KING OF PEACE
‘Being, by interpretation … also King of Salem, which is, King of Peace.’
We go on by an easy step from righteousness to peace; and indeed we must be always jealous that we travel in this order—taking righteousness on the way to peace. For if God had not first been true to Himself, and made it a righteous thing with Him to forgive a sinner, what an idle vanity would our peace have been!
I. The name of peace presupposes that there has been war—and what a tremendous fact lies in that simple inference, man is at war with his Creator.
II. It is over all the widespread field of war that the King of Salem has in His infinite grace stretched His sceptre, making the very ground of the battle the base of the throne of the empire of His peace.
III. When the last mortal combat which a man can fight comes on, how will it be with the believer then? Brighter visions of coming glory will shine on his path—sweeter whispers will sound in his ear—the arm will be more sufficient beneath him, and the staff stronger at his side—death, stingless because it is sinless, and stingless and sinless because it left both sting and sin in Christ, will meet him harmlessly—its fiercest power can only knock off the chains which bind him—it is the death that dies—the dying Christian lives indeed—and the grave itself is another province in the empire of peace, through which he travels to a higher Salem.
Illustration
‘Go down into the secrets of the hidden life even of a converted man; and what is there? A warfare still, even to the death. That has come to pass—the curse to Satan, the promise to Adam—the presence of a second principle awakening conflict where all before was in too fatal union and peace—and between the two natures of the original child of Adam and the new man which is in process of construction within him there is set up a contest, severe, unsparing, constant, which will not cease till he lays down this mortal body.’