the work of God. God does not take pleasure in disorder, destruction, death, He wants life and order. He is witness to the astonishing beauty of order, regularity and harmony that can be discerned in the universe, which glorifies His creative power and wisdom. He delights in life, because He is a living God, a life-creating, life-protecting, even sin-saving God! He is so unwilling that any should perish, but have eternal life, that He was willing to lose His own only begotten Son, to let Him die! And that is why "God is a God of peace!" We have a God "who has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not imputing their sins to them." (2 Cor 5:19) At the cross of Christ, a great peace was made between heaven and earth, between man and God - and in this peace God was the initiator, He offered peace from heaven to earth, as if to say: all iniquity, rebellion, insolence, be forgotten, buried, forgiven - and all the cost of this peace, all the price it cost, He Himself bore. So precious, so important to Him is this peace, that He sacrificed His Son for it. This is what the prophet expresses, "the penalty of our peace is upon Him." (Is 53:5) On the Son! On Christ! When God looks at Christ's death on the cross, He takes it as if in Him all those who had suffered the punishment of damnation in whose place Christ died had suffered it. So, in my place and in your place - by God's grace - our Lord suffered, made satisfaction, made reparation, paid the price! Therefore, God does not accuse you, even though you were his enemy, does not accuse you of what you did against him, does not complain that you did not love him, did not trust him, did not accept his word, but points to the cross and says: 'See, I love you so much? You are so dear to me, so precious in my eyes, that I was able to do this for you! This is what God wants! So truly "God of peace!"
And that means not only inner, spiritual peace. It cannot be said that God is only interested in this inner peace, only in the things of eternal life, and does not care about external things, worldly matters. On the contrary, this statement of our Word, that "God is not a God of withdrawal, but of peace", then and there referred primarily to the external situation and behaviour. So God is also the God of this worldly peace! Peace is that which is in harmony with Him, peace in all its aspects, and therefore also peace between nations, that is, peace on earth! God, who gave this commandment, "Thou shalt not kill", does not take pleasure in mass murder, He condemns the destruction of war. The God whose compassionate, healing and saving love in Jesus Christ has come to us in unmistakable closeness, has already decided in favour of life in the matter of life and death, and has made peace his cause in the matter of war and peace. For He is not the God of withdrawal, but of peace, of life, of growth, of happiness, of edification!
The peace which God has obtained and given to us is not only a certain invisible spirituality or idea, but an actual, productive force, a radiance, an attitude of wanting and working for peace. It is not a God-gotten peace that lurks hidden in the depths of the believer's soul as a secret delight, a spiritual pleasure - for if this peace is real, it wants to penetrate into the relationships of our earthly relations, our personal, family, economic, political life, our thoughts and actions, and there it wants to act as salt and blessing! The believer must radiate the soothing and reconciling radiance of the peace of Christ. He who has the God of peace as his God is himself a man not of withdrawal, warfare, confusion, but of peace! If anyone with sincere honesty desires and makes peace his cause, he is first and foremost a man reconciled to God in Christ!
We know very well that today this is not an academic debate, but a matter of life and death for all humanity. Anyone who looks at events with open eyes can see clearly what a time of crisis we are living through. The situation has escalated and the most important and timely question has been reduced to this: do we want peace or war, life or destruction?Someone might say, what difference does my individual position make, since forces outside my control will decide this question without consulting me! Well, it matters a great deal. Not only because we strengthen or weaken the will for peace or the psychosis of war of millions of people by our own individual positions and decisions, but also because we are all personally responsible for peace as well as war!
In one of his books on this question, the greatest theologian alive today, Charles Barth, says the following. So the question is posed: what are you doing for true peace? What are you doing, in one of the many possible forms of action and omission, to avoid war between peoples, or perhaps the opposite? What is the state of your conduct as a whole, how you think, how you speak, what you allow yourself or what you deny yourself, what you encourage or hinder in others: are you contributing in all these ways to the avoidance or occurrence of war? Do you see clearly that war, if it comes, will not in any way break vertically, vertically from the demonic world, but will come to people - very demonically, of course - through people to people, and you will be one of the people who will be guilty or innocent of it. It cannot be otherwise, the question of war along all these lines must also be asked and answered as a personal question. And perhaps this is the most important contribution of Christian ethics to this question, that it unhesitatingly takes this question out of the general political and moral debates of obligation and turns it into such a personal question: what have you or have you not done in this matter so far? What are you doing or not doing right now? And what do you intend to do or not to do in this regard in the future?" (Dogmatics III/4).
There is no question that anyone who has any relationship with the God of peace: he is also in favour of peace in the earthly sense, he wants peace! But let me say that this in itself is not enough. We, if we really want peace, must also contribute to this peace. Do you know what we, the people of God, the children of the God of peace, can do to contribute to peace? First of all, by believing in him! Believing that it is possible! We believe that the tensions in the world can be resolved not only with weapons and bloody wars, but also peacefully. We believe that the leaders of states can come together and resolve international issues that threaten to erupt by peaceful means of mutual goodwill. We, who dare to bear witness to the fact that there is eternal life beside the open grave, beside the corpse to be buried, dare to believe that a peaceful solution is possible at a time when many consider war inevitable. If faith makes sense at all, let us dare to believe now! Because such bold faith has power! For we believe in a God who is not a God of withdrawal but of peace!
There are already hundreds of millions of people who have recognised the immense blessing of peace and are demanding the peaceful settlement of disputes in a huge world movement. We can stand among them in good conscience and strengthen this common good cause with our own faith, prayer and service. And even if those who have started this movement are far from us in matters of faith, let us thank God that He has given us good partners in their struggle and that we can work together with them for this good cause! For God says to us, "For whosoever will love life, and see good days, let him restrain his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit: let him turn from evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and follow it." (1Pt 3:10-11) For our God is a God of peace, so we want to be people of peace!
Let us sing together:
Glory to God in the highest,
Peace on earth to men,
And good will to all nations
And to all kindreds!
(Canto 315, verse 2)
Amen
Date: 25 May 1952.
Lesson
1Pt 3,8-17