From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: As most of you will remember, we are dealing at the moment with the words found in Paul's epistle to the Romans in chapter 14 and verse 17. The 17th verse in the 14th chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans. "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

Now, we're looking at this great and most important statement. As I've been trying to show, here the Apostle is lifting up this whole discussion about our attitude to things indifferent and putting them into the context of the whole of the Christian life. I'm suggesting that he does so in order to ridicule the way in which the members of the church in Rome, both the strong and the weak, were behaving with regard to these matters.

And as he puts it, the important thing is to remember that we are in the kingdom of God, and that the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. It's not fussing and bothering about things indifferent and so exaggerating their importance as if they were the very central matters of the Christian life and the central matters in the kingdom of God. That's wrong, he says. The kingdom of God is not meat and drink.

Well, what is it? We come to these three great terms: righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost. Last Friday night, I was indicating that there's been a difference of opinion as to how we should approach these three terms. There are those who say that they are ethical terms, that they are ethical descriptions of the members or the citizens of the kingdom.

So that he's virtually saying the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but uprightness, rectitude, peaceableness, and joyfulness. There are those who reject that view and say that is quite an inadequate description of the kingdom of God and that it is certainly not an adequate exposition of this particular statement. And I indicated that I belong to that second group.

I am trying to show that what the Apostle is doing here is to ridicule this attitude that was so prevalent in the members of the church at Rome. If you just put it in terms of rectitude and peaceableness and joy, you fail to bring that element out completely. In other words, what he's really doing is to show that their whole trouble was that they'd forgotten the real character and the nature of the kingdom of God itself and of life in the kingdom.

Hold that in your mind as we come to take the second term tonight. We considered the term righteousness last week, and I trust it was clear to all of us that what we've got here is the Apostle repeating in a sense what our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount: "except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven."

You remember the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? It was a righteousness based upon particulars: what you did and what you didn't do. They were very punctilious about that. That's not the point. Our Lord says that the whole conception of righteousness was too small, too low. You've got to exceed that. That's what he's bringing out here, and these people in their folly were tending to revert to that old Pharisaical view of righteousness.

He's showing that that's quite inadequate. The Christian is a righteous person. He is righteous even as the Lord Jesus Christ himself is righteous. So there he's put it in terms of righteousness. They've got to expand their whole view of it and not think of it in this kind of small and legalistic manner which they were guilty of doing on both sides.

But now we come to the second term, which is peace. This, of course, is something that follows directly from the first. You remember how we found in the fifth chapter the Apostle has this same order: "Therefore being justified by faith," or being justified by the righteousness of God imputed to us in Jesus Christ, "we have peace with God." Same order: righteousness first, and righteousness leading in the second instance to peace.

Once more, it is essential that we should realize why exactly the Apostle introduces this term. What he's doing is to show that the condition prevailing amongst them was more or less the exact opposite of what it should be in the kingdom of God and amongst the citizens of the kingdom of God. The atmosphere amongst them was one of contention. It was one of judging, of recrimination. It was one of strife and envy.

The Apostle is just setting out to show that this is the very negation of what should be true of citizens of the kingdom of God in their relationships to one another. He's taking them as they were, and having reasoned the thing out in detail with them, he says, "But can't you see that you've got yourselves into a position in which you are really denying the very essentials of the characteristics of the kingdom and the characteristics of the life of those who belong to the kingdom?"

He says, "You know, you've turned the kingdom of God into a matter of eating and drinking. And naturally, because you've done that, you've lost peace." That's your trouble. Let's work this out together. What was wrong? They'd got into this condition of unrest, of this condition in which they were lacking in the manifestation of this great element of peace which is so characteristic of the kingdom.

How were they showing this? They were showing it, as it's always bound to show itself, in the state of their minds and their hearts. They were troubled in their mind. They were worried about this. It had become a source of anxiety to them on both sides. The strong people, people who were stronger in the faith, and those who were weaker in the faith. They were anxious. This constantly was a source of anxiety to them.

As the result of this, they were in a fearful condition. They were afraid. I remember once describing this kind of condition as one of morbid scrupulosity, and I can't think of a better way of putting it. They'd got into this state in which they were interested in these details, these particulars: "Should we eat this meat? Should we drink that? Should you observe this particular day?"

This had become so exaggerated in their thinking that they'd become over-scrupulous to the extent of becoming even morbid about it. This, of course, was all due to the fact that they were ultimately concerned about their reputations and about their being right. The moment you get into this kind of condition, you are now constantly afraid of making a mistake.

You're familiar with this condition. Every question that arises, at once you're thrown into a kind of power about it. You're so terrified of doing the wrong thing that you become restless in the whole of your mind and in the whole of your heart. You're always on edge. You're always in this fearful, anxious condition.

Accompanying this, there is an unusual sensitiveness or a sensitivity almost to the opinions and the criticisms of others so that you lose your peace altogether. You feel you're being watched, and you're afraid that you'll give grounds for criticism or misunderstanding, and you've completely lost your peace.

On top of all this and as the result of it all, of course, you're always on the defensive, and you're always concerned about justifying yourself and proving that your opinions are right. That was the condition into which these people had got on both sides, even the strong as well as the weak. It was perhaps more true of the weak than of the strong, but it was true of those who are described as the strong.

Remember, they were only strong in their intellectual understanding. But even that can lead to this kind of fearful, anxious condition which I'm describing and which is the very antithesis of being in a state of rest or of peace. There's a kind of inward turmoil, and all along you are having to watch and being careful and concerned about possible criticisms. That was part of the state of these people in the church at Rome.

This is just a description so far of their own actual inward state and condition. But of course, it never stops at that, and it can't confine itself to that. We all live in relationship to one another. No man is an island, and especially in the Christian church. If that is our own state and condition, if we are in this kind of restless, apprehensive, fearful state, this is bound to manifest itself in our relations with other people.

If you are feeling at all insecure or if you're at all uncertain of yourself, or if your mind is filled with anxieties and worries about your position, you will be on edge. You can't help being on edge. You're not at peace with yourself, so how can you be at peace with other people? The result is that this kind of person becomes querulous.

You're almost expecting opposition and expecting criticism. You become a querulous person. You're ready to disagree with anybody whom you happen to meet or to fight them over some matter or another. It's because you yourself are lacking in peace and in rest. You're all on edge, and so you react, and react generally in a wrong way when you meet others.

In other words, you seem to be watching for difficulties, waiting for them, and you are over-ready to be critical of other people. It's people who are uncertain about themselves who are generally most critical of others. It's a part of this self-defense mechanism. If you can show they're wrong, that means you were better than you thought you were, you were right. That's the form it tends to take.

So it leads to a censorious attitude and a censorious spirit. That was the essence of this trouble in Rome. As we've seen in the previous verses, they were all watching one another: the strong despising the weak and the weak judging the strong. They were all guilty in this way of looking at one another and passing these judgments and coming to these conclusions.

What I'm trying to convey is that whenever you get too much preoccupation with details such as these that were concerning these people, and especially about matters that are ultimately indifferent and not essential, it always produces this kind of condition in the individual and in their relationships with one another.

You get these people, therefore, becoming what we may well describe as spiritual detectives. They become hypercritical. They're watching one another and almost looking for some defect in one another, something that they can condemn in one another. I can't recall whether I've ever told you of a story of an experience I once had many years ago.

I was preaching in a certain place one afternoon, and I was preaching—I don't know that I was actually preaching on Acts 3, but I certainly brought in that incident in Acts 3 to illustrate the point I was making. You remember Peter and John going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, which was the ninth hour.

As they were about to go in, they saw this man seated at the beautiful gate of the temple. That immediately engaged their attention, and they healed the man, and it led to the rest that follows. In using this as an illustration, I happened to put it like this: that though Peter and John were on their way into the temple to pray, seeing this man, they forgot all about the praying and dealt with the man and with the problem.

I went on to add, as it was evidently the point I was making, that it wouldn't be a bad thing for some of us if now and again we forgot our meetings and behaved in a more practical manner as Christians; that there is a danger of Christian people just thinking of themselves and the enjoyment of meetings and attending meetings and doing nothing as Christians in the neighborhood in which they live or even in the street in which they live or amongst people whom they know well and with whom they have to work.

I'll never forget what happened to me at the close of the service. Two young ladies came to me dressed in a kind of uniform. They were students at a certain Bible College not far away from that place, and they'd got their notebooks and they'd been taking notes. They came and they said to me, "Did we understand you to say that you didn't believe in prayer meetings?"

Well, you see, I was able to show them exactly not only what I meant but what was wrong with them. I said, "Did you come to this meeting just to listen to see if I should say anything wrong?" I said, "You probably did." You see, they belonged to an ultra-rigidly orthodox Bible College which, because it felt that everybody was against it, in turn had become opposed to everybody else. And as a part of their own self-defense, they'd become hypercritical.

I had said, far from saying that I didn't believe in prayer meetings, I'd actually said in the same sermon how important prayer meetings were. But you see, because I happened to say that they forgot the prayer meeting and dealt with the problem, was I against prayer meetings? That's the spirit. You become spiritual detectives. You'll condemn a man for a word or a phrase. You forget the spirit. You're interested in details, and you develop this mentality in which you're always looking for this kind of thing.

It's very sad. It's always a sign of a lack of assurance, a lack of certainty, a lack of confidence. There's something wrong with a person who gets into this condition. It is, as I say, ultimately a part of this defense mechanism. But the tragedy is that it leads not only to strife but to divisions and to schisms and to parties. The Christian church gives the impression that she is just a collection of warring groups and sects and divided personalities.

There it is. Ultimately, it tends to show itself also in our relationship to God. It means that though we still say that we believe in justification by faith only, we've become so preoccupied with these details that we've got back again into a condition of fear with respect to God. We think of him in terms of a lawgiver and as a judge who is carefully watching our every single action and immediately pounces on us when we do anything wrong. We develop even that attitude towards God.

That in turn leads us to think unconsciously that we put ourselves right with God by being right in certain particular details. That's again this whole question of righteousness. But here it comes out in this form: that there is really a lack of peace between us and God because of our preoccupation with these details. I suggest to you that that was the state and the condition of these people in the church at Rome.

What has the Apostle got to say about it all? Here's his answer: "The kingdom of God," he says, "is not eating and drinking; it is peace." What's he mean? Your whole attitude is wrong. You've forgotten really what is the truth about you yourselves as Christians and what is true about the kingdom to which you now belong.

He says, "You know, you are showing all the characteristics of the old life, not the new life." And those things that I've been reminding you of are all the characteristics of the unregenerate life. Now, this is the thing: though we are Christians, we can slip back into that old way of thinking. The Apostle is constantly having to say this. He had to say it at very great length to the church at Corinth: "I couldn't speak unto you," he says, "as unto spiritual but as unto carnal. You're still thinking in a carnal way." They were, though they were truly Christian.

We've got to remember this: the fact that we are born again Christians doesn't guarantee that our thinking is always going to be right. Far from it. We need instruction. We need to be taught and trained how to apply this to our thinking about every subject. That's precisely what the Apostle is doing here. So he says, "Can't you see that you've slipped back into thinking in that individualistic manner?"

That's always the characteristic of the non-regenerate, the non-Christian life: individualistic. It's the whole source of trouble in the world tonight. The world is as it is because of individualistic thinking. Self is at the center, and man by nature is self-centered. These people had become self-centered. These strong in the faith were self-centered, despising the others, not bothering about them. And the weak were self-centered, looking at these others and criticizing and feeling that they were unfair to them.

Without realizing it, they'd dropped back to this old self-centered outlook upon life in every respect. They'd even become self-centered in their relationship to God. You see, what these people were now concerned about was their reputations, their opinions, their ideas about this matter. But that's the world. That's how the world always is: "What I say is this," "What I think is this." That's the typical worldly way of thinking and of speaking, isn't it? That's exactly what they were doing.

"I say," says the one man, "that there's nothing wrong in eating this meat." "I don't agree," says the other, "I say..." So it's "I say" and "I say," and there you get war. Peace is gone, and they're quarreling about these things. Each one is asserting his opinion and his idea. As I say, each one is concerned about self-protection and self-defense. Each one in the end is concerned about himself: "Why shouldn't we eat this meat offered to idols?" "Why shouldn't we drink what we like?" says the strong person. It's all in terms of themselves.

Again, you find this in all the epistles: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others," says Paul to the Philippians in the second chapter. He has to keep on saying it to all these New Testament churches. They were reverting to this. Two women in the church at Philippi, Euodias and Syntyche, were very guilty of this, and they'd formed parties around themselves and the church was divided. It is a constant danger and a constant tendency.

The result of that is that you get division, you get strife. That is why the world is as it is this evening. This is the source of all quarrels and disputes, whether it be between husbands and wives or parents and children, masters and workers, whatever you like to talk about, different countries. It is this terrible preoccupation about self—its rights, its demands, its pleasure, its happiness—always myself and refusing to see the other.

What Paul is saying is, "Look here, you seem to have forgotten that you're in the kingdom of God. You're behaving exactly as men and women behave out in the world. You're using exactly the same arguments, you're behaving in exactly the same way." Very well, that's the first thing that he tells them about it: that their whole attitude is wrong because it is a reversion to the worldly, carnal way of thinking.

But positively, and this is the thing: it is such a complete contradiction of life in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not that. I'm trying to justify my attitude towards these three words. He is ridiculing it. He's treating it almost with contempt. This is the element we must bring out in our exposition. If you say it merely means peaceableness, it doesn't come out at all. You're missing the very thing the Apostle is saying.

"No, no," he says. "The way you are behaving amongst yourselves and with one another is a denial of the chief purpose of the kingdom of God." What is the chief purpose of the kingdom of God? Why is God introducing his kingdom into the world? Why has he ever done so? This is the thing that they were forgetting. The answer is perfectly clear. Why is there a kingdom of God at all? Start with that question.

Why are we here tonight? Why is there such a thing as the Christian church? Why is there anything of this great salvation? There's only one answer: it is because God is the God of peace. You remember that great doxology in the 13th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews: "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make us perfect in every good work to do his will, working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ." But you notice how it begins: "The God of peace."

God is a God of peace. If he were not, there would be no kingdom of God. His whole object is to produce peace. You see, you get this in the very introduction of the gospels. You remember the lyrical scene in the second chapter of the gospel according to St. Luke? The angel making the great announcement to the shepherds watching their flocks by night. Suddenly they hear a great heavenly host singing, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will amongst men." The great thing that's emphasized is this element of peace in the very proclamation at the very beginning.

This is the thing that is stressed and emphasized. The God of peace has taken this action, and the result of this is going to be peace on earth, good will toward men. Then you notice how the Apostle in that great statement in the second chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians that we read at the beginning, he puts it in these terms. He's talking about our Lord, of whom he says, "He came and preached peace to you that were afar off, and to them that were nigh." It was a prophecy that he would do that. He's come and he's done this.

Why? This is the whole purpose of the kingdom of God: to bring in peace. This is where it becomes necessary. Sin was the result of rebellion and enmity against God. God had made man in his own image, put him in paradise, and man was living a life of peace and of communion and of fellowship with God. The temptation raises questions, doubt, interferes with the peace and with the relationship, creates an enmity, suggests that God is against them. That's immediately rebellion, and it's a form of enmity.

Sin always means that, and it leads to a lack of peace—a lack of peace between man and God, a lack of peace between man and man, a lack of peace everywhere. That's the great point that Paul makes there, as you noticed in that second chapter of Ephesians. He comes back to the same thing in the fourth chapter where he says that the natural man is an enemy and alienated in his mind from God, alienated from the life of God through the blindness, through the ignorance that is in them. He was constantly making this point.

As we've already seen in this epistle to the Romans in chapter 8 and verse 7: "The carnal mind, the natural mind if you like, is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." All this is the very opposite of peace. That is what sin has done; that is what the original rebellion has achieved. The whole world is full of unrest and of war and of enmity between man and God and man and man. There is no peace. "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." There is no peace anywhere, and the world tonight is proving this.

What is the object of salvation? It is to produce peace. God is a God of peace and of order. What is salvation? It is reconciliation. Here's the great message: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." Reconciliation, atonement, bringing together at-one-ment, bringing two enemies and bringing them together. Reconciliation. This is the whole object and purpose of salvation.

So you see, Paul is saying to these people, "The way you are behaving over these matters indifferent and the way you've produced these enmities and jealousies and dis-ease and unrest amongst yourselves. Can't you see," says Paul, "you're denying the whole object and purpose of the kingdom of God?" It isn't mere peaceableness. That's where I reject that exposition of Haldane and Professor John Murray so radically. It doesn't bring out this tremendous contrast. It doesn't ridicule this thing out of court if it's mere peaceableness.

They're forgetting the whole object and purpose of the whole of salvation. The great characteristic of this kingdom of God: it's a kingdom of peace where a great reconciliation has taken place. We must work out that it is first and foremost peace with God. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." There's nothing more wonderful than that. Reconciled to God.

The first thing that happens to a man when he becomes a Christian is that he loses that fear of God which, according to the Apostle John, is a "fear that hath torment." That's a terrible thing. There's no peace when a man is afraid of God in that sense. It's torment. He feels that God is against him, that God is just a judge, that he's waiting, as it were, to pick up any detail and to denounce and to punish. That is the attitude of the natural man towards God. He thinks in terms of these details, and God is just a judge and a lawgiver, and it's a fear that hath torment.

But the moment a man becomes a Christian, that is no longer his position. This is the marvelous thing. The Christian knows that God is his Father. He's reconciled to God. He knows that God as his Father is not watching details in order that he may punish. The Father has a positive interest. The Father is anxious for the child to grow and to develop, to show the great characteristics of the family. If the child should fail, there's no bitterness in the attitude; there is regret, there is sorrow.

The whole attitude of this man who's come to realize this is now entirely different. He doesn't think of his Christian life henceforth in terms of details and particularly with regard to things indifferent. He thinks of himself now as the child of God. That's what these people were forgetting. The whole thing had become to them a matter of eating and drinking and observation of days or not observing days. They seemed to have forgotten their relationship to God as their loving Father; they'd forgotten that they were children of God, members of his household, and so on.

They'd forgotten this first great object of salvation, the first great purpose of the kingdom is to put men at peace with God. Then secondly, what it does is to give man peace within. Our blessed Lord, especially at the end of his life, was very concerned with this, and he goes on repeating it. You remember those most moving statements in chapters 14 to 17 of the gospel according to St. John? Listen to this in John 14:27: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

That's chiefly about his departure, but it includes everything. He gives his peace. That's what he gives. It's a wonderful thing. The world can't give this, and the man of the world knows nothing about it. But the Christian is a man who's been given his peace. It's inside him. The Apostle himself puts it in different words, but he's really saying the same thing in Philippians 4:6 and 7: "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." What happens? "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

"Where's that amongst you?" says Paul to the Romans. "You seem to think the kingdom of God is a matter of eating and drinking, but it's peace. You haven't got it. You've forgotten all about this. You're full of strife and of worry and anxiety and self-concern." Or as Paul has to put it to Timothy, "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind or discipline." You're not always fearful, apprehensive, and wondering and worrying. No, quite the opposite.

This is one of the most marvelous things that happens to a man when he becomes a Christian: he's given peace within. It's the end of struggle, it's the end of this perplexity. As Philip Doddridge puts it in his hymn, "O happy day that fixed my choice," you remember, "Now rest, my long divided heart." And it does. You're no longer in this apprehensive, nervous, critical condition always about yourself and others. There's a rest that comes in.

It isn't that you don't realize that you've got to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. It's not contradictory of that, but you've lost the fear that hath torment and this unrest. You realize the greatness and the glory of the life and the seriousness of what happens in it, but you're delivered from this constant watching and stress and striving. There is a rest and there is a peace within. It goes even further. Once you've got this inward peace, it'll deliver you from a constant, morbid anxiety about the opinion of others.

Listen to Paul putting it in 1 Corinthians 4: "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self." That's the ultimate acme of peace: that a man is at such rest within himself that he doesn't even judge his own self. Still less is he constantly on edge because of his concern about the criticisms and misunderstanding of others. Peace with God, peace within, and then peace with others.

This is the thing the Apostle is dealing with in particular. He says, "The thing's a tragedy. You are denying the kingdom of God. Not only amongst yourselves, you're giving a wrong impression of it to those who are outside. They think that the kingdom of God is a place in which the one thing that matters is do you eat these meats or do you drink this, and do you observe particular days?"

He says, "Look here, the whole business is about peace." You had that mighty statement of it all again in the second chapter of Ephesians. Listen to this: "You were once Gentiles. You were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who at one time were so far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." How? "Well, he is our peace, who hath made both," Jew and Gentile, "one."

This is the whole thing and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. This is the kingdom of God: it's broken down middle walls of partition—Jew and Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free. It's gone. All one in Christ Jesus. "But," he says, "you're re-erecting these middle walls in terms of eating and drinking." He says, "This isn't the kingdom of God." The kingdom of God demolishes, brings down, breaks down walls of partition.

"Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby." But the enmity had come back in the church of Rome over these trivialities. This is ridicule, this is sarcasm, this is contempt. I'm not talking about mere peaceableness. It's the whole conception of the kingdom of God that's being denied. What they're doing is a denial of the very essence of the life of the kingdom.

The effect of truly understanding the message of the kingdom, the Christian gospel, is that we realize that we're all equally sinners, that we're all saved by nothing but the grace of God, that we all share the same salvation. We have the same Savior. We are looking forward to the same eternal, blessed hope and life together in heaven. That's the man who understands the kingdom of God. But they were behaving in the exact opposite manner here: judging one another. "He's down, I'm up. I'm up, he's down," over these trivialities. "The kingdom of God isn't that," says Paul, "it's peace."

The kingdom of God abolishes enmities, and any re-introduction of enmities in any shape or form is a denial of the kingdom. But I rather like the way in which he puts it positively. He makes a great appeal in the epistle to the Colossians in the third chapter and in the 15th verse: "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body."

This is what they were neglecting and forgetting: "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts." There are excellent alternative translations here. Here are some of them: "Let the peace of God act as umpire"—umpire in your hearts. "Let the peace of God decide all doubts in your hearts," says another. "Let the peace of God settle all questions," says another.

"Should you eat this meat? Is it right to eat meats offered to idols and to take particular drinks and observe certain days?" And all standing up and "This is my opinion." "Look here," says Paul, "let the peace of God arbitrate, let the peace of God decide, let the peace of God act as umpire. Not your opinion or my opinion, but let the peace of God settle it."

How does the peace of God settle? How does the peace of God act as arbitrator or as umpire? Negatively like this: we've got to be unlike the members of the church at Corinth. In the sixth chapter of the first epistle, he chides them because they were taking their personal disputes before the public courts. He said, "You're denying the whole thing. Can't you settle your disputes amongst yourselves? Don't you know that one day you're going to judge angels and judge the world? Surely you can judge little matters like this amongst yourselves. Take the meanest person in the church, put him up as judge."

We mustn't be like those Corinthians or as they were in the 12th chapter. What's the meaning of 1 Corinthians 12? The church at Corinth was being divided up hopelessly into factions and sections over the particular spiritual gifts that they'd had. Some had one gift, some another, and they were envying and jealous. Read 1 Corinthians 12. The whole church was in a state of schism, divided up into these groups. Don't be like that, says Paul, and he says the same thing here.

Realize that you belong to one body. "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also you are called in one body." It's the same argument in 1 Corinthians 12. The body is one, it has many members. Is there anything more ridiculous than for the members and parts of the body to be quarreling amongst themselves, and the eye says to the hand, "I have no need of you," or the stronger parts are despising the weaker and the less comely parts? He ridicules the thing. He says, "If you behave like that, you don't realize the truth about a body, and you don't realize that you're all members of the body of Christ and members in particular."

It's this body. We're all one. Indeed, in the 10th chapter of 1 Corinthians, he's made exactly the same point about the communion service: "You are one loaf," he says. So don't divide yourself up in the ridiculous way that you are doing. Realize also that you're in one and the same relationship to God. Did you notice this great verse, Ephesians 2:18? "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father."

The next time you feel proud of yourself because you've got great understanding and you despise the man who knows less theology than you do, remember that you and he have only got one way to God: it is through Christ and by the one and only Spirit. Let the weak brother remember the same thing. The moment you remember that, you can't quarrel and divide over these indifferent matters. The thing is unthinkable. You've forgotten that the great characteristic of the kingdom is peace—the producing of it and the maintaining of it.

In other words, people only behave as these people have been behaving when they forget that the one thing that matters is the glory of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. People who are so concerned about their own opinions and are so self-centered have forgotten that everybody in the kingdom is to minister to the glory of God and the glory of his dear Son. What do my opinions matter as long as God and Christ and the Spirit are glorified and are honored? That's his appeal. The kingdom of God is peace, and by breaking peace, you're doing dishonor to the great purpose of the God of peace through his Son and through the Spirit.

What are we to do? Remember the words of our Lord in one of the beatitudes: "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." It's to be their great characteristic, the children of God. They're peacemakers. Their Father is the God of peace, and they're like their Father: they're peacemakers. Not only are they not disturbers of the peace and people who are producing unrest and schisms and divisions, they're positively peacemakers.

How do we do this? Let me close by just reading to you some of these great verses out of the third chapter of Paul's epistle to the Colossians:

"Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him."

When we all do that, what wonderful peace we shall enjoy. It just means this: that you realize that the Lord Jesus Christ is not only the king of righteousness but is also the Prince of Peace. You remember the old prophecy of Isaiah: "his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

And are you and I going to give the impression to the world that the chief characteristic of those who belong to the Prince of Peace and rejoice in him and glory in him is that they're scarcely speaking to one another because of attitudes towards eating and drinking and observation of days? The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace. God willing, we'll go on to consider the third great characteristic next time: joy in the Holy Ghost.

O Lord, we come unto thee and we acknowledge and confess that we feel so much like those members of the church at Rome. O God, we thank thee that we are thy workmanship and that we are not saved according to our own understanding, nor our own life and behavior, but solely by thy grace. Oh, open our eyes, we pray thee, to the glory of thine eternal kingdom. O God of peace, we humbly pray thee by the Spirit to make known unto us in a deeper manner the Prince of Peace, thine own dearly beloved Son, who even died on the cross in order to make this peace—possible to us as individuals, possible for us in our common life together as we go on marching through this land of sin and woe to the glory that thou hast awaiting us with thyself.

Lord, hear us, receive our praise, and continue to do thine own great and glorious work in us. We ask it in the name of thy dear Son. And now, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now this night, throughout the remainder of this our short and uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage, and evermore. Amen.