Seek Peace and Pursue It

1 Peter 3:8-9 ESV

“Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”

When the Scriptures teach us Christians that we are to have unity of mind, it is understood that this “unity” is first and foremost unity of mind with God, being likeminded with Jesus Christ. It is not unity with the ungodly, and it is not being likeminded with the worldly nor with those who are walking in the flesh and not according to the Spirit of God. And it is critical that we comprehend that, for there are many wolves in sheep’s clothing within the gatherings of “the church” who are pushing a unity of the flesh, not of God.

Basically, whether the Scriptures are speaking of faith or unity or love or compassion or tender hearts or humility, etc., these must all be founded in God/Christ, and in his divine character and will. And they must be understood in biblical terms first and foremost. And these character traits should not be defined by the world nor by culture nor by the flesh of humans nor by psychology nor by humanistic philosophy, etc. For the world doesn’t define all these things in all the same ways in which the Scriptures do.

Now, as followers of Jesus Christ, if we are walking in obedience to our Lord and to his New Covenant commands, and so we are no longer walking in sin, but we are walking in righteousness and holiness, and if we are sharing the truth of the Scriptures with others, and if we are refuting the lies of the enemy, we are going to have people hate us and come against us and do evil against us, even our own family members, and even others who profess faith in Jesus Christ, and even pastors of church congregations.

But we are not to be people who repay evil with evil, but who repay evil with good. If they are mean to us, we are kind back. If they deliberately and even premeditatedly do what they know is going to hurt us, we do not try to hurt them back. Now we can certainly speak the truth in love to them, and try to reason with them, especially if they also profess faith in Christ. But we are to forgive those who hate us and who do evil against us and who try to get even with us. But forgiveness should not be permission to keep on sinning.

1 Peter 3:10-12 ESV

“For ‘Whoever desires to love life

    and see good days,

let him keep his tongue from evil

    and his lips from speaking deceit;

let him turn away from evil and do good;

    let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

    and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.’”

We live in a world and in a Christian culture here in America where lies and manipulations and the twisting of truth and deception abound. Our government lies to us. Our media lies to us. Businesses lie to us. Teachers lie to us. Advertisements and social media memes and videos and books, etc., lie to us. So much can be faked. So much is being altered. Even if you see it with your physical eyes, you can’t trust that what you are seeing is real. And people lie to us by pretending one thing but while doing another.

But the sad reality of it all is that so many who are supposedly teaching the Scriptures are willfully, deliberately, habitually, and even premeditatedly lying to us. And they are trying to manipulate, deceive, trick and trap us in their deceitful scheming. And so many of them are mimicking one another, because they are all following the same marketing tools and schemes for how to grow their “churches,” and for how to “draw in large crowds” of people from the world, using worldly means and methods.

So, we must guard our hearts against that. We must be people of prayer and people who study the Scriptures in their context, and people who test the spirits against the Scriptures, in context, to see which ones of them are of God or not of God. But context is critical, for so many false doctrines and practices are being developed via removing Scriptures from their contexts and twisting them to say what the Scriptures, as a whole, do not teach, i.e. they are in direct conflict with God and with the Scriptures.

One of the big lies being pushed and accepted today is that we can “believe” (not usually biblically defined) in Jesus, have all our sins forgiven (past, present, and future), be on our way to heaven, believing nothing can take that away from us, and yet still continue to walk in sin, in deliberate and habitual sin against God and against other humans, combined with the belief that we do not have to repent of our sins, we do not have to submit to Christ as Lord, and we do not have to obey our Lord’s commands. That is a lie!

So please pay attention to what this is teaching here. The righteous are not those who merely make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ but then nothing changes, but they continue living in sin. The righteous in the eyes of God are those who are living righteously, for whom righteousness is their practice, which is the righteousness of God and not of the flesh of man. The righteous are not those who make sin their practice. They are those who have turned from evil and who are doing the will of God, in practice.

[Matt 7:21-23; Matt 24:9-14; Lu 9:23-26; Rom 1:18-32; Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14,24; Rom 12:1-2; Rom 13:11; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; 1 Co 1:18; 1 Co 15:1-2; 2 Tim 1:8-9; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 1:5; Gal 5:16-21; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 2:8-10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:5-17; 1 Pet 2:24; Tit 2:11-14; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Heb 3:6,14-15; Heb 10:23-31; Heb 12:1-2; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15] 

When I Go Home

By G. M. Eldridge

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes…” Revelation 21:4

In the moment He appears

And the light from heaven shines,

I’ll forget ev’ry fear,

Ev’ry pain I’ll leave behind.

Then I’ll see Him as He is

And I’ll know Him as I’m known.

Ev’ry tear wiped away when I go home.

Ever present is the tho’t 

That a moment waits for me

When unworthy as I am,

His glory I will see.

I will empty all my praise

Before my Father’s throne.

Ev’ry tear wiped away when I go home.

If the trial I endure,

And your presence I can’t find,

Be near me, Lord, I pray,

Bring back unto my mind

That your promises are firm

And I’m never on my own.

Ev’ry tear wiped away when I go home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98Zvr1CyXg 

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