 |  |
This leads us to the second reference to the "God of peace":
"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 you perfect"
(Heb. 13: 20, 21).
Not only must the "God of peace" meet the enmity of the Serpent; He must also
overcome death and the grave (for death is an "enemy": I Cor. 15: 26). The "God of
peace" must carry the work of its blessed conclusion and "make perfect in every good
work to do His will" those who, by reason of the alienation and enmity of sin, knew not
the way of peace nor the paths of righteousness. Nothing short of resurrection glory, with
its complete satisfaction, can satisfy the God of peace, and so, to the testimony of
Rom. 16: and Heb. 13: must be added that of I Thess. 5::
"The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul
and body be preserved entire, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ"
(I Thess. 5: 23 R.V.).
We have quoted the R.V. here because of its translation "be preserved entire". The
A.V., however, by its double use of "wholly" and "whole" keeps closer to the actual
wording. The first word "wholly" is a translation of holoteles, from holos, "all" and
teleo, "to complete". What a wonderful expansion of the word shalom, with its
underlying thought of perfectness and completion. The second word, translated "whole"
in the A.V. and "entire" in the R.V. is holokleros, from holos, "all", and kleros, a "part"
or "share". This word is used by Josephus to describe the "perfectness" of the sacrificial
victim and in Acts 3: 16 with reference to the lame man's "perfect soundness". It is
also used in James 1: 4 of that spiritual integrity that "wants nothing".
In I Thess. 5: 23, the order of the words is important--"spirit, and soul and body".
This order was inverted at the fall of man. The spirit lusted after wisdom, the soul lusted
after that which was pleasant to the eyes, the body sought satisfaction. The yielding to
the temptation placed the spirit in a position subordinate to the soul, and the soul to the
body. The law of sin is "in the members", and still wars against the law of the mind.
Man is not viewed as complete and entire until spirit, soul and body shall have attended
the full perfectness of resurrection standing in Christ. Such a doctrine is, of course, a
complete denial of spiritism, which discounts the body and has no room for a physical
resurrection, and is also a rebuke to those who set aside the soul as something undesirable
and evil. The soul is as necessary as the body, though both may be instruments of evil if
allowed to usurp the place of the spirit. The Lord Himself spoke of loving "the Lord thy
God . . . . . with all thy soul", and it would be a foolish criticism of the Creator's wisdom
to set aside one third of the perfect man. It is true that the exercises of the soul in such
things as poetry and music are not "spiritual", neither is the eating of one's breakfast; yet
both are normal and both can be done to the glory of the Lord. I Thess. 5: 23 reveals the
God of peace triumphantly undoing the evil and discord introduced into the constitution
of man by the enmity of Eden. The title is a fitting one, when once the true meaning and
goal of "peace" is perceived.