Part 7
All the gifts of his spirit are gifts of peace, to be used in the service of the pure unity of his church.
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The house of God upholds peace. It tolerates no breach, no irritation and strife within or hate and enmity to those without. All unpeace is banned from this house. Joy in all God's gifts, in all the objects of his love, lives in it. Where God grants his gift of joyful hearts, born of love that includes everybody, his peace gathers a people in creative unity. God brings about his righteousness of faith that grants peace with God, which is his will for all. The Holy
Spirit who fills the church of faith means life and peace from God for all. The fruit of the Spirit is love and peace, the joy of a life in God.
Peace is the daughter of faith. It surpasses all human understanding.
As an offspring of the spirit of Jesus Christ, peace keeps the heart and mind in him. Unity born of the spirit of God can accomplish what the thoughts and demands of the understanding never can.
Faith conceives this unity, just as Mary conceived. Now as then, it is the body of Jesus Christ, the united church, that is born of God's creative spirit through faith. She surpasses everything that is human. Starting with the hearts of believers, she has power to rule and direct them; and she brings peace into all the world. Like the birth of Christ, every commission to the church of God is given in peace and unity. Her ways are ways of peace, just as the ways of Jesus Christ were, are, and always will be peace among all nations.
Therefore the sons and daughters begotten of God delight in creating and in bringing peace alone. The kingdom of God belongs to peace.
God himself is in his sons and daughters; for they carry his blessing as peacemakers, carry out God's commands, live to give him joy, and do their utmost to keep peace with everyone. Yet they know that peace on earth can only be the fruit of faith in God and 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 2 0 5 and that the godless cannot keep peace, as long as they remain far off from true life. The goal of all Christ said and did, and the goal of his ambassadors, was unity with God and peace among all people as a way of life.
The ambassadors of Jesus Christ proclaim a peace that rules over all areas of their life. They bear the name of the prince of peace because Christ is the lord and king of divine peace, and because he holds the universal kingdom of eternal peace in his mighty hand.
For them, his kingdom does not exist in sterile words but in the strength and power of unity, creating the peace of his future world.
Sent out from the spirit of the church where peace rules, they carry its power into all the world. They fight and make every effort to improve conditions to help build up the holy peace of God.
For them, peace is the hope of their faith, their expectation for the future, and a power here and now. Peace is for them the sum total of all God's wisdom and decrees. God as the Lord, Christ as their expectation, and the Holy Spirit as the power that reveals all future things fill them with the most confident joy and inviolable peace. Their peace is not of the moment, for it comes from him who is, and was, and is to come.
Peace as God's future is proclaimed by the whole prophecy of the old covenant and the prophetic mission of the new church. All war and hostility are to come to an end. The old prophecy and the new prophecy are one. The prophets of the old covenant and the new covenant bring to bleeding humanity the divine kingdom of God's peace, putting an end to the violent, predatory nature of all ruling powers. Bestial malice and ferocity will be completely banned.
The predatory nature of brute force is overcome by long-suffering with its sacrificial nature. The reign of the Lamb replaces espionage
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 6 and violent killing. The love that lays down its life fills the new person and replaces the injustice of the old one, who alienates God and destroys life. From the time of the first Adam and the first fratricide, our true image had been forgotten. The Son of Man, the last Adam, leads the way to our ultimate state, in which we are truly God's people. The heart and soul of the Bible is filled with this certainty. All of divine history in the Bible and all the history of humankind lead to God's goal.
The book that reveals God in history begins and ends with peace. The inmost depths of the Bible, its life and soul, is and remains peace. Loss of community with God always leads to murderous unpeace. Yet Christ, the morning star of the coming peace and unity, is never extinguished. After the breach with our origin in the first kingdom of peace, the next step follows immedi ately – fratricide, which must not be avenged. The descendants of the man who murdered his brother proceed to found cities. The fellowship of the metropolis – as in the soaring structure of Babel – leads to dire confusion, disintegration, and warlike tensions between nations. Revolt against God leads nations to insurrection and war. Yet God revealed his heart once more: the deluge of his judgment swept over humankind, disunited and resistant to his spirit; but under the colorful symbol of the rainbow, he established the covenant of peace.
Abraham, the father of faith, is consecrated as a prince of peace by a mysterious priestly figure who belongs to the united dominion of peace. The faith of the patriarchs turns again and again to peace because the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the one God shows itself as a uniting power. So the greatest blessing of these 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 7 patriarchs and later of Aaron (the first priest of atonement) is the blessing of peace. Even in the war years of the lawgiver, the blessing of the first high priest culminates in the peace that the last high priest was to turn into reality: "May Jehovah establish, work, and give thee peace!" Through Moses the law comes to God's people. In its wake come war and the sword. The military power of the Israelites reaches its zenith through the kings, given them at their demand by God – in his wrath. But despite all battle songs, at the heart of the psalms of the people and the songs of the kings there lies a longing for the peace that shall come from God.
The prophets proclaim peace as justice from God that shall take possession of the whole world. In the midst of the storm of devas tating historical events, the prophetic message of peace stands like a rock that cannot be broken. The coming helper and leader of God's people will calm the raging sea of nations. As the bringer of peace, Jesus is given the name "Our Peace." Faced with his strength and truth, every illusion vanishes. The Old Testament prophet sees the contrast between the conditions of his time and the divine justice of the coming one who judges and saves. It must shine relentlessly through all the evil of the present time; it is love at work, and its fruit is peace.
When God is involved, so is his creation. Where God's peace appears, human unpeace is struck at the root. Social discord is revealed as human injustice – enmity to God and an obstacle to peace – which must be identified and ruthlessly exposed. Whoever sins in this way commits an outrage against God. The spirit of peace demands justice. The divine spirit in prophecy strikes society at the root of its poisonous growth. It exposes the economic injustice of hardworking people shamefully robbed of all meaning in life and condemned to a life of unhappiness.
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Through the toil of the poor, unearned privileges are piled up, only nourishing strife and discord. Social distinctions and class consciousness rob us of soul and spirit. The injustice committed daily arouses the wrath of the God of peace until it reaches white heat. The prophets of God expose the depravity of assessing human beings in terms of money values. We are all responsible for those who have hardly any dignity or joy in life or vestige of peace left.
As outcasts from the love of human society, they are delivered up to discord and unpeace.
The prophecy of peace is directed against this debasing of human love, this degeneration of the social conscience. Prophecy rises up against the loveless will to possess. The prophet of peace attacks pride of rulership, making slaves of others. The rich person's cold love of money and heartless will to possess – which results in eco nomic exploitation of the poor – summon the prophet of peace to the Spirit's battlefield, where it fights all greed, force, and wealth.
The prophet recognizes that one who gathers possessions at the expense of others, often violently, is nothing other than a cheat.
The prophetic spirit calls to account all who helped trample the poor, who sided with the rich against those with nothing. The prophet Amos says every luxury is won at the expense of the poor and needy. The wealthy enjoy expensive furnishings, rich food and drink, and spacious rooms only through tyrannizing and crushing the poor and needy. Other prophets too hurl their "Woe betide thee!" at those who, by amassing clothing and furniture from the poor through seizure, become enemies of their own people: "You tear the skin from the body and the flesh from the people's bones."
"You feed upon the flesh of my people."
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The prophet exposes the enormous outrage of people planning to gain new land and houses to consolidate and increase private property. Isaiah cries "woe!" to all "who join house to house, lay field to field until there is no place for others." Moses had spoken the word of the Lord: "The land is mine." "The whole earth belongs to me." It must not become heritable property. Taking interest, like owning land, is unmasked as godlessness: they are the two hands of greedy mammon. All taking of interest is condemned by Ezekiel through God's word: "You have forgotten me!"
Ezekiel proclaims God's justice at work only where no one is harassed by poor wages or demands for money, where goods are not seized for debts, where people give their bread to the hungry and their clothes to the naked, where money is borrowed and lent without interest: that is, where the right to own property has been supplanted by love.
All prophets want economic oppression to be overcome, slavery's yoke removed, freedom for the degraded, the homeless led home, and the ill-clad given new clothes. Hosea puts the prophetic demand into one brief sentence: "Hold fast to love and justice and wait steadfastly for God!" All prophets know that for this a new spirit has to come over humankind. The spirit of God must be poured out over the crushed and downtrodden also to remove their suffering. The God of the stars and all their heavenly hosts will rule on the earth. He has laid his spirit on one whose righteousness and justice will never be exhausted until firmly established over all the earth as peace: it shall begin with one and shall come upon all. The spirit-bearer will judge the lowly and wretched justly and protect them. But he will overthrow the oppressors with the word of justice. He is called "God is our righteousness." His justice and 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 1 0 righteousness will bring peace; swords and spears will be beaten into tools for peaceful work. No nation will lift up weapons against another. No one will prepare for war anymore. The king of justice will obliterate all war chariots and weapons, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters fill the sea.
Through the centuries, the prophets' call for justice resounds like an echo heralding the peace to come. For thousands of years peace is the direction of the prophets for the earth and humankind.
This call is more distinct than the stamping and roaring of all the wars of the world. The approaching day of the prince of peace is mightier than any throughout all history. The works of humankind come to a halt! The work of God comes over humankind and over the whole torn earth in final and all-embracing peace! The work of God breaks straight in! It penetrates to the depths and spans the breadths! In the midst of collapse, Jesus, the man of peace, arises without whom no peace can be achieved.
The people of peace follow the Master whose nature is the life blood of their order of life. His spirit, which stands up for the mean and lowly against the great tyrants, inspires their unity. This spirit of peace opposes war. His journey of peace on the humblest beast of burden displaces cavalry, breaks the weapons of war, and inaugurates national peace. This peace bearer sets prisoners free and redeems the downtrodden. The majesty of his divine peace is framed by the princely forms of justice and well-being and gracious kindness that shines out on the poor.
No peace and disarmament without social justice! No prophet recognizes peace and disarmament or the changing of deadly weapons into tools of civilization without social renewal and recon ciliation, giving back to the poor the use of all tools and products.
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The prophet Moses had already proclaimed: "There shall not be any poor found among you anywhere!" Yet he knew there would be poor people in this world until every remnant of injustice had disappeared, when all hearts and all energies would be concen trated on peace, giving brotherly love unlimited authority. Because
Jesus sees this approaching, he can and must say, "Blessed are the poor! Woe to the rich!"
The majesty of God comes very near to this earth! Kindness and faithfulness, righteousness and well-being kiss each other. Faithfulness springs out of the earth! Righteousness comes down from heaven!
(Ps. 85:8–13). Going out from the heart, peace penetrates into all lands because it comes down from God's highest heaven like lightning. It comes as justice. It reveals its clear and simple nature as the love expressed in fairness and brotherliness. This descending ball of lightning annihilates unpeace in its blazing flames.
When peace conquers, it means the abolition of wealth as much as of armed force. Both powers wield enormous influence, but faith stands against them and conquers. Faith meets with deeper under standing among the poor than among the rich. The will to peace is strongest and most genuine where poverty of goods goes hand in hand with the hunger and thirst of spiritual poverty. The kingdom of God will bring fairness and brotherliness. It will bind in complete unity all those whose longing hearts hunger for justice and righteousness.
For this reason wealth and all surfeit must be dispersed.
The prophets make inflexible demands to cut out all ostentatious extravagance in clothing, housing, and social life, root and branch.
Utmost simplicity shall be established in everything. Unity demands it. The style of unity is expressed in the beauty of the simple line.
Social peace can be achieved in no other way. The circle and 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 2 1 2 straight line are symbols of the love that gathers and the genuine truth that goes with it. When no one outspends another, when no one embellishes life to suit his vanity, everyone will be drawn into the community of shining clarity. When privileges and luxury are abolished, justice has broken through.
Social inequality, the result of rifts in society, destroys the sense of community and all possibility of community. It must be attacked with the sharpness of the Spirit if the cause of peace is to go for ward. Luxury and greed, property and wealth are the roots of discord. So the beginning of the great prophecy of Amos mercilessly assails the unequal distribution of the joys and goods of this world. Hosea and all the other prophets follow his example with the same sharpness.
What applies to the root applies to the fruit as well. The violence of killing and warfare is and will always be the height of unpeace, the bitterest fruit of injustice. Isaiah therefore points to the law of peace: "The violent shall come to their end." But the peace of Christ's justice shall never cease. The kingdoms of this world shall all be destroyed because they are warlike kingdoms. Dominion, power, and might over all things under heaven shall be given to the holy people of the Most High. For they are the people of peace and justice. The kingdoms of this world with their predatory nature will be swept away without distinction, whether their emblem is the eagle, the lion, the bear, or other beast of prey. The Son of Man has come to destroy the works of the devil.
The hour of decision approaches: "Ask of me, and I will give you nations as your spoil and the ends of the earth as your possession."
"The nations will be glad and sing for joy: for thou dost judge the people justly and govern the nations upon the earth." "Sing among
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 1 3 the nations that the Lord is king; he will judge the people justly."
"Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad. The Lord is king."
In the kingdom of this king, justice is loved. "He helps the weak gloriously."
The new covenant takes up this proclamation and makes it a reality, as Ezekiel had foretold: "I will make them one nation in the land…and one king shall be king over them all; and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms." In Christ, Isaiah's words became reality: "O thou afflicted, tossed by the tempest, I will teach thy children great peace. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, nor destruction within thy borders." In the church of Jesus Christ, Jeremiah's word is fulfilled: "The days are coming when the city of the Lord shall be uprooted no more."
The Spirit says through Peter: "Change from the root up! Make a complete turn in your life! Your sins must be wiped out. Let the time of new life break in! It comes from the presence of the Lord of all worlds! The coming time sends the Ruler! He will be announced to you beforehand. In heavenly power, Jesus Christ waits until the time has come when everything shall be fulfilled that God has spo ken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."
Jesus Christ is the goal of our history. God's prophecy with its all-commanding view proclaims the final peace of Jesus Christ. In this peace all enmity is extinguished, all war put down, and all strife brought to an end. Christ is the beginning of God-created human kind and its life-bringing end. He is the first and last of the living letters that spell out the divine plan of peace. In Jesus, the whole course of history turns toward its conclusion, when everything will be renewed. The long-awaited unity of peace, approaching at last with the coming of Jesus, will lead in the completely different and entirely new rule of God.
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The kingdom of God draws near. God's will shall at last prevail.
What is hidden in his heart will reveal the mystery of his name.
Jesus' first and last concern, the entire content of his will to live (which was also a readiness to die) was the glory of God, that is, the glory of God's heart.
Jesus, who revealed the heart of God, knows that the future is dedicated to it. From now on, all those who believe in this future reign of God are dedicated to his perfect will of peace. For the deeply longing hearts of Jesus' inner circle, the first petitions of the Lord's Prayer show the old covenant's prophecy of peace endowed with new and final perfection.
Everything Jesus says and does makes the rule of peace foretold by the prophets a reality. It confirms the truth of all their promises. In the church of Jesus Christ, the long-prophesied community, bound by common covenant, becomes reality now, precisely as it will in the coming kingdom. The word of the prophets of old has paved the way for the messianic rule of peace. Now from all nations, the future citizens of the kingdom of peace stream together. They gather around Christ. A call to the power of perfect peace goes out from the church to the whole world.
God's people of old are and will be the starting point for the new people of unity. Yet in Jesus all national barriers have fallen and his kingdom of unity spreads unimpeded. In the presence of the unit ing spirit of the future, the divisive spirit of this age is of no signifi cance. Through the spiritradiating from the church, all national boundaries are abolished forever. The heirs of the old covenant, now consecrated in Christ, extend the work of peace over the whole earth. All land belongs to God. Jesus has burned his fiery rule of peace from the other world into this world.
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In Jesus Christ, the fiery spirit of the old prophecy of peace comes to perfect expression for all time. It starts in the present: the peace foretold by the prophets penetrates into the church of Christ as love, justice, and truth, present here and now down to their last consequences. Jesus, like all the prophets, knows no reconciliation with destructive opposition. His prophetic truth knows no giving in or making of concessions. He does not work for peace by making compromises. His peace makes no covenant with unpeace. He never joins any hostile opposition. He destroys unpeace. His opposition to the roots of unpeace is inexorable.
Jesus, sparing none, hurls his sevenfold woe at the hypocritical destroyers of all true unity. Their answer is murderous. As foretold by the prophets, every government and all powers of world economics are bound to fight with the most deadly violence against the perfect expression of peace in Jesus Christ and his church. In this way, the character of unconditional peace shines out more strongly and clearly than ever and delivers up the peace bearers, unarmed, to the flaming sword of the enemy. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the most powerful prophecy of the kingdom of peace, stands for the will to peace with its resistance unto death – any death. Against the peace-disrupting power of the whole world it sets the passive resistance of the cross: the cross versus the sword!
The cross is the radicalism of love. The peace of the Sermon on the Mount tackles everything at the root. Out of love it gives away the last remnants of property, right down to jacket and shirt, and gives every bit of working strength to the community spirit of absolute unity. As often as love demands it, this peace sacrifices itself and goes serenely twice the distance and gives twice the working time. Without pause, the church of peace conducts an 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 1 6 active and creative general strike against all the surrounding injus tice of outward unpeace. In this break with the status quo, Jesus recognizes no claims justified by law. He does not allow his church to carry on any lawsuit or to sit in judgment in any court of law. He demands that the church should drop or interrupt its religious worship whenever brothers need to be reconciled, whenever the genuine ness of brotherly unity is in question. He places the restoring and maintaining of the unity of love over and against the insincere cult of disunited piety.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives an absolute mandate never to resist the power of evil. Only thus can evil be turned to good. Jesus' will to love prefers rather to be struck twice than to counter with even one blow. Love matters more than anything else.
Love allows no other feelings to come in. In marriage too, love keeps faith and fights against any separation or divorce. Because it is forgiveness, love governs private prayer (Matt. 6:6). As complete reconciliation, this absolute and all-embracing will to love determines our attitude to society (to our enemy as well – yes, particularly to him). Love does not take the slightest part in hostilities, strife, or war, nor can it ever return curses and hate, hurt and enmity – neither in the individual nor in the community. Love is not influenced by any hostile power. No change of circumstance can change the attitude of Jesus and his followers; he does nothing but love, make peace, wish and ask for good, and work good deeds.
Where the peace of Jesus Christ dwells, war dies out, weapons are smelted down, and hostility vanishes. Love has become boundless in Jesus; it has achieved absolute sovereignty.
Here at last the justice and righteousness that was begun in the prophets becomes complete reality in Jesus Christ, which is better
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 1 7 than that of all moralists and theologians, of all socialists, communists, and pacifists. For the sap of life flows in it for the plantation of the future, for the living community of perfect peace. Here the salt of the divine inner nature is at work in strength. Here the light of God's heart streams out as the beacon of the city church whose towers proclaim freedom, unity, and dedication. Here what each one wants is wanted and done for all. Here no one lays up possessions and no ones heart is cold with icy fear for their own existence or how to make ends meet. Here the peace of love reigns.
In this city church, all citizens are gathered with one goal in mind: God's will and God's rule, God's heart and God's nature. No one is in opposition to another here and no one is condemned. No one is coerced here; no one is despised; no one is violated. And yet love rules as truth and the nature of our inmost heart is recognized by the fruits, by deeds. Here everybody knows well that such a determined common will provokes the sharpest opposition from the surrounding world. Perfect unity, which gathers and binds, is seen as a provocation. It is regarded with enmity because it is misunderstood as an infuriating exclusiveness. It makes all those resentful who, like most people, feel that they are neither able nor willing to accept the call to such complete community. So a clash is inevitable. No one can escape it.
This living community of hearts, this combining of goods and working strength, stands out in absolute contrast to the attitude of the whole world. This is bound to cause resentment, especially in others whose ideals drive them to violent action for which they want support. For in this community of love every hostile act is rejected, whatever the circumstances and however weighty the reasons. Any participation in warlike action, police activity, or law
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 1 8 proceedings is out of the question, however justified it may seem on the grounds of protecting the good. This community of peace has nothing in common with violent revolt, however necessary it may seem in the name of suppressed justice. The very fact that such a life exists, symbolizing the kingdom of peace and love, challenges all (both right and left) who regard government by force as the primary duty of the hour.
Because the expectation of the coming peaceable kingdom leads to a life in full community, all those who look upon community as impossible are affronted by it. As long as they are determined to refuse the continuing fellowship of the wedding feast, as long as they cannot accept what is so great and yet so intimate – the bond of peace, the common table, the unity of life, the cooperation in work, and the church that carries responsibility – they have no other choice than to fight it. In the end, though reluctantly, they take measures to destroy it. So, in spite of the church's unconditional peace stand in all situations, severe struggles and clashes are bound to result from the will to community, precisely because of its uncom promising nature. They are bound to grow in number and intensity the nearer the church of peace draws to the final kingdom of peace.
In the true church, the beginning of the coming kingdom is present in full force and challenging clarity. Before the final extension of the rule of peace, there has to be a last battle between the power of strife and discord and the strongest power, the power of peace. The severity and dreadfulness of the last battles will be more and more startling as the peace witness of the church reaches its consumma tion and her martyrs once more go unarmed to their death. But under no circumstances can the opposition be left in repose. For there, people will not give up their selfish separation as individuals
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 1 9 or as national groups. People cannot or will not let the root of sin, of curse-laden unpeace, be taken away from them. They maintain it is absolutely indispensable.
People cannot trust peace, want nothing of faith, and reject the better future. They would rather trust the idols of brute force than the spirit of love and the God of peace. Property needs the protec tion of law and force. People want to hold on to what belongs to them, and will not accept anything from others. They demand their rights and reject grace. Under the law, sin continues and unpeace remains. The law's iron hand holds on to bloody judgment and the sword. It strikes down individuals and mows down whole nations with its ghastly weapons, which poison continents and will in the end destroy the whole earth. Sin and the law make death inevitable.
Finally God himself, against the ultimate will of his heart, must assent to this judgment of wrath, which is necessary according to the justice of the law.
When the nations harden their hearts completely against the one way God wants, the way of pure love, they call down judgment on themselves. They are the origin of all those abnormal events that happen as unavoidable natural catastrophes. When they despise the creative will, God has to give people up to their degenerate, impure, and depraved love-life. When people of their own free will reject the will to peace, the raging torches of civil war will flare over them. God in his wrath brings on the judgment precipitated by self-will. The old state of affairs is repeated: God in his wrath once gave his beloved people a warlike king because his own kingship had been rejected by war-lust and greed for the status of a major power; still earlier, God's law had allowed blood vengeance and the death penalty to replace the rejected leadership of the spirit; and 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 2 0 the flood had buried the flesh that had turned away from the spirit.
So now, as antichristian strife reaches its inevitable climax, the judgment of God will let loose a fiery flood of war.
This fate is inescapable – a matter of cause and effect. War is karma, the necessary consequence of discord, unpeace, and lack of community. It is the deadly fruit of the broken fellowship with God, the inescapable judgment over the causes of war – separation from God's unity, division of life into hostile opposites, injustice and disunity. It all arises from property and selfishness. War judges itself. It is based on unpeace with God and disunity among people.
War is the monstrosity born of the covetous will, the hell of disunity. War intensifies this compulsion to sin to the point of selfdestruction. It drives the law, which kills, to the point of massacring nations. In war, loveless injustice surpasses itself. It be comes murderous lawlessness.
War is the insane culmination of the clash between judging law and unbridled lawlessness; its ultimate purpose is to reveal sin. The judgment of war should crash down on us, hammering and shaping us, so that at last a longing arises for the cause of death to be overcome, for community in God to become everything. To be rid of war, the roots of sin must be exposed and eradicated. Once the cause of separation is overcome, unity and community will break in – then not a hand will be lifted, not a foot will be stirred, to serve the monstrosity of hell that is called war. With sin destroyed, brothers are no longer killed. The way ahead is made free, and in the empty space, the peace of God arises. Repentance gives birth to faith; faith brings peace. Ending separation to establish unity – that is the gospel.
To sin belongs the law. To law belongs killing (1 Cor. 15:56). These three uphold each other. Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit and 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 2 1 in the name of God, has conquered this triple alliance of death forever and ever. He broke the weapon of death – sin. He tore up the writ of accusation and judgment. His death unmasked the origin of all killing: he tore out its root cause. He plants resurrec tion and the unity of the Holy Spirit in the places where dissolu tion, separation, and sin are eradicated.
The law of Moses brought war, which it then had to control. The grace and truth of the gospel bring unity and the order of commu nity (John 1:17). Because national and international laws determine the prosecution of all illegal conduct, they require war, imprison ment, and death. The sons of Christ's spirit keep peace, bring free dom, and are responsible for the forgiveness of sins. Through the mission of their spirit, they spread abroad unity of life.
Where Christ takes over the government, the rule of all other death-dealing powers is annulled. Where the spirit of grace rules, the law of governmental authority withdraws. Death's judgment retreats before the salvation and resurrection of life. Gathering replaces enmity. So it is in the church, and so it will be at the end when the first and last fruit of separation from God, death itself, is swept away. All the works of enmity will be destroyed and last of all the final enemy himself. Before then, all enmity and hostility must be given up; it leads to death. The auxiliary troops of death will be the first to be surrounded; first the tree with its roots will be torn up. Then the poisonous fruits of death will be attacked to the very last seed, till death itself is done away with.
However, evil and murder are still on the increase, gaining more and more influence. The stronger the power of love grows, the more it drives poisonous hostility to a peak. The reverse is also true.
When evil has matured, it is time to clear out what has ripened 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 2 2 2 death's plantation and make room for the laying-out of God's garden. This dual development of completely opposed events forces decision. It leads to tearing-down and rebuilding. The course of all history runs up from below and down from above. From both directions it converges on a single point. Apostolic prophecy (in the book of Revelation) follows this dual line of development to the end. The point where they meet is the end: the judgment and the kingdom. Both lines are drawn by "religiously" motivated hands: "satanism" and "faith" are the mysterious forces that direct this dual line of development.
Siding with the deadly power of evil, the godlessness of a life of hypocrisy and murderous corruption mounts to the maddest heights of arrogance: with amazing pomp and splendor, it claims the highest place of all in the house of God. It is the false prophecy of a church that has fallen away from God. It hypocritically flaunts the raiment and the mien of the animal of peace, like a sacrificial lamb, while making propaganda for the dragon of war. In the form of the lamb it speaks like the dragon against the lamb. To wage war against the church of peace, it joins forces with the warring monster of worldly power, the power of all armed nations.
The church of peace sets out against this overwhelming and twofold power without the protection of murderous weapons. It refuses to worship either power and knows that the whore of Babylon will fall. Certainly, this false and faithless woman is still firmly seated on the throne of the world's ruling powers and authorities. Elated by power, she is still intoxicated with the blood of the martyrs she has sacrificed. But the breath of the coming reign of Christ sweeps her off. The twofold world power from below is broken from above. The lying dragon of unpeace is expelled and war is banned.
The reign of peace comes.
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The last outburst of war from humankind's major powers storms out of the night. Like every war, it bears afresh the marks of Satan's power let loose and so is bound to assault the kingdom of God once more before it is overthrown. This final war, this last world confla gration, must forever annihilate all states based on force and all major world powers. The new aeon begins by putting a final end to all the powers of war. The joyous unity of the wedding feast and the gathering of love at the common table of God's kingdom replace the horrors of war, enmity, and death.
In solitary greatness amidst a world full of enemies, the prophets of old felt compelled to make known their opposition to the priesthood of established religion and to the sovereignty of their state – all this to the same degree that these two powers expanded their double-faced rule on the lines of the great heathen powers with all their wars and magnificent pomp. In the same way, the apostolic prophets of early Christianity have had to fight with everincreasing ardor against the bloody violence of political power and against all religion that hypocritically supports them but in truth has fallen away from God.
To the prophets, the God of Abraham is and always will be the God of the kingdom. According to the faith of the apostles, the Father of Jesus Christ does not want to be forever a God of the law.
He is the same God as he was at the time of the lawgiver and prophet Moses; but the way of his heart (love) triumphs over the ways of his wrath. His peace supersedes the law. What the law could not achieve, God accomplished in Christ. Through Christ's spirit, faith in the God and Father of Jesus Christ is obedient to peace, because faith – perfected – has as its object the God of perfect love. It is the God of history who makes all the threads of 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 2 4 history run together and come to an end in the one, single way of peace – the peace of his Christ.
We must distinguish between the innermost heart of God and his waist that is girded with judgment (Isa. 11:5). For hidden in the somber flames of judgment lives the ray of his pure love. The deadly accurate judgment of his presence is nearer to love than the cold distance of a god who hides his face. The brazen footsteps of God's wrath are dreadful. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of his judgment. But secretly his pulsing heart spreads out a mantle of love for all his enemies. Beautiful are the feet of his messengers, spreading joy as they come from the mountains and bring the message of God's heart to the valley of judgment. Their greeting to everyone is peace. Their message is clear: the judgment of God is fulfilled in his heart. He himself has been met by it. God's heart becomes king! His ambassadors wept bitterly because peace had been lost. For them, there is no harsher judgment than the loss of peace. But now they hand over this sealed message: that miracle, the heart, is stronger than all judgment.
Though mountains were to melt in volcanic eruptions and hills laid low by appalling earthquakes, and even if the earth itself were to totter and crack and the judgment of his mighty wrath were to demolish great powers – still, the love of God's heart, the rainbow of his perfection, will never waver. The sun of his heart shines upon the devastating storm-curtain of his wrath and the rainbow of peace spans it. What if leagues of nations and world peace itself suffer shipwreck, what if all treaties be torn up – the seal of God's covenant will not break. Times of judgment will come and sink into the grave. But peace will arise and remain. That will not change.
Peace is God's final word; it is his heart. Peace is and always will be the ultimate will of God.
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We should stop looking merely at the historical instruments of judgment, at the human vessels of wrath, and with deep discern ment turn to the heart of God in all his works throughout history.
Then in spite of the murderous chaos of war and the injustice raging around us, we have entered the garden of peace. The historical Jesus is the heart of God. As the coming Christ, he shows the importance of God's heart for the whole world. His command empowers us to sheath the sword and put it away forever. The heart of Jesus foresees with fearful clarity the catastrophe ahead: it will devastate all the kingdoms of this earth and the whole world economy through major international wars and bloody revolutions.
He knows that because of strife and discord, the hour of wrath must precede the day of peace. The approaching fall of civilization with the final war of judgment is one of the main themes of his great prophetic speech, which John and Paul have enlarged upon so powerfully in apostolic prophecy.
The dreadful cup cannot be avoided. The plowland must be cleared; the corrupting weeds must be burned. After they have run riot for the last time, they must never again be able to spread their seeds of murder. If evil is to be uprooted, it must be exposed for what it is.
Political chaos, outbursts of war and revolution, economic depres sions, and frightful natural catastrophes shall once more deliver humankind to the knife of its own unpeace. But in the midst of all the hellish tumult, the paradise of peace is revealed. Those who hold out and shed no blood in spite of the mounting horrors of the final desola tion, doing God's holy work in pure, brotherly love, will come through the sharpest judgment and the last catastrophe.
The old world collapses in terrible self-destruction, but the church of Jesus Christ takes no part in all this horror. The frenzied
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 2 6 power of the world loathes the unassailable peace stand of Christ's church. In their fury, all warlike powers persecute the gathered unity of God's peace. Even in the battering storm of extreme need, the church rejects the slightest sign of militarism – the inhuman beast of prey. The power of love opposes the violence of unpeace.
Just for this reason, persecution reaches the heights of its fury. The prophetic spirit of the king of peace sees through the tension between these ultimate and diametrically opposed powers of love and hate as the shaking force at work everywhere in world history and in end-history. This spirit sees that the throes of extreme need must precede the birth of world peace.
The dreadful birth-pangs of the end times are part of the curse of death, brought by the loss of our original peace. The peace of God and of the great advent cannot be born without a final judgment over frightening unpeace, bringing forth its last monstrosity. Just before the new breaks in, all that is old must be shattered by appalling need. All institutions made by human society must be overthrown. Every form of their power and slavery must be oblit erated. No peace can be planted on the unchanged soil of unpeace.
The plow sets to work. It breaks up the sod again. The beginning of God's rule leads to the frightening end of world history so that on its ruins, purified of all adulteration, the justice and righteousness of eternal peace will be able to rise.
Right into a world driven frantic with unpeace and injustice, Christ will let the unblemished kingdom of peace break in. But this future, coming directly from above, is already present in the spirit of Jesus
Christ: in his church, the will to peace is put into practice here and now. God's world judgment annihilates the evil powers of unpeace in order to sweep through the last and greatest catastrophe 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 2 2 7 humankind's history of war. It brings in eternal peace. God's rule has to make this final step because it cannot make any alliance with the powers of injustice. Under the trampling boots of soldiers, God's heart, as Christ crucified once again, beats on in unchanging love; as the church of the risen one, it carries God's peace inviolate to meet the coming day.
The spirit of Jesus Christ lets the fresh air of the ultimate kingdom of peace blow right into this sultry, disaster-laden atmosphere. His gospel brings purity, reconciliation, and unity. His new spirit is the authentication of the kingdom of peace. Through the signet and seal of the spirit, what is decreed for the future is already entrusted to the church. The church of Jesus Christ is the body of the community of perfect peace, through which life and immortality are revealed in our time. As the bearer of the kingdom of peace, the church is freed from all killing and murdering.
When we are gathered in the church and God's love fills our hearts, we cannot be tempted by any power that belongs to force.
As Jesus can never be thought of as a Roman soldier, so members of his church can never belong to the artillery, air force, or police.
Neither poison, bombs, pistols, or knives, neither the executioner's sword nor the gallows can be our weapon. As the revelation of the heart of Jesus, as Christ's letter, our task is simply to pass on the image of absolute love in all its clarity (2 Cor. 3:2–3). Standing in the presence of Christ, we must represent that he has arrived; when Christ reveals himself now, we must proclaim his future coming.
What is invisible in the world of peace to come becomes visible in the church. Everyone shall see this work of God. Everyone shall honor the Father of Jesus Christ through it. This unadulterated
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 2 8 image of Jesus is the only hope for the future. The church is his uplifted torch, the radiant city on the hill.
The stars of prophecy have shone through the night of unpeace, moving for centuries across the celestial sphere of world history.
As history draws to a close, the starry heavens of prophecy will let the great gods of military power spread their twilight. When the days were fulfilled, the morning star – the king of peace – rose in the firmament of prophecy. He heralds the dawn of the coming day. The church is wedded to the sun of peace. Whoever lets the morning star rise in his heart is freed from all warlike powers of this world and belongs with every beat of his heart to the coming day of God's great peace.
The dawn of the new age lights up the invisible city of peace. The hidden land of community appears. In the Holy Spirit of the church, the new Jerusalem comes down from above. Only the perfect city without a temple has done away with cultic religion. In this city, community life is the temple of peace, the temple of the great king. The church bears the seven-armed lampstand of the Sabbath of peace, on which our own works shall rest forever because the mighty works of God have begun. The city of peace and justice and joy reveals the radiant brightness of the new creation. The old order has passed away. The new order comes into force – everything becomes new.
This is the gathering and uniting from all four ends of the earth to the ends of heaven, the unity of those still alive with those living in glory – God's kingdom of peace. Its power in the future begins in the unchangeable community of life and spirit, which in our time bears the name "church." In the peace of the city-church, the bride, the church, prepares herself to receive the bridegroom, 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 2 9
Jesus. She will go to his wedding feast carrying the blazing torches of the spirit.
This feast day of the king of peace establishes the throne of his government; his infinite joy makes it possible for his reign to begin. The places of work for his kingdom are already there; will and deed crown his feast. When we celebrate our freedom from the hideous monster of bloody violence and from the powerful woman of seduction and unfaithfulness, a fruitful life arises with a clear authority. On the foundation of the atonement, which brings unity and enthusiasm, the reign of the priestly king begins, inaugu rated by his feast. It is a feast celebrating the perfected reign of peace. The bride of the king has prepared herself for it.
This message of apostolic prophecy was entrusted to John as certain tidings of the approaching time. It is "the revelation given to Jesus Christ by God to show his servants what must very soon take place." The Christ who appears among the seven candlesticks of the church receives the book of the future from the sovereign of the world, who is surrounded by the twenty-four elders and the four radiant living creatures of the star-world. Only he who is the faith of the church is able to open it. So his present is the ultimate future of the dawning kingdom of peace. This is true in the church, so that John had to write his revelation to the seven churches as a reality in the present and a certainty for the future: what exists now is a picture of what shall be. To the seer whose eyes are open, faith's present and hope's future are one and the same. What unites them is love.
In the church of the Holy Spirit, the future kingdom of God is present with its perfect justice, its absolute peace, and its joy in love and unity. In the midst of the church, the king of peace brings
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 3 0 here and brings now her inviolable community of peace both within and without – nothing but peace. Where there is redemption and reconciliation through Christ, even the locking-up of Satan for the thousand years of rejoicing is present reality because peace is here and now put into action. The church is the door of peace, open in the present as an entrance into the kingdom of the future. So for the believing and united church, Satan is already bound; in the church, his divisiveness and hostility have been done away with.
The kingdom of peace has been won. Weapons are laid down. Christ is king, and he is king here and now as the head and the heart of the church.
From the church, Christ's spirit of love and his will to unity press outward into all the world. This fact, in the present, guarantees certainty about the future: he is the one to conquer and renew all creation, to make the whole torn cosmos into a new and living unit.
In Christ the old world passes, and the new creation arises. Jesus is the new man of the church, as the son of man in the coming kingdom. In Jesus, God's rule has now become love to our brothers and to our enemies through faith. For those who have eyes of faith to see, the life in his church shall be the living parable of the unity and peace for which God wants to conquer the earth. In the church, the world of today can see the image of the city of peace. It is the signpost to the future, and everyone will see it. No corner on earth is to be left in darkness; the light, held aloft, floods into all rooms. The city of light sends out bearers of light. Community in the city on the hill and constant traveling for the sake of mission are identical.
The unity of the early Christian church and the apostleship of peace are one. From churches formed in brotherly love, power 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 3 1 sent out to all inhabitants of the earth – the power to create peace and harmony. Rays from the small sun-city light up the whole world. From apostolic times, the early Christian church has been assigned the world-embracing task that the one cause of the kingdom of God shine out in all directions with unalloyed clarity.
She is to represent nothing else. Not only the generation immedi ately following the apostles makes this abundantly clear: the clear light of the original Christian truth through succeeding generations checked the slow but persistent growth of darkness till far into the third century.
The post-apostolic elders of the earliest times took apostolic mission as their authority. About a.d. 150, Justin also took the prophetic spirit as proclaiming a future begun with the apostles. That swords should be beaten into plowshares and lances into sickles, that nation should no longer lift up sword against nation, and that we should forget how to wage war – for him, all this had already begun. As he writes, "from Jerusalem men and women went out into the world…not mighty in speech, but sent through the power of God to the whole human race."
Justin describes Christian life around a.d. 160 in just the same way, as an expression of reverence, justice, love to all, and confident expectation of the future. Here again he testifies: "We also were once just as conversant with war and murder as with everything else that is evil. But all of us, wherever we happen to live in the whole wide world, have all exchanged our weapons of war: swords for plowshares, lances for farm implements."
Theophilus writes still more strongly to Autolycus around a.d.
180: "Even to watch fights that are dangerous to life is forbidden to us. We can be neither active participants nor conscious specta
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 3 2 tors of acts that lead to death. Not even our eyes or ears shall take part in any act of murder. We must avoid witnessing any deathdealing act and also listening when such deeds are glorified, even if it is only in song." Every outward but also every inner participation in war is impossible. Any kind of propaganda for the glory of shedding blood is rejected. For "in the church of Jesus Christ, justice is put into practice and faith is testified by deeds; here grace keeps watch and peace protects. Here God is king."
At the end of this early period, Origen writes in no uncertain terms about what the consequences of this attitude of faith were for the early Christians: a Christian may never use the sword against anyone; the church of Jesus has a completely different politeia. It has a completely different public responsibility from that of the military and judicial power of state authority, a completely different political task, a completely different citizenship, and a completely different form of community life.
For this reason, according to Tertullian, the holder of a govern ment office could be regarded as a Christian only if he exercised his duty "without condemnation, without punishment, without chains and prisons and torture, without capital punishment, and without depriving anyone of civil rights." In spite of the ascendance of the institutional church, the third century still held the same view as Athenagoras in the second century, who expressed it in these sharp words: "To force people through lawsuits in which their lives are at stake is a crime against human flesh." Anyone committing this crime against Christians attacks those who are not allowed even to withdraw from blows, let alone return one.
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As late as a.d. 248, Origen wrote to the anti-Christian Celsus: "Military service should not be demanded of Christians." This attitude was still as clear to post-apostolic Christians as it had been to the early Christians of the first church. After all, military service is not demanded of priests. "We do not go with the emperor to the battlefield, not even when he demands it." Christians support the governmental authorities only through their prayer, which is determined by Christ; only through prayer for peace; only through prayer for the community of the new humanity; only in the prayer that all inhabitants of the earth shall be given peace and harmony; only in the request that the governments of all nations shall exercise their authority with reverence, in peace and benevolence, and without violence; and only in the faith that the peace of a new life is brought about by the power of the resurrection from the dead.
The First Letter of Clement (written before a.d. 100, yet strictly in line with the institutional church) and also the much less ecclesi astical "Acts of Thomas," written soon after a.d. 160, express complete agreement with Origen. Justin, too, declared that all the kingdoms and powers of the world look upon Jesus with fear and yet must recognize that everywhere believers in Christ are peace bringers. Moreover, around a.d. 150 Justin wrote, "We, more than any others, are your helpers and allies for peace." Tertullian sums up the attitude of early Christianity from the time of the apostles right into the third century with the words: "Only without swords can Christians wage war. The divine and the human banner do not go together – the flag of Christ and the flag of the devil!"
War is in fact the most powerful act of violence, the work of demonic power. Under the banner of war, measures of the most murderous kind (coming from a hostility that even without war 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 3 4 constantly present) are carried so far that they become an unbridled storm. "World peace" is a state of war waged by other means; it is not peace. Not only war is satanic; satanic is also the root of war – unpeace in times of political "peace." Under the false name of peace, it commits demonic crimes against life everywhere.
The outbreak of military hostilities in civil and international war is not by any means the only evil the peace bearers of the church must stand against. They must stand as much against the widespread damage done in private life, seen most clearly in the destruction of nascent life, which was labeled "murder" and "child-murder" by early Christianity. It calls those women "murderesses of human life" who "procure a miscarriage through medicine" or those who in tacit agreement allow it to be done to them.
Bearers of peace are familiar with all the murky sources of deathbringing division. They fight money's power to buy and rule as passionately as they fight unfaithfulness in love relationships because there they see the dangerous seat of murderous unpeace.
Tertullian testifies that the Spirit "makes everything communal with one exception – love for women." In essence, the dragon's teeth of covetousness, in privileged ownership and in unfaithful love relationships, is the power at the root of the widespread state of war – latent or active – between people who are meant to live a pure life together in God as brothers and sisters.
Money, according to the prophetic faith of early Christianity, is a "source of godlessness and license, an inciter to war, and an instru ment for waging war. It is the hated plague and torment that belongs to what is falsely called peace." "As long as the earth is divided among the rich by defrauding others, as long as the wealthy possess this earth that could feed so many, the poor will be 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 3 5 exploited and the downtrodden kept in oppression." Then justice can never be achieved, and peace is a sheer impossibility. Without justice or love, peace cannot last a moment.
According to this early Christian prophecy (which gained wide spread recognition) and according to Justin's testimony, that power is important which proclaims the approaching time, when people live together as brothers and sisters on the land God has promised them. Defying death, the martyrs declared before their prosecutors that they could recognize no kingdom of this present world-age; that they knew only one lord, the king of all kings, the ruler over all nations. In the third century still, according to Hippolytus, the conditions of acceptance into the early Christian church decreed that anyone should be rejected or excluded who was unwilling to refuse all killing, even killing required by law. From all this it is clear how state power and the church were bound to provoke the sharpest opposition in each other.
Hermas, an exceptionally sober-minded prophet (influential in Rome in post-apostolic times – perhaps before a.d. 100 but certainly before a.d. 155), summarizes this state of affairs in the following urgent challenge: You know you live in a foreign country. Your own city-state is far away from the state surrounding you here. Those who acquire land, houses, perishable dwellings, and costly furnishings (as the custom is in the world state) can never expect to be at home in the quite other city-state to which they should belong. Unhappy people! Do you not realize that not one of all these things can belong to you, that with all these possessions you place yourself under a power foreign to your calling, by its very nature? Do you want to forswear the laws of the city you are called to? Will you really do this for the sake of property – fields and other things?
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Do you really want to live according to the laws of the city-state that rules here? Then you cannot be accepted into the other city-state you long for as your home. You have denied its laws. You have to be expelled. Let it be quite clear to you that you are living in a foreign country! Be satisfied with the bare necessities! You may not accumulate more than is enough to live on. At all times, be prepared!
Such stringent demands can be made only where people's hearts are alive with the spirit of perfect love and completely filled with the highest calling – the kingdom of God. The peace stand taken by the early Christians is possible only in the strength of the gospels.
Only where the call to the church of peace takes over the whole of life can concentration on mission lead to a break with the status quo. Only where the spirit of unity establishes inmost peace can the fight be ventured upon for peace and against unpeace all over the world.
The center of life-energy that makes this stand possible is given