And This Is Peace
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . ." -- Galatians 5:22
The clamor today is for world peace. It seems that it should be easy enough to set the nations and peoples at peace with one another, since they all profess to want peace and clamor for it. But when we stop to think how few of us are at peace with ourselves, and how difficult it is for people to be at peace with themselves, we can understand and appreciate the difficulties the problem of world peace involves.
The personal peace problem is the hardest of all the peace problems with which we have to deal. It is hard enough at times to live at peace with our neighbors, but it is harder still to live at peace with ourselves.
When a man does things, or says things, for which he condemns himself, or despises himself, there are obviously within him two contending forces. There is his "better self," which now and then gets the upper hand so as to control his thoughts and actions. But there is also another self, a self that thinks and acts differently when it has the chance; and for the thoughts and deeds of this self, that better self condemn and reproaches him.
The apostle Paul describes this internal warfare, and points the way to peace, in the fifth chapter of Galatians:
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. . . . And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the passions and lusts thereof. If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit." "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . ."
The peace that comes to our hearts through Christ living in us and through our living and walking in the Spirit, does not mean that the conflict is over, that there will be no more warfare within. Our peace is a day-by-day peace that comes through victories won day by day. The victories are the victories of our higher self over our lower self, resulting in co-ordination and harmony between the diverse elements of our nature—and this is peace.
