Part 6
this faith and joy, one after another shall be drawn into the circle of love and complete community. The spirit of the church is the spirit of justice, peace, and joy, for it is the spirit of the kingdom. It is the church of Jesus Christ that brings the kingdom of God down to earth here and now.
The spirit of God is a power working within our hearts, but it has outward consequences. Its effect on society is to break off all exist ing relationships and build them up completely new. Whoever denies this betrays the innermost nature of this power. For the spirit of unity wants community in everything. He achieves unity among us because he brings us into unity with God. The oneness he brings about expresses itself in such a way that all the evil and unrighteousness in us is overcome through the goodness and love of God.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 2
To every situation, such a spirit brings a superior power that is in God alone; it can never originate with people. The will of faith strengthens life and increases works a thousandfold. This faith is the confident trust that radiates from hearts gripped by God. Love is poured out into a believing heart. This takes place through the spirit, through the living and objective spirit, who brings with him
God's life and God's cause. Faith is something so clear and definite in content – in a personal way and in an objective way – that it cannot be separated either from the believing heart or from the object of faith. Christ himself is this faith, so that Paul declared: "I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me. For the life I live now in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me" (Gal. 2:20).
There is no other life of faith than that lived in the unity and community in which Christ lives.
Faith lives in Christ. The believer is in Christ, and Christ is in him: that is the power that transforms the whole of life from within.
Luther expressed this mutual relationship between Christ and the individual heart in the most challenging way. He went through years of struggle, striving in vain after the righteousness of God with all kinds of human efforts; for this reason, his experience of God has such an unprecedented historical importance. The consciousness of sin that characterized him had thrown him into agony before the face of God, an agony so great and so severe that many cannot understand it today. Anyone who has lost the feeling of terror before God's might will never be able to understand this agony. And those who do not know Luther's distress can also not grasp his faith.
God seemed so full of wrath to Luther that he did not know which way to turn. He could find no consolation, either from I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 3 within or from without. His agony of soul rose to such a pitch that it was infernal: no tongue could express it, no pen describe it. He felt he must perish utterly; he had to admit it. God's greatness and might threw him to the ground. Fear before God's justice crushed him. Only through the experience of love could help come to him.
In the righteousness that springs from grace, he experienced it. By the word justification (grown so alien to us), Luther understood the experience of God that gives us in Christ a "being good through faith" without our own efforts or works; without this we cannot live before God, before ourselves, or before our fellows.
The new element that put Luther's heart and life on a completely different foundation was the relationship of mutual exchange between him and Christ. As he put it in a letter to a friend, Georg
Spenlein:
Learn to know Christ, that is, the crucified Christ. Learn to sing his praises and to despair about yourself. Say to him: "Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what was mine and given me what was thine; thou hast accepted what thou hast not been and given me what I have not been." Yes, you will learn from Christ himself that, in the same way as he has accepted you, he has made your sins his and his righteousness yours.
This mutual relationship, this receiving and giving of one to the other, is Luther's understanding of the words: "I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). He understands with this confession that the bond between the believer and Christ is so complete that it is impossible to separate faith from Christ. This certainty of being one with Christ is based on his surrender to us. Brought about by Christ, it lives in our surrender to him. Faith gives us everything
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 4 we are and have. Paradoxically, when this surrender takes place, it becomes the strongest power of will that can be brought into being. Our own will is never capable of it. To say about myself that I no longer live is possible only when my will has become one with Christ's will to die. Everything I have ever been or experienced or achieved must die there where Christ gave up his spirit. Only from Christ's grave is there resurrection of the free will.
The hours in which we come to this experience are hours spent, as it were, in the Black Tower.* It is the loneliness of the crucified one in his death that gives us freedom from our self-importance. It is the step taken by faith, into death and through the grave, that leads to certainty of life: Christ has accepted me in such a real way in his unity with me that he can say, "I am this poor sinner; that is, all his or her sin and death is my sin and my death." In this unity in death in spite of the most terrifying consciousness of sin, we become free from all sin. We have life in the risen one.
New in this experience is having Christ in us: he has taken our life upon himself. Our old life is taken away. Through his life, we share all that he is. Everything he possesses will in him be given to us. The same Jesus who said: "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matt. 28:18) gives us his authority. The same Christ who takes as his own the seat at the right hand of power and confesses his unsullied unity with the Father makes us become in him partakers of divinity. Because he has made us his brothers, the Son of Man, who is called the last Adam, has become our life. In Christ, the power of him who can give everything to everybody is in us. The throne of all the worlds is his. His riches are infinite.
reference is to the Wartburg Castle, where Luther stayed after being outlawed in .
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 5
It is often forgotten what Luther recognized as faith: taking hold of the precious and costly treasure itself – that is, Christ. Only
Christ himself could give substance and content to Luther's faith.
Only Christ, "comprehended and dwelling in the heart in faith," is righteousness. Here is no human definition of faith; it is simply a matter of Christ. Christ comes down to us and becomes our life. His coming is faith; what he does is faith. With all their understanding and good intentions and church services, the human forces of piety, wisdom, and religion have no faith. Their efforts to rise up to God are futile. Believing in Christ means that he, Christ, has become one with me. It means that he abides in me. The life I have in faith is Christ himself.
This fact that Christ lives in me is what is new in my life. Where Christ is, the law that condemns is forever canceled. Here is Christ, who condemns sin and throttles death! Where he is, everything that destroys life must withdraw. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Christ is here! No power can sever us from the love of God in Christ Jesus as long as he, the most powerful, is our mas ter. If I have lost Christ, there is no help, no consolation, and no counsel to be had anywhere. The terror of death is all I know. Life is dead without Christ. Only he is life. To be with Christ means life and peace within and without. The life of Christ is energy. God is dynamic power. Luther says expressly: "A believer has the Holy
Spirit; where he is, however, he does not leave us simply idle or lazy but impels us to all manner of good, in which we can exercise our faith and prove our Christian character." Here we must go beyond
Luther, for here he goes no further.
Christ living in us means he unfolds his powers in us. Christ wants his power of love to come alive in us with his will to serve and his I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 6 abundance for giving to others. With all the diversity of his gifts, he wants to be at work in all those who have accepted him as their life. Christ living in us means a wealth of serving and working to be measured only by the need and distress confronting it. When the vials of wrath are poured out over the world, when misery reaches unbearable heights, then a justice must be proclaimed and put into practice that will be mightier than the injustice over all the world: all the punitive justice of judgment will be fulfilled in love.
Through faith, Christ lets the justice and righteousness of God become our justice and righteousness. God's justice cries out to be revealed to everyone as the goodness of love. Wherever this justice and righteousness is, anything to do with injustice or selfishness has to withdraw. God's greatness is revealed as the power of love.
There is nothing greater than this. When Jesus Christ is the whole content of faith, this faith must be as active in his perfect love as he was. What Jesus accomplished has to be represented by the believer personally and in actual practice. The love born of faith is urged on by the consciousness that the unity of Jesus with the Father was so complete that he said, "What is mine is thine, and what is thine is mine." The unity of faith that binds the human heart to Christ is so completely clear that what Christ says to him, the believer also says, "Mine is thine, and thine is mine."
Such community of complete sharing must reveal, out of each heart that has experienced it, the same essential nature and power in all things. A love that is active on behalf of all sees to it that there is everywhere a sharing of the mine and thine in complete surrender, bringing everything unitedly to a common pool for the use of all. Then the believers, as those who love each other, say to one another, "What is mine is thine. What is thine is mine." The I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 7 love of Christ impels them to act and live in this way. The justice and righteousness of a Christian is Christ and his life. The Holy Spirit urges toward the same good deeds that Jesus did. Those gripped by Jesus have, like him, a love that makes them let go of all privileges.
When they confess that Christ is their life, like Christ they must choose voluntary poverty for the sake of love; like Christ they must sacrifice their life unconditionally for friends and foes, with all they are and have.
Jesus was given all power and might. His love, therefore, must rule unconditionally and unhindered in the lives of those who are equipped with his authority. Then from the throne of power he puts his spirit into their hearts and gives them his commission. This commission must fill the whole of life. It must transform all the circumstances and relationships of life in accordance with its objective demands.
We should not say that we believe in Christ and his kingdom or unity and community with him if we do not sacrifice everything and share everything with one another, just as he did. We should not claim that his goodness and his righteousness have become our goodness and our righteousness if we do not give ourselves to the poor and oppressed just as he gave everything to them. We cannot think we experience the Strong One, who exercises all authority at the right hand of the Power, if his works of justice and community do not come to reality in our lives through the Holy Spirit. If we have that faith that is Christ, the working of it must become obvious in works of perfect love. If Christ rules in us, his rule must go out from us into all lands. If his spirit is in us, streams of this spirit must transform all the land around us in accord with his promises about the coming kingdom.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 8
For such deep-going and far-reaching changes to take place, we fickle and weak mortals need to be constantly renewed and deepened – all the more, the more we are threatened by increasing distractions and inhibitions. Indeed at all times our inner experience needs renewal and deepening. Constant renewal belongs to the realm of the spirit just as much as to the natural, physical life.
When the sun is shining and our eyes can see the light, when the birds are singing and our ears can hear them, it is an actual reality only because our ears are not deaf, our eyes are not blind, and our spirit is not dulled. Above all, these experiences of our mind and spirit can be renewed only when something actually happens, when God's mighty power lets the sun rise again every day and lets the birds begin to sing afresh every year.
We are born again through the living word of God and the blowing spirit of Jesus Christ. The strength and power of God does not live in faint recollections. It is not at work in dead intellectualism. If our spirit is not to fall prey to death, the word of truth, which creates new life, must prove to be again and again a living power in our hearts. The spirit of life judges the thoughts and motives of our hearts; he wants to sever soul from spirit moment by moment so that we do not become subject to our emotional nature and unable to perceive the living spirit (Heb. 4:12–13).
The spirit of truth is always ready to fill us and unite us in his church again and again. Christ wants to confer his power and authority on his church so that through the Holy Spirit she can time and again win new victories over all other spirits. It is the work of the spirit whenever the word of God cuts our hearts to the quick and shows up all confusion in sharp relief. We need these experiences of the true life-giving spirit even more than we need our daily bread.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 7 9
In the strength of this truth, the Master over all spirits rejected the encroaching power of the tempter: "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." If life is not to die out, we must accept God's truth constantly and let ourselves be renewed by it. Jesus says therefore: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me." God lives in deed and action. When we receive the word of God again and again, it brings forth in us the strength of God's life and God's deeds from the heart of God.
In this sense, George Fox was right when, in the formative days of his great movement, he emphasized his belief that it was the Spirit – the inner light, the inner word – that was all-important.*
The living word is always waiting to be received into the innermost ground of our soul – to be grasped quite personally and so transformed into actual deeds. This is the only way we can be always steeled for the hardest battles, as John wrote to his church communities: "You are strong, the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the Evil One." We will abide in the Father and in the Son in all we do – but only when the direct witness of living truth abides in us and is constantly renewed.
From the beginning, the word of God has led man in the atmosphere of grace. Every experience of God is an undeserved gift. By utterly exposing our incapacity and opposition to him, we have let ourselves be known by God. We have known him in the completely undeserved love he revealed by sacrificing his son. We have known
Jesus as the healing savior of a life going to utter ruin. Through his death, we have received forgiveness and redemption from the heaviest burdens. Every time we experience God, we are led to a deeper consciousness of the deadly interrelationship of all guilt and to a deeper reverence for undeserved grace.
Fox, –, founded the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in .
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 0
The daily purification of our hearts helps us to see more and more clearly what separates us from God and to take vigorous measures to set it right. God is faithful and just, and when we are ready to take the consequences right to the end, he is prepared to forgive every thing that disturbs his unity and purity. When we sin, we need the Advocate, who reconciles and unites. Through this spirit Christ the mediator wants to set in order all that causes disintegration and division – all that mars the unity of life. The work of reconciliation blots out guilt and sets free the guilty for life in God – it restores unity.
No one can dispense with the renewal of this experience even for a moment. Community with God and the unity of his church are constantly attacked by all the powers of the earth. They are in danger of being broken up at any moment. The spirits of mammon, of lying, of unfaithfulness, and of impurity besiege and storm the stronghold of God's community without respite. If we allow them even the smallest foothold in the outer fortress of our being, they concentrate their attack on the very center. Their concentrated fire tries to numb the heart and destroy the unity of life. The soul in our lifeblood is constantly exposed to their destructive rays. As soon as the darkness that surrounds us gains power over our stand in life, we lose community with God. We deliver up the lifeblood of our soul to impure powers. We are separated from God and his kingdom by a barrage of dark rays. We are without God and without community in this torn and divided world.
Yet the light of unity outshines the darkness of decadence and ruin. We must follow the light. "If we live in the light as he is in the light, we have community with one another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ cleanses us from all sin." The bright beams of God's light are stronger than the dark radiation of destructive demonic powers.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 1
Light cannot be overcome by darkness; but faith and the life determined by it must be focused steadily on the light. Rays of darkness cannot capture those turned away from them. Such rays are active in the area of the will and aim at destroying it. If the will keeps free from their poison, the battle is won. Light is victorious over darkness. The will that lives in the light repels the attacks of darkness and is free.
Living in community takes living in the light for granted. The life given from God has a clarity and purity that leads to perfect unity of life. It overcomes all powers of destruction and disintegra tion. When we are at one with the soul of Jesus, with his blood and his life, the purity of his sacrifice sets us free from all impurity, and the powerful, unifying deed of his death from all disunity. This power brings a life that radiates the same brightness and glowing warmth as that from Jesus. The light of Jesus Christ is the new life of perfect unity. Lack of community and opposition to community are darkness and coldness – turned away from the glowing light of Jesus. Isolation of soul and impurity of will are antagonistic to the life of Jesus. The will is impure and darkened when it mixes the clarity of Jesus' life with other elements, when it offends the faith fulness of perfect love or the community of perfect unity, and when it denies the surrender of all belongings. It forsakes the light and chooses darkness when it becomes a selfish, covetous, or possessive will. Every disunity and separation denies the power that radiates from the sacrificed life of Jesus.
In the spirit of the church – in which Jesus is among us here and now – he brings the community that is united. Only where there is unity is the life of Jesus actively at work. In his church we stand
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 2 under the impact of the cross. Unity was created by the cross. The Spirit brought it. Without the witness of the blood of Jesus there is no witness of the spirit of Christ. Unity is preceded by the abolition of disunity. The Spirit brings death to the fiend. In the power of Christ's death our old life dies and new life begins. Those who lie buried in the churchyard are no longer to be seen at the tavern, on their property, or carrying on their own affairs. They have been taken away from the busyness of their old selfish nature.
Those who, with Christ, are dead to all they own turn their backs on all influences of self-will and self-interest. They live in the strength of the sacrificed life of Jesus. In this strength, they sacrifice their own old life just as Jesus sacrificed his perfectly pure life.
They are prepared for the same baptism of blood that poured over the body of Jesus. Those who believe in the executed Christ are pre pared for death in the strength of an inner dying. If for the sake of truth it has to be, they are even prepared for death with the shame of public condemnation and execution. As a sign of this readiness they are lowered into the grave of Jesus: early Christian baptism is the symbol of the power of dying and the power of resurrection.
As a sign of the pouring-out of the Holy Spirit, baptism testifies to the break with things as they are and to the beginning of a new life. Unity in Jesus' death brings unity in God's life. It is only through sacrifice that we can find the courage to enter into the presence of God.
Whoever has experienced God in the holiness of his love, brought close to us by Jesus, knows why Jesus died. God wants us always to be one with the soul of Jesus' blood, dying the death of Jesus, rising in the power of his resurrection, and living the words and life of Jesus. This takes place through the presence of Christ, that is, I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 3 through the life-giving spirit, and through Christ's love, poured out over us and filling our hearts. His love draws us into God's commu nity through the Holy Spirit. Dead to everything that is evil and unjust, we live from now on for the good, in the justice and righteousness of perfect love.
God by his very nature can never deprive himself of his moral character, of his goodness; he can never enter into community with evil. He cannot end his own existence. God is the good. He wants to conquer the world for the good. The good can live only where evil has died. Our whole nature, which is shot through and through with evil, has to undergo the death of Christ as a dying to evil, as our death. With the crucified one, we suffer a death that frees us from all that makes community with God impossible. Delivered up to the judgment of Jesus' death, we become one with the heart of God in a new life: God breaks in. What is new begins. What is evil comes to a stop. What is good starts.
The love of Jesus' heart has turned the judgment of God into redemption. Unity with him who was executed on the cross brings unity with his soul, with the very essence of his life. That means unclouded community with the living God. Community of life means victory over everything that has anything to do with sin and death. The death of Christ brings us to his resurrection. The powers of his sacrificed life bring us new life from God. This new life proves, through the working of the Holy Spirit in the resurrection, that Jesus Christ is the living Son of God. In the Son, the heart of God has come to us. The spirit of God brings us his heart. We can perceive his hand and footsteps in nature and in world history. His heart is revealed in Jesus. And his heart is mightier than all his power.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 4
Then the proclamation of the cross becomes a divine power; coming from the heart of God, it shows itself as the power for resurrection. Zinzendorf says his "rule and method" is "to make the glorious Lamb everything and to know no blessedness other than being with him and thanking him and being pleasing to him."* He is talking of the living sacrifice, which has its joy in the life and work of all-powerful love. The Lamb takes the rulership of God's kingdom on his shoulders because he bears the heart of God. If we accept the cross, come life come death, we take hold of the risen
Christ in the crucified one. In him, we believe in the all-victorious power of love, which is God's heart. The cross is revealed as the victorious power of perfect love. It leads to resurrection and to the lordship of God. Jesus Christ, as the revelation of God's love, is life risen out of death. His death overcomes all the powers of the world and all deadly forces. Unless we experience (at least in some mea sure) the same readiness to die that characterized his love, we can not experience his all-powerful life. Without him, nothing we can do has the power to withstand death and the devil. Only his divine life turns our actions into living work. Only the works of the living
God are living.
We can sense things and experience them, we can move and be active, only as long as life is at work in us. There is no way of creating life apart from the power of life that is God, that is in Christ. When life flees, our eyes grow blind and our hands wither. Our ears stop hearing. Our spirit can no longer turn perceptions into experiences.
Our will can no longer take on any work. In death there is neither strength nor activity. This power of life – this capacity to take in experiences – is decisive for being able to act or to create. Only God is life without any death. Only God's vital energy triumphs over *Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, –.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 5 death, degeneration, and decay. God rules over all spheres of life as creative life of infinite power.
Only the whole Christ for the whole of our life transforms and renews everything. Half of Jesus for half of our life is a lie and a delusion. The Spirit tolerates no choosing of principles or objects of faith such as a self-willed spirit selects from God's truth. Truth is indivisible. Christ does not let himself be taken to pieces. Those who do not take the same attitude as Jesus in everything have rejected Jesus. Not even the most ingenious explanation for their half-heartedness protects them from the words, "He who is not with me is against me."
Those who want to hear, read, or experience one or the other specific thing about Christ yet use weakening interpretations to wipe out what seems impossible will come to grief no matter how
Christian the edifice of their life seems. Therefore Jesus must say that all those who hear the words of his Sermon on the Mount without doing them are like those who build on shifting sand. Their building is lost from the start. At the first attack of hostile forces, it gives way.
So Jesus commissions his ambassadors: "Teach them to keep to all
I have commanded you." Whoever loves him keeps his word.
Whoever believes in him does everything he has said. But whoever ignores any part – even a seemingly small part – of his living commandments cannot receive Christ's life. Organic unity is the essence of his life and spirit. Jesus' life is indivisible. It withholds itself or it gives itself –completely. It is living unity. Those who want to cut Jesus into pieces and lay violent hands on his life are left with nothing but death in their hands.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 6
Christ wants to be experienced as a complete reality who stands at the center of living action. His life is integration and wholeness itself; his life tolerates no mixing with anything outside its sphere.
Thus anything contrary to the unity of his life and its living task has to give way before him. True life fights against all ungenuine life.
Where Christ unfolds his divine life, all other life is extinguished.
No other love can exist beside his perfect love. With divine jealousy, he annihilates every other image – often a falsified Christimage – we set up beside him.
Over eight hundred years ago, Bernard of Clairvaux said, "When Jesus comes to me, or rather, when he enters into me, he comes in love, and he is zealous for me with divine zeal."* The whole Christ wants us wholly. He loves decision. He loves his enemies more than his halfhearted friends. He hates those who falsify him even more than those who are diametrically opposed to him. He abhors what is lukewarm and a colorless gray, the twilight, and the pious talk that blurs and mixes everything and commits itself to nothing. All this he sweeps away when he draws near.
Jesus comes to us as he is. He enters into us with his entire word.
He reveals himself to our hearts as a coherent whole. In his coming, we experience the full power of his love and the whole force of his life. Everything else is deception and lies. Jesus Christ draws near to no one in a few fleeting impressions. Either he brings the whole kingdom of God forever, or he gives nothing. Only the one pre pared to receive him completely and forever can experience him.
Such a one is given the secret of God's kingdom. To all others Jesus cloaks himself in unrecognizable parables. Whoever holds aloof from complete surrender hears parables without understanding them. He has eyes to see and sees nothing. He has ears to hear and *Bernard of Clairvaux, –.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 7 understands nothing. Whoever does not want the whole loses the little he thinks he has.
The experience of Jesus Christ is either a confirmation or a delu sion. It proves true by holding firmly and with enduring steadfast ness to the very beginning, to the whole way, and to the final fu ture of Jesus Christ. So it endures to the end. When Christ is recog nized fully, the invincible love of the Spirit overflows with endless insight and knowledge. It fills life with the fruit of steadfast righ teousness; for Christ, the whole Christ, is its righteousness.
How we conduct our lives proves whether this experience of faith forms its basis. The father of Jesus Christ is God the creator. Every experience of God brings power to give life shape and form. Where it comes from God, a form of life takes shape in keeping with the complete picture of Jesus Christ and, therefore, with the kingdom of God. The weaker the life, the less able it is to give life shape and form. The difference between fleeting observations, which skim the surface, and experiences that go deep and remain steadfast can be seen in the power of their effect. Where God is at work, he goes into the depths while he reaches out into the distance. He is power at work giving life shape and form.
How many people travel in rushing vehicles from country to country, hastily skimming over the beauties of the whole world!
Their eyes take a quick glance at everything. Yet nothing becomes a lasting experience. Their lives remain infinitely poorer than the lives of many of their neighbors who have never seen anything but the fields or woods outside their home town, but for whom trees and flowers blossoming and fading or nature stirring in any way becomes a fruitful experience.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 8
Those who go rushing by in cities see nothing but the deceptive exterior of life. Their less esteemed neighbors, however, know deeply shaking realities in the joy of love, in daily work, and in the need of the world; they penetrate into all that life has to offer and to the very core of death too. True life is the all-embracing consciousness that sees deeply into the essential nature of things and, at the same time, far and wide into the distance. It bears the suffering of the world. It hungers after justice and righteousness.
For it has heart and is heart. It is God's heart.
In some people, the shattering experiences of worldwide need, of war, and of all the subsequent catastrophes have only blunted the conscience. Others, though, see with new eyes what was previously hidden: the present as it really is and the future as it truly shall be. The new vision transforms life and animates every action. Only those who take in fully the true nature of all things and all events have a true and enduring experience of life. Truth demands hearts touched to the quick and the whole of life moved by the shattering experiences of God's wrath sweeping over the world today and making history; but beyond that it makes even stronger demands: that hearts and lives are moved by the love that appeared in Christ Jesus.
No matter how much we may hear and read of the life of Jesus, no matter how well we understand his words according to the letter of the Bible, our knowledge remains lifeless if the spirit and essence of his love does not grip us and our whole life. The letter kills. The Spirit gives life. His life is love. If truth as the essence of love does not become all-determining in our lives, its power kills the conscience. Without love, the new life dies before it is born.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 8 9
Truth also has a deadly effect when its life-giving works are rejected. Whoever hardens his heart to the transforming power of its living nature will be killed by truth.
The effects of an experience show whether it has been significant or empty, whether it has awakened life or killed it. Every experi ence of the unfalsified Christ means energy that proves itself in actual life. The renewal of our mind and nature brings about a transformation. Then we give up ourselves, and all we have, to serve God and his kingdom only. The results prove whether we have experienced God or whether we have become entangled in an illusion. For God has a power of life and love that his creatures are never capable of. The experience of God brings a superhuman love because it brings God's life. Love pours itself into the heart. The Holy Spirit transmits the divine power of this love.
The experience of God means strength for action. There is no love that does not come to living expression in deeds. To experience God as a life of love is to experience strength. A freeing from all unjust, loveless, and self-willed activity liberates abundant powers, leading to fruitful works of love. The love of God is experienced in the innermost heart and unfolds toward the outside. The more faith increases in knowledge, experience, and strength, the more must we do the works of love. To experience God is to be over whelmed by the power of love.
Our world situation calls for the kind of dedication that lives in Christ alone, in the heart of the powerful God of Jesus Christ. Only a heart filled with the superior power of God's love will be able to check need and distress and alleviate suffering. Only in the strength of the omnipotent God can we carry the burden of historical responsibility laid on us today, a burden beyond all human
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 0 strength. The perfect strength of all-powerful love, surpassing every other power or greatness, is needed to penetrate our devastated world with God's rule and Christ's message.
In the midst of the escalating power of injustice, in the midst of today's widespread cruelty and coldness of heart, love must be revealed: a love that towers above all the mountains of earth; that shines out more clearly and brightly than all the stars of heaven; that is more powerful and mighty than the quaking of the earth and the eruption of all its volcanoes; that is greater than all world powers and ruling authorities; that works more powerfully on history than all catastrophes, wars, and revolutions; that is more living than all life of the creation and its most powerful forces.
Above all nature and throughout all history, love proves itself as the ultimate power of the Almighty, as the ultimate greatness of his heart, as the ultimate revelation of the Spirit.
The experience of God is love – love that overcomes everything that withstands it. Love is the energy of the new creation. It is the spirit of God's coming rule. Love is the one and only element in the new building-up. It is the herald of a new time. It is the organic strength of unity, the building-up of a new humankind. This love is put into practice by the unity found in the church of Jesus Christ.
The building-up of the church means a gathering. Whoever does not gather with her, scatters. Her life consists in uniting. Whoever does not take part in this uniting continues in death. In an age of decline, the life-bringing spirit of Jesus Christ establishes the work of the church. In her, God is experienced in Christ. In the church of perfect love, the spirit of God brings Christ's kingdom of perfect justice and righteousness down to earth. The experience of God means the reign of God in the church of Jesus Christ.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 1
The Peace of God
A deep-seated need makes people long for togetherness and harmony. Our inmost feeling tells us that the life ordained by God is one of organic unity, unity of all powers of the spirit and the will. In actual experience, though, the fate of unpeaceful human kind today is petty limitation, discord and disunion, inorganic confusion, conflict of spirits and aims. There is no unified center, no living point from which our entire thinking and doing can radi ate. We lack this common point of reference, from which any ef fective unity must be determined if life is to prove itself strong and undivided. This dynamic integrity of life has been lost to individuals and to humankind.
Only where peace is alive and active – where its harmonious working embraces the whole of life – can a clear conscience acknowledge peace. There can be no talk of peace or harmony if a life does not show its integrity in lively activity and rich diversity.
Impassive silence and unbroken quiet belong only to the deathly peace of the graveyard. Life is energy for enthusiastic action and reality in all its facets. Where the quickening spirit of God's peace
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 2 fills and unites us, he puts his infinite energy into deeds of love.
They are varied yet consistent, animated yet stable, diverse yet whole and undivided. The peace of God is the dynamic harmony of the perfect life, vibrant with infinite riches. "Whoever finds me, finds life" is the revelation it brings.
God's life is love. That is why he is the God of peace. His will is unity. In Jesus Christ, the revelation of his ultimate will, the supreme power of the Almighty brings a peace the world cannot offer. Jesus brings God's peace to us. In Jesus, God's countenance is so illuminated it brings an inmost peace of heart, a national peace that is justice, and an end to all warfare through love for one's enemies. The peace of God is unity in his creative spirit, who wants to bring a new peace and unity to the torn state of the whole world today. When God blesses his people with peace, we must never think exclusively of peace of soul or of a military cease-fire. It refers to the new order of a kingdom of peace that carries all be fore it inwardly and outwardly. The prince of peace makes faithful ness and justice the foundation of the land of peace he rules over.
Under his rulership, justice and peace kiss each other. Where God has been at work healing and making whole, he grants perfect peace on a stable basis: constancy and faithfulness of heart, mind, and manner of life to the very end. Whoever obeys his spirit says with the prophets: "As long as I live, peace and faithfulness shall reign."
On the basis of a justice that can serve nothing else, God creates peace. The Lord of peace consecrates every aspect of our human life to his perfect purity and unity. He demands the surrender of all the goods of this life and of life itself. His new justice gives the poor and the wretched the land they never had; great peace shall be their joy. Without justice there is no peace. If the land of this I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 3 stolen earth is not given back to the poor, justice will remain lost.
For the poor who have been robbed of land, justice demands that everything amassed in self-will and opposition to God's will is handed back again. God's justice overcomes self-will and private property. What we own hinders God's unity. With the doing of good deeds, the peace of God supplants the evil of discord and unpeace.
Peace belongs to all who do good by giving up everything to love.
It belongs to them alone. It streams out from the mercy of God and reveals his heart. Where his peace rules is goodness in abundance.
The world peace of Christ establishes the order of love and justice for all and for all things. The peace of God, as the future of God's king dom, is to have complete sovereignty over world affairs as well as over local churches. This takes place through the unity of the church of Jesus
Christ, through the united nature of the innermost life. In the church of Jesus Christ, the peace of God reveals the infinite power and united nature of God's heart. His all-conquering supremacy will penetrate and master all things and all beings to unite them in God.
When God says, "Peace be with you," and Jesus gives his "peace" to his disciples, when the early Christians and the powerful Christcentered movements of the Middle Ages and the Reformation greet each other with "Peace," we must acknowledge the joyful certainty and the power in this blessing of God's unity. The peace of God brings with it the grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy
Spirit. It encompasses the complete supremacy of God's rule, which as the unity of the creative spirit aims at bringing all created things in God. Whoever believes in the all-surpassing power of God is full of courage and confidence that his peace will be victorious. Faith in the peace of God is courage in a heart sure of victory.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 4
Peace is the opposite of of fear. Peace, as unity springing from life in God, overcomes the fear of dissolution in death. The greeting of peace to Gideon was to encourage him to live: "Fear not, you shall not die!" Discord belongs to the kingdom of death. Peace allows life to triumph over death. Unpeace bears within it the fear of death. Peace is freedom for a courageous life of justice and righteousness. Unpeace is slavery to injustice and to the fear of death arising from it. People justify preparations for war as security measures because they are anxious in the face of oppression and danger. They fear injustice and the loss of freedom. Yet these very preparations bring nothing but injustice and slavery. The individual's fight for life, discord in the struggle for existence, stem from weakness and fear and result in nothing but unfreedom and injustice. Those who fear do not have perfect love.
Fear for our own lives prevents us from keeping peace and doing works of righteousness and justice. Enervating fear is overcome by the power of love; then strength of abiding peace enters. It builds up everlasting justice. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. An armistice with armies lying in readiness, fearing renewed hostilities, cannot be called peace. An armed peace is no true peace. Only the rule of peace staying for ever and ever (as promised to the house of David) is true peace. Only eternal peace is true peace.
God alone rules over eternity. We do not even reign over the very small span of time allotted to us. There is no peace other than God's peace. All peace treaties and all great congresses and conferences among nations have spoken about everlasting peace. They know temporary peace is meaningless. Yet they cannot achieve peace. A significant work written by Immanuel Kant in 1795, when he was I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 5 looking back on his life from mature old age, bears the characteristic title, To Eternal Peace. A hundred years earlier, Quaker William
Penn had also demanded peace for Europe for both the present and the future.* Both point to the divine character of peace. Only perfect life has no end. To us mortals and our undertakings only a brief span is allotted. Only God's peace and the kingdom of the prince of peace, who is arisen from the dead, have no end. Our works must retreat before God's works: "When he rules far and wide, peace will have no end."
Only from eternity, which is immortal, can lasting peace be guaranteed. It can never be established by time-bound powers.
Only the infinite power of God can build up unity and preserve peace. Everything mortal falls prey to dissolution and decomposition.
Life has to overcome death if unity of life is to be won and kept.
When scripture says God will bless his people with peace, it as much as promises he will give the strength of his eternal and unchangeable power. God is life and strength. In them, he is the God of peace.
As creative power, it is God who brings about the productive life of constructive unity. His joy in peace delights in energetic action and demands active mutual help. It aims at a community of work that creates values. The peace of God is grounded in creative justice. Peace is God's work. There is no peace in creation without the Creator, just as there is no outward peace without the inner peace of social justice and no justice without community of creative work. God alone is love. Peace is created only when his spirit of love is at work.
We should not talk of peace if we do not do all we can to pass on to the poor and down-trodden everything we receive from God – *William Penn, –.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 6 all the goods and strength. Helping one another through deeds done in love to God – that is peace. Unless this power is at work, everything stays lifeless, nothing is at peace. Talk about establish ing outward peace is false prophecy from those who do not build up active peace through loving work in community. What they call peace cannot be peace. The object of peace is missing: the buildingup of unity through mutual help.
When foreign ambassadors came to David the king of Israel and spoke of peace, he said to them, "If you come to me peaceably (which can only mean to help me), my heart shall be knit to yours."
Only mutual help and service in action is living peace. The lifeless peace that is all negation, such as the abolition of war, the peace that is satisfied when we lay down arms and cease to kill, is an empty nothing. The same is true when we claim we have peace in our hearts simply because the fire of inner conflict dies down.
The peace of God brings the strength of God's life. It brings the power of his love. It is active deed and service. To the first chal lenge, "Lay down your arms!" belongs the second, "Pick up your tools!" Depart from evil and do good! Turn your back on war, and with all your strength build at the communal work of peace. Peace is constructive work.
Peace is born when justice as a living body comes to the light of day. The church of Jesus Christ is this body, this organism of justice, peace, and joy of the spirit. This is why the psalmist says both things: "The mountains shall bring peace, and the hills shall bear justice! At the given time, justice and righteousness shall arise for you. With the rising of the sun of justice, the day of great peace dawns." This day has dawned in Jesus. In Christ, it draws near again.
When justice shines forth, peace is guaranteed.
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 7
The land must be opened up to love. Starting from thinking and believing hearts, peace is making its conquest of the earth today through the church. If peace is to reign within city walls, true counseling of justice must be found for everyone and put into practice. The city that is the church of God is responsible for the carrying out of this counsel of peace. Whoever wants God's peace has to think the thoughts of peace, God's thoughts. The church, in thinking the thoughts of Jesus, is the bearer of God's heart. Hearts filled with the truth of Jesus know what counsel to give, and do what needs to be done. Where God is at work, faith is present. Faith is action. Faith produces love. Love knows what to counsel. When Jesus commands us to have the biting salt of truth, he is referring to the peace that the believers have among themselves and take out into the world.
Truth ends the disorder of unpeace so the order of peace can arise. The God of peace and order wants to stop the inorganic scattering of our thoughts and end the disorder of all things in our world that obstructs peace. Without Jesus Christ, people cannot find the way of peace because they do not recognize it. And they do not recognize it because their thoughts are bent on the divergent ways of unpeace. They are unclear about the main condition for true peace and just as unclear about its needed consequences.
If we are to recognize and avoid all other ways as leading to destruction, if we are to set foot on the way of peace and go with peace in our hands to those without it, then the spirit of wisdom must reveal the whole truth hidden in God's unity. Our hearts must become rigorously honest in the light of truth if we are to live up to the wisdom that comes from peace. The peace of God is given through the truth – but only to the upright. "Seek what is upright and you shall have peace."
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 8
Only to the upright is wisdom given; only wisdom opens up the way of peace. When God speaks about peace, he speaks against unpeace as folly. The practical wisdom of God seeks peace. Jealousy and strife are marks of worldly, emotional, and devilish wisdom. It is folly and brings nothing but evil and disorder with it. Wisdom from God brings peace, for it is full of mercy and good deeds.
Directed toward everyone without any hypocrisy or partiality, God's wisdom is all-embracing. As long as we remain petty-minded and aloof from the oneness of the whole and put what is isolated and individual in the limelight, we remain torn by untruthfulness and sunk in confusion. We are not at peace. We get lost in super ficialities, persist in folly, and remain in death.
Some want to talk exclusively about the peace of their own soul or the peace they share with another. They are incapable of representing the whole peace of God that belongs to the final kingdom. They remain sunk in narrow-minded folly, bogged down in the swamp of isolation. But it is the same with those friends of peace who make the opposite mistake and speak about world peace without peace with God and without the social justice of complete community. They want "pacifism" without fighting the spirits of unpeace, without battling the covetous nature of mammon, without opposing the accepted lies of social insincerity, and with out waging spiritual warfare against unfaithfulness and impurity.
Both of these false paths represent unpeace. It comes from folly, and indifference to all-embracing truth.
Where there is wisdom and faithfulness, peace is a reality. The kingdom of God is the union of love and truth. Therefore to unite outward peace with inner righteousness is the whole will of God's
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 1 9 9 love. Only those hearts have peace and only those people bring it and work for it who love the whole truth. God's truth brings wisdom and uprightness – it begets perfect love. Love is the ultimate truth – it brings peace.
We keep peace only when the truth of God is in our hearts and our lives are upright, in tune with his perfect love. Only this truth in love and this love in truth makes for peace. When we do what God lays upon us, we shall – in the truth of love – bring salt and strength, help and loving-kindness to all people. In this love born of truth, peace is guaranteed by loving-kindness and faithfulness.
Out of the thoughts of what is good, peace is born. In the strength of peace, we want what is good for all people and all things. A heart that thinks evil cheats itself and everyone else: it becomes unhappy and spreads unhappiness. But whoever works for peace through the good – only love born of truth is good – brings the joy of life to people. Everything that offends love – the love that is the truth of God and his universe – is evil. Whoever represents the good for all with the unfailing power of perfect love puts into practice the peace of God: the ultimate truth of God's decrees.
The prince of peace is also called the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, and the eternal father. The kingdom that rests on the shoulders of the Son of Man is one of peace because it has the counsel of wisdom, the strength of might, and the divinity of the father of Jesus Christ. The creator of the new creation establishes the divine work of eternal peace: God's counsel leads to peace as the kingdom over which he rules.
The quiet and security of God's household of peace makes us free to dedicate ourselves to the task. Hands freed from defense should be active in building up the city of God. When the pickax is not I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 0 0 used as a weapon, it serves as a tool. Those limbs not going to war on the side of injustice work for justice. Only then do we become true men and women. The faithfulness shown in dedicated work is God's peace in practical community.
The peace of God works like a stream, a wind; it is almighty power. Only God's peace can move all the mills that work for us, like a mighty river whose waters overflow, whose depths and force produce the greatest achievements. Whoever wants well-being of the people, building-up of the city, productive employment instead of demoralizing unemployment, and healing of human society must want peace as God wants it. As work in community, in a completely united society, peace is the only state that brings inner and outer well-being.
Love as God's peace is a bond of perfection; it unites everything that was split apart. It leads to complete surrender and common action. The Lord of peace wants to establish and maintain unity – in infinite diversity – for all things, however dissimilar. Peacemakers must represent God's peace as the solution for all problems, however remote. The strength of God's inmost nature copes with everything. It overlooks and neglects nothing: it is concerned with everything. God's heart is the mightiest power of all superterrestrial worlds, of all the powers of eternity. The peace of God's heart shall "have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth."
Jesus proclaims peace to all, far and near, as part of the fighting equipment of his mission. The feet of his ambassadors must be shod with it for carrying his truth on long journeys into every land. The message of peace as a fighting commission shall conquer all countries
I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 0 1 for God's rule with weapons of the spirit. Only for this task will the Lord, the commander of peace, be on our side. The life of Jesus was sacrificed in the decisive battle to establish peace. So we too should be ready to lay down our lives. Whoever is not ready to fall in battle for the truth cannot live for peace.
When Jesus gave his ambassadors the commission to proclaim
God's coming reign, he wanted peace and its powerful effect announced to each house open to them. Their peace descended in God's full truth on each house they visited. If a house was not ready and willing, the peace, like a boomerang, would return to the hands of the warrior of peace. Peace is the salting power of fire, the spiritual weapon of the kingdom of God, the sword of the spirit.
Peace is the battle-song of God's heavenly hosts: "Glory to God in the highest! Peace on earth to men of good will!" In its strength the messiah-king entered the walls of Jerusalem. He rode no war-horse to a battle in which blood would be shed. The animal of poverty and peace was carrying him when he heard the cry, "Hail to him who cometh in the name of the Lord! With him is peace!"
Defenseless, he rode to meet his death. Victorious, he sacrificed his life to lay the foundation of peace, carrying into all the world a bloodless battle against the power of the bloody sword, a battle for the complete dominion of the Spirit. Whoever glimpses the king of peace enters his kingdom in unsullied peace even though, like him, he must ford the terrifying river of death.
God's peace is the Spirit's victorious and death-defying battle against the evil spirit of devilish unpeace. In his defenseless death, Jesus destroyed the deadly weapons of the enemy just as the God of peace will soon crush Satan under the feet of the Spirit. He establishes peace in an all-out battle to the point of dying a I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 0 2 defenseless death. He does not bring that flabby lack of hostilities we call peace. He brings the sharp sword of spiritual warfare, but those in his spirit sacrifice their lives without killing the enemy.
Jesus went to his death to bring peace. He killed no one, but he was killed. Without defending or sparing his life, he let his body be broken on the tree, welding hostile nations into one united people of peace, one single and united humankind. In the death struggle of his body, he gave humankind a new body: his living, united organism of peace – the church of Jesus Christ.
Anyone who wants to belong to this new united body must be ready like Jesus to suffer the most shameful and cruel death, to accept the same cup of poison from enemy hands, to be baptized by the enemy in the same bloodbath of the death sentence. Anyone who wants to live for the peace of God has, without sparing his or her own life, to take on the same fight to the death that Jesus fought to the end for the kingdom of peace. This is why the human heart is terrified and shakes with fear when the risen one stands before it with the marks of death to pass on his peace and the message of his mission.
The militant peace of Jesus Christ is unknown to humankind. This world knows only hate with its murderous preparation for war or the insincere and uncreative flabbiness of peace without struggle and without unity. This world knows only blind rage leading to the mass murder of war or the untruth of false prophecy, sparing the individual life but unable to represent an effective peace.
Because we ignore the sacrifices that lead to peace, we know nothing of God's will to unite or of his well-considered thoughts of unity. Peace blooms on the soil of genuine truthfulness that is I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L 2 0 3 shown only in a life sacrificed to the utmost and spent in unarmed but out-and-out combat against all opposition to unity and constructive peace. The heart that makes the perfect sacrifice – the mightiest power of all worlds – is the only strength that can bring peace.
Love fighting for unity makes this perfect sacrifice, which demands inmost purity of heart, making our whole life pure. Because Jesus poured out the soul of a pure life in his sacrificial death, because Jesus commended an unstained spirit of divine love into the hands of the Father, he triumphed as the pure one over Satan, the prince of death, and his impure spirits. Purity atones and must rise again.
Impurity not atoned for leads to death. Not even by sacrificing its life can an impure life gain peace. Unity demands purity.
The unbridled passions of youth bring the deadly unpeace of impure spirits. These passions undermine trust and destroy faithfulness. They break up the coherence of life. Peace born of living unity exists only in the pure air of trust and faithfulness. Pu rity, trust, and faithfulness make up the atmosphere of life and of all viable community. Those who want to devote their strength to a living peace must strive for that sanctification of dedicating their whole lives to God's pure cause.
The purity of a life dedicated to God's unity lies hidden in the long-suffering humility of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. It wishes to take command of our lives in the pure spirit of Jesus. God's peace is unmerited grace. Only through a direct gift of God is our life at any moment pure and blameless in the absolute peace of God's heart.