The Lord of Hosts and the Lord of Peace

“Now the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always by all means.”—2 Thessalonians iii. 16.

There is another reading of this passage, which modern editors have preferred, and I think with good reason; for τρόπῳ they substitute τόπῳ,—“in every place” for “by all means.” The expression in our version may, no doubt, have a good and important sense; but it sounds like a tame addition to the words which have preceded. The other suggests a new thought, which enlarges and completes the prayer. “May the Lord of Peace give you peace at all times and in all places.” The Apostle is not satisfied with desiring that it might not be less one year than another; he desires that it might be the same whether his disciples were in Thessalonica, or in Athens, or in Rome, surrounded by friends or enemies, in a city or a desert, in a church or in a prison.

Such a petition must needs have a deep and solid ground to rest upon. The Lord of Peace, he says, give you peace. This he assumes as the very name of God. A God of War they had all heard of. He was said to have watched over the infancy of the greatest city in the world, to have been the father of its first king. Whithersoever the Roman Eagle had been borne, there were the tokens of his presence. The name Thessalonica testified that he had been on that soil. Nor did the Scriptures, to which the Apostles appealed as witnesses of the true God, reject this title. They too spoke of a Lord of Hosts. They bade every band of Jews remember that He was in the midst of it, to give it strength against enemies ten times as numerous or mighty as itself. Did St. Paul come to insult that old faith of Greeks and Romans? Did he mean to recant that faith in which he had been nourished, and which was embodied in the books that he accounted most sacred? I believe, if he had taken the first course, he would have robbed the Heathen of a treasure, instead of bringing them a treasure; that if he had taken the other, he would have torn out of his own mind the very roots upon which his faith in the Son of God grew. The Greeks had felt that they must ascribe every act of animal, much more of human, courage, every great achievement, every triumph of order and discipline over inorganic force, to some mysterious divine power; their consciences and reason told them so. The faith was flickering; since they had lost their freedom it had almost died out. St. Paul’s business was not to extinguish the sparks, but to rekindle them. He believed that this mysterious divine power was a righteous Being, just, and without iniquity, who was warring for the extirpation of evil out of His Universe; who, for that end, made plagues, pestilences, earthquakes His instruments; these, and men also, whom He had formed in His image, whom He had appointed to carry on His government and to execute His chastisements; who were not to shrink from that office, but to believe that He had called them to it; who were to give Him thanks if they fulfilled it rightly. This is the doctrine which is written in sunbeams upon the records of the Old Testament; a doctrine which St. Paul at all events did not suppose to be obsolete. He had opportunities enough for saying so if he did. It was his especial vocation to teach the Gentiles. He would not let the law, ceremonial or moral, stand in the way of the Gospel which he preached. He foresaw clearly that all which was exclusive in the Jewish polity would soon come to nought. Yet he never said, “Our fathers were mistaken when they went out to battle in the name of the Lord; we shall be mistaken if we imitate them.” He never spoke these words, or any words at all like them, or any from which such an inference could, by any ordinary or legitimate process of reasoning, be deduced.

But he did speak these words: “The Lord of Peace.” He knew that the Heathens had never been satisfied with the idea of a God of War, however much it might have possessed them. They felt that the olive was a sacred emblem as well as the laurel. There must be some One from whom it came,—of whom it testified. The quiet homestead, the growth of trees and flowers, the power and art of tillage, must have an origin, as well as the skill and feats of armies. Surely tempests did not witness of unseen power more than a still lake or an evening of clear starlight. All sweet notes and their intricate combinations told of some secret source of harmony. The heart which responded to these sights and sounds demanded a Lord of Peace nigh, and not afar off. Was He a different Being from the other? It was the misery of Polytheism to believe that He must be different. How could such opposite effects proceed from the same Cause? How could both be accounted for, if there were not a number of powers contending among themselves, exciting contentions in Nature and in men? There seemed but one refuge from such a belief,—the philosophical dogma that the Gods could not be affected by human feelings, joys, or sorrows; that theirs must be a nature far removed from the concerns of the world and its sympathies; one of entire quietness, inactivity, self-concentration. The philosopher would have added “Peace,” but his conscience rebelled against the use of that word. He might not see what Peace meant; but he knew that in its highest form it did and must mean something altogether different from stupid Repose, from indolent Selfishness.

It was the blessed privilege of the Jew to be taught in direct words, and by the whole course of his history, that the Lord his God was one Lord, that the God of armies was the same as the Lord of Peace. The acts of His Power were the manifestations of His Righteous Will. He was the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy; therefore would He not clear the guilty; therefore was all evil, everything unmerciful and oppressive, hateful in His eyes; therefore was He pledged to destroy it. There was no actual or implicit contradiction in His Nature. The aspect of His countenance towards all that degrades the earth which He has made, and defaces His Image in His creature, is one token of that inner mind which would unfold itself more and more perfectly to those who sought for Him, who cried out day by day for wisdom as for hid treasure. The more the holy man meditated upon the fearful judgments which were visiting people who had transgressed the law and broken the Everlasting Covenant, the more did the righteousness and beauty of that Law, the perfect grace of that Covenant, shine forth before his eyes, the more would he put his trust in the Lord, the more certain was he that the Lord of Peace would one day manifest His whole Being, His innermost Nature, to mankind. The vision was yet for an appointed time; it rose gradually upon the eyes of the chosen seed, still more gradually upon the nations of the earth. But it came out fully at length. The Angels’ song, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill among men,” was heard by the shepherds as the message of a Prince of Peace. He went forth preaching peace to publicans and sinners. He said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you,” to His own disciples. He gave them the bread and the wine at the Paschal Supper, the witnesses of peace to them and the universe. He met them after the Resurrection with the words, “Peace be with you,” and showed them His hand and His side. He sent His Spirit of Peace among them, to bind nations and languages together in one bond of peace. And that bond was the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the perfect Unity, the complete Revelation of the Lord of Peace, the fulfilment of that idea of God which prophets and lawgivers had been unfolding, the reconciliation of all those different, separate names by which heathens had striven to explain the divine operations in Nature, the perplexing testimonies of their own hearts.

It is in this name that St. Paul is wont to bless the Churches to which he writes; this is the Lord of Peace to whom he prays that He will Himself give to the Thessalonians peace always and in every place.

I. The words are very emphatic. May He Himself give you peace. As if he had said, “I know and am persuaded that no one else can give it you; not I, not all the preachers and doctors in the Universe. Properly speaking, you do not even receive it at second-hand through us. He gives you the thing itself; we present you with the seals and sacraments of it. He opens a direct communication with your hearts; he conveys into them that which we only stand offering to them from without. May He,” says the Apostle, “Himself give it you! Be not content to take it from any other. Do not expect it from any other. When you seek it, be sure that He is present to bestow it; so will it become yours.”

II. “And be sure also that He gives it. You do not purchase it by prayers or faith or good deeds. Your prayers, if they are true prayers, are acts of submission and surrender to Him. The heart is frozen up in self-reliance, self-exaltation. You pray that it may be thawed, that the pores through which His grace would enter you may not be unnaturally stopped. You bring nothing in your prayer except the confession of unworthiness and helplessness.” St. Paul’s divine teaching anticipated that humbling maxim of physical science: “Man can only bring natural bodies together, or separate them; all else is transacted by Nature in secret.” He taught that this doctrine is applicable, in a higher and stricter sense, to the relations of man with his Creator. He can but draw nigh to Him or dwell apart from Him: the consequences follow inevitably. God works in him: or he remains wrapped in himself. He receives the gift of a higher life, or he sinks into death. In other words, God gives him peace, or he continues in a state of perpetual war.

III. This peace the Apostle desires for the Thessalonians. Not some image or shadow of peace, but peace itself, in its full meaning. Not a peace which depends upon pacts and bargains among men, but which belongs to the very nature and character and being of God. Not a peace which is produced by the stifling and suppression of activities and energies, but the peace in which all activities and energies are perfected and harmonized. Not a peace which comes from the toleration of what is base or false, but which demands its destruction. Not a peace which begins from without, but a peace which is first wrought in the inner man, and thence comes forth to subdue the world. Not a peace which a man gets for himself by standing aloof from the sorrows and confusions of the world into which he is born, of the men whose nature he shares, choosing a calm retreat and quiet scenery and a regulated atmosphere; but a peace which has never thriven except in those who have suffered with their suffering kind, who have been ready to give up selfish enjoyments, sensual or spiritual, for their sakes, who have abjured all devices to escape from ordained toils and temptations; the peace which was His who bore the sorrows and infirmities and sins of man, who gave up Himself that He might become actually one with them, who thus won for them a participation in the Divine Nature, an inheritance in that peace of God which passeth understanding.

IV. St. Paul could then say boldly, “The Lord give you peace at all times.” He was living in a time of exceeding restlessness. All about him were wars and rumours of wars. The Jewish commonwealth was breaking to pieces, from the hatreds of its sects, from its mad desire to measure its strength with its Roman masters. St. Paul was the object of the fiercest spite of those fighting sects. They did not abhor each other so much as they abhorred him. And he knew that the end was coming,—that God Himself had pronounced the doom of the city of David; that if he did not witness the fall of that nation, to save which he was willing to be accursed, it would be only because some violent death would take him sooner than it out of the world. In this time, which affected all his disciples as well as himself, which had caused great sufferings to the Thessalonian Church, both from present Jewish persecutions, and from the dim feverish apprehension of some day of the Lord which was near at hand; in this time, he could ask the Lord of Peace to give himself and them peace. He could ask it confidently, nothing doubting that the petition would be heard and answered, nay, that the very tumults in the world and in themselves were intended to awaken it and to accomplish it. He knew that easy and comfortable circumstances do not impart the peace which men want. He knew that the most disastrous may drive them to that centre where it dwells, and where they may possess it.

V. He prayed also, if the reading I have spoken of is the true one, that they might have peace in every place. He had some experience of different places, of Greek cities and Jewish, if he had not yet seen Rome, as he purposed to do; and all his experience hitherto had been of strifes, tumults, persecutions. He had come to Thessalonica because he had been thrown into prison at Philippi. He escaped from Thessalonica to Beraea, thence to Athens. In Corinth the continued Jewish opposition was trifling compared with the struggle in his own spirit, which made him despair even of life. At Ephesus he was destined to fight with men who assailed him as the beasts assailed those who were exposed in the Amphitheatre. At Jerusalem voices cried, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! it is not fit that he should live.” Bonds and imprisonments awaited him in the capital of the world. And yet he could say, The Lord of Peace give you peace in all places. In the prison he had found it; in that infinite tumult and despair of his own spirit he had found it. When there was nothing to rest upon in what he saw around him,—in what he felt within him,—when he was more battled by his own thoughts and the contradictions in them than by those of Jews or heathen or false brethren,—though he was no Stoic as to these, but felt them in every nerve,—he had learnt that the Lord of Peace was there, sitting above the water-floods, as a King, a Friend, a Father for ever. And this, he was certain, was not because he was an Apostle——because he had had divine revelations,—because he had singular gifts. It was because he was a man, sharing the temptations of men, experiencing in himself the redemption which had been wrought out for men. It was because he was sent to men everywhere with glad tidings of peace.

VI. Brethren, do we not need to hear at this time, in this place, the same message? We shall soon be giving thanks for victories won over men who two years ago were accounted our friends and defenders. We are asking one another, Can anything hinder the nations of our own Continent from drawing their swords against each other? We have enough to remind us that Peace is not a thing to be reckoned upon; that there are powers at work within and without, to take it from us. Our own minds, it may be, are not all of them very peaceful. Passion-week and Easter-week will be a time of contention between parties at home, if not between armies abroad. Does it appear to you strange that this should be so? Do you think that this week should be what in one country it is called, “the still week;” that the Death of our Lord at least should be remembered in silence and calm? God has not ordained this outward quietness, and we cannot create it. Perhaps we should understand the meaning of these days less, if we could make the circumstances in which they occur more apparently suitable. The Passion does not mean rest, but suffering and agony. Through those the Head of the body passed. Will the members of it revere Him more if nothing in their own condition testifies to the need of effort and endurance? The Resurrection means not sleep, but the awaking out of sleep, the return to all the energies of life. Shall we believe in it more if we covet that kind of rest of which the grave is the emblem?

VII. But is not the week that witnesses of the Sacrifice of the Victim one that brings peace, if it finds little? Is not the week that commemorates the completion of the sacrifice one that carries peace even into the midst of war? Yes! this, and nothing less, is what these days signify. “The Lord of Peace Himself give you peace always in all places.” You want a Lord of Peace, one in whom Peace dwells always, under all conditions, amidst all turmoils. Here, in the agony of the Garden, on the Cross of Calvary, behold Him! See there the Peace which lasts on, not only when it is threatened without, but when it seems to have perished within; when the soul is troubled even to death, when it cries out, Why hast Thou forsaken me? It is there because trust is there; because the sufferer can say, Thou continuest the same, O Thou worship of Israel; Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. There is the Peace of God resting on the Man, sustaining Him that He may sustain all creation, glorifying the Son that He may glorify the Father. You want to know whence Peace may come forth to men in all conditions, amidst all turmoils. Again behold the Agony and the Cross. Thence it issues, to meet all that is striving against it in the world and in you. Thence it issues, as the power of Sacrifice, which is stronger than the power of Self; as the power of Love, which is stronger than the power of Hatred; as the power of Life, which is stronger than the power of Death. Thence it comes, as the Peace which can subdue all things to itself, can reconcile all things in itself.

The Lord of Peace then Himself give you this peace. He has given it you whenever you have won it. We did not recover it in India because we were the best of all people, for we had sins enough to answer for there,—hard and unjust acts by governors and individual men, the very reasons why we lost it. But God gave it us—gave it all the more perfectly, because He did not let it drop upon us like the manna out of heaven, but gave stoutness of heart and wisdom and endurance to our soldiers and citizens, that they might seek for it and obtain it. He Himself will give it, not diplomatists or monarchs, if it should be preserved on the Continent——His Wisdom using or else counteracting theirs. He will give it, even though the wars and fightings in men’s hearts should make it needful that the nations should receive it through blood; that swords should punish those who have removed their neighbours’ landmarks, and trampled on Freedom and Right. He Himself, and not any intrigues or compromises of statesmen or of schools, will give us Peace in our own land, the reconciliation of that which is good in those who can acknowledge no good but their own, the destruction of that which is contentious and selfish in them all. He alone, and not our opinions, or judgment, or virtues, or faith, will give us Peace in a nearer region still,—Peace with Him, Peace with our brethren, Peace with our own hearts.

Therefore let us crave for this Peace,—that which He promises, that which He has assured us in the blood of His Eternal Son, always and in all places. Let us desire it when we know we have deserved it least, that we have forfeited it most utterly; because it descends upon us from Him who gave His Son for us, not to reward our love to Him, but that His Love might bring back ours. Let us desire it in all times of our tribulation and of our wealth; when our self-accusations are loudest, and our self-security most dangerous. Let us desire it in every place, that in every place we may be peace-makers, and so may be called the children of Him who is the Great Peacemaker.