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.
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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
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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
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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.
*The reference is to the Wartburg Castle, where Luther stayed after being outlawed in .
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
*George Fox, –, founded the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in .
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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.
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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
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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,
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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.
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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, –.
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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.
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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 Christ-
image – 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, –.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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 Christ-
centered 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.
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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
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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, –.
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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 building-
up 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.
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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."
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.