Queen of Epistles

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     The congregation of God is something quite different. It is the company of people whom it has pleased God to call into the fellowship of His Son. Its members are chosen by Him, not by us, and we have to accept them whether we like them or not.--The Household of God, by Lesslie Newbigin.

     If you are the "gung ho" type of reader, this article which is the first of a short series, may turn you off like a faucet in the kitchen sink. I could jump off the journalistic diving-board and start paddling for the other shore but I prefer to take you behind the scenes, and let you see what happened to firm up my resolution to write about part of one chapter in the Ephesian letter. If I ramble around a little in this too lengthy introduction you can either take a nap or two along the way or climb the fence and cut across the lower forty and meet us three or four pages down the road.

     Almost a year ago I spent a long evening talking in a dormitory room with three young brethren on a university campus. You couldn't have picked a more unlikely looking foursome. I was approaching sixty-five, as evidenced by my thin gray hair, a non-intellectual wholly devoid of an educational degree, having barely gotten out of Topeka High School through the grace of God, with the added assistance of Miss Carmi Wolfe, an unclaimed female blessing who was a speech teacher like no other I have ever met. May she rest in peace!

     In addition, I was the only one in the dorm room who gave evidence by his dress that he was part of "the straight world." I had a tie on and was wearing an Arrow shirt which I had purchased on the bargain counter of "irregulars." The other fellows were wearing jeans, and their heavy shoes which looked like combat boots sent a stray thought flickering through my mind that I was in an underground meeting with some of God's paratroopers.

     One of the men looked like my idea of the ship captain who pursued Moby Dick. He had a bushy beard which would have made the writing prophets green with envy in 500 B.C. The other two lads both had moustaches. One of them had trained his to make him look as fierce as any pirate who ever climbed up the deck of a ship with a knife held between his gleaming incisors. But we were absolutely at ease. They accepted me as being about their age and I accepted them as being about mine, and since "generation gaps" only exist inside of people, if there is no internal gap there can be no external one.

     Our talk was serious, although punctuated by some of the sharp wit which is a part of the refreshingly open era in which our lot has been fortunately cast. I had spoken four times on campus that day, starting at a continental breakfast before daybreak. Three times I had made myself vulnerable by inviting questions from the audience, and I had gone the full round, discussing humanism, exis-

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tentialism, the genuineness and authenticity of the sacred scriptures, the concept of life beyond, and the authority of the moral and ethical values as expressed by Jesus in word and deed.

     At the morning meeting these three came to ask if they might meet with me after the last session of the day and "rap" awhile. I am not a philosopher and I haven't got as much sense as Elton Trueblood who heads for the motel room to rest and meditate every evening at 10:00 o'clock. That is about the time when things start moving on the campus. So I allowed these three personable activists to "con" me into meeting with them in a session which finally broke up with a prayer about 2:00 o'clock in the morning.

     They were all interesting, but then I have never met a person who isn't. They had been through some pretty hairy escapades which were calculated to curdle the blood of a staid old codger like myself, but I am resolved never to be surprised by anything which humans do, and if I am, never to let them know it. The boy with the buccaneer-type moustache had been "busted by the fuzz" about two years before, to employ the language which is the jargon of the one time Beats. He had been inhaling a joint when the long arm of the law reached out and plucked him from a park bench. When they searched him they found his little sack of expensive "Acapulco Gold" and they put him through the legal wringer, giving him a pretty rough way to go.

     He now looked upon the occasion of his arrest and detention as an exhibition of God's providence, because one of the Jesus People who was working the jail, and who had formerly been on the real hard stuff, sought him out and told him "the Way was a Who" and also told him who the Way was. Now all three were members of the Church of Christ although it was touch and go as to whether they could stay with it and keep their sanity. It was a little like being back in the detention ward. They were not under grace but under law! That was one reason they wanted to talk with me. They knew I had not "flown the coop" or tried to set "the chicken house" on fire!

     I had been brought on campus by a crew of young Christians who wanted to throw down the gauntlet of faith in the pagan arena and have a direct encounter with the forces of raw skepticism. The only group in the city that kicked up dust about my coming was the Church of Christ. The preacher came down to the college class on the Sunday before and warned the students not to attend my meetings. He fulminated at length and breathed out fire about my laxity on fellowship, telling the kids how I did not hesitate to speak where they used instrumental music. But he made the mistake of telling them I was probably one of the best thinkers around, and spoke and wrote so cleverly that I could make black look white and vice versa. So all of them came, everyone of them, and quietly slipped up and told me they wanted to see my magic color trick. We had a great time in the Lord! They were terrific!

     Before the talk test was very far along I learned that the others were really serious about study of the revealed word. They were engaged in a weekly investigation of Ephesians in one of the dorms and were enthused about it. When they learned it was one of the books which really turned me on we discussed it at length and I told them that for years I had bandied about the idea of writing a whole book on Ephesians 4:1-16. They urged me to do it. I pointed out that I could never fulfill the dream because I had so much else going, but I might deal with it briefly in the paper.

     I requested each one to write down how he classified the Ephesian letter. Here are some of the answers of these perceptive men with sharp minds. "Ephesians is the dessert served up with God's free smorgasbord." "It is the minimum daily requirement of all truth caught up in a single one-a-day capsule." "The jewel covered handle of the sword of

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the Spirit." They did not know it but they were expressing in contemporary vernacular what heavy minds of the past had said.

     William Barclay calls Ephesians "the Queen of the epistles." He says it is "Paul's supreme letter." Hugh Grotius, who died in 1645, said, "It equals its sublimity of ideas with words more sublime than any human language ever possessed." Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it, "The divinest composition of man." Once, while teaching a class years ago I referred to it as "the central diamond in the regal crown of divine disclosures." At the insistence of my young friends I want to share a few thoughts about it. What I say will neither be new nor unique. I only trust that it will be refreshing.

     All of this is in harmony with the divine purpose, pleasure and will, which is to "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him" (1:10). The letter is a great dissertation on unity. And unity is to be found only in Jesus. The expression "in Him" sounds like the staccato blows of a power hammer as the apostle beats out a rhythm of oneness. We are chosen in him, in him we have redemption, in him we have obtained an inheritance. He is the center of life. Whatever does not proceed from him has no authority. He is the circumference of life. Whatever does not lead to him has no validity. He is everything! He is all!

     After we trusted in him we were sealed with the Holy Spirit who had been promised (1:13). We were quickened or made alive after being dead in sins and trespasses. We not only owe God our thanks for an inheritance but we are indebted to him for life. Really the inheritance is life! So this letter speaks of those who were apart from God being brought back into unity with him by reconciliation through his marvelous grace.

     It also deals with those who were alienated from one another. The Gentiles were regarded as being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. They were foreigners according to the covenant upon which the promises were based. They had no hope. They were in the world without God. They were held in contempt by the Jews. It was a common saying that, "Gentiles were made as fuel to keep the fires of hell stoked." To touch a Gentile was to become unclean. To enter a Gentile home was to be defiled. So bitter was the hostility that if a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, the parents of the boy held a funeral service for their son. Intimate relationship with a Gentile was the equivalent of death!

     But Jesus swept away the hatred. He did not force the Jews to become Gentiles, nor the Gentiles to become like Jews. Those who were far off were brought nigh by the blood of Jesus. It was the blood that reached out and drew them in. He abolished in his flesh the enmity. He reconciled both Jew and Gentile unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the existing hostility by it. I am thrilled by this! I know now that the secret of unity is not to kill each other off in debate. It is not to vanquish opposers at all. It is to remove the hostility that exists between us. It is not to straighten up everything so we can start loving. It is to start loving so we can straighten up things. It is to love

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that we may live, for it is better not to live than not to love.

     The Jews continued in their circumcision. The Gentiles continued in their uncircumcision. What the blood did was to render both of them unavailing in the divine-human relationship. The only thing really important to that relationship is a new creation in Christ Jesus. That is why I repeatedly affirm that I shall allow no opinion, idea or interpretation of sincere brethren in Christ to become of greater value than the blood of Jesus. I shall not sever the red cord with which God has bound us by the sharp blade of controversy.

     We do not become one by attaining harmony. Peace is not a pact but a person. He is our peace. We are made one. Our unity is an act of God, not an attainment of man. Read it again! "He is our peace, who hath made both one." I do not need to accept the views of another. All I do is accept Jesus, and that puts me in a position to accept everyone whom God accepts. I do not accept a man because I agree with him. I accept him because God accepts him. If he is circumcised I do not uncircumcise him. If he is uncircumcised I do not circumcise him. The only circumcision which counts is that made without hands. It is an operation of God and not an act of man. It is the faith he has in Jesus, and not his conformity with a theological position I hold, which brings a man into Jesus.

     It is easy to talk about how the cross renders the entire hassle over circumcision invalid. We no longer have that problem. For one thing, not one community of saints in a thousand has a single Jew in it. It is no longer "to the Jew first and also to the Greek." It is now to the Gentile first and last, and not at all to the Jew. Most brethren think the gospel cannot save the Jew now, so they do not bother taking it to the Jewish community.

     Our contemporary problems are basically the same in nature. But they are over different issues. The Bible does not mention our issues, so we never think of applying the recommendation as to circumcision to them. We are just not bothered about eating meats or observing days, and we have no trauma over circumcision. The faith has now become a white Anglo-Saxon, middle-class American export. It is our bag! We even talk of sending "missionaries" to England and Canada. They are not a part of the United States of America so they are areas for foreign missionaries to try and reach "where the gospel has never been preached."

     I am no longer a party to the sectarian spirit. I have been delivered from the partisan treadmill. All of our "issues" avail nothing so far as I am concerned. Instrumental music avails nothing and non-instrumental music avails nothing in so far as our relationship with God through Christ Jesus is concerned. Bible classes avail nothing or lack of them avails nothing. The same is true of one cup or individual cups, orphan homes or no orphan homes--all of them are like circumcision. If a man wants to be circumcised but does not regard it as essential to my salvation and does not try to bind it as dogma upon my heart, it is his business. It is between himself and God. The same thing holds true for instrumental music, cups, classes or colleges. Just do not try to bind any position upon me as essential to life with the Father, for I do not believe it. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life. That is where I stand, and there is where I intend to allow others to stand.

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     I intend to receive every person who has been immersed into Christ Jesus upon the basis of his faith, just as God received me. And I do not intend to be catechized, cashiered or calibrated by men. I no longer represent any splinter or segment created by men. I belong to Jesus. I intend to stand with Him. I will not be moved. I do not belong to Jesus because I belong to a special set of brethren, but I belong with all of His brethren because I belong to Him. If God could accept me into his fellowship when I was ignorant about so much I will have no trouble accepting others who are ignorant about so little. Fellowship is not conditioned upon one being right about all things, but upon being in the right one at all times.

     I may disagree with a saint the rest of my natural life. I may discuss our differences every time I see him. I know that I will if he brings them up. But, if he has gained access by one Spirit unto the Father, I'll receive him as my brother, and I will not look upon him as an alien or foreigner. We are not begotten again by musing on music or by a position on praise, but by a loving Father. It is the blood of Christ which makes us one, not a correct understanding of every opinion. We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. It is not a good work to destroy or deny his workmanship. If you are good enough for God to receive, you are not bad enough for me to reject.

     Please remember that our real purpose is to learn God's secret for the edifying of the body, that marvelous synchronization, the glorious organism, composed of living parts. I have the honor of being one of them. I'm overjoyed that the teaching with which I am concerned is pitched on a field of unity. This is the soil in which service must grow if it is to grow at all. It is God's will that the disunity seen in every part of the fragmented universe be resolved in Christ Jesus. His design is that it shall be effected by the body. My task is to become an instrument for the sacred oneness, an earthen vessel bearing the message of unity, a channel through which grace may flow to produce singleness of heart.

     "I therefore the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (4: 1-3).

     These words logically fall into three divisions--a plea from prison, a presentation to practice, and a position to protect. They define the responsibility of an organ in the spiritual body. They speak of a call, a walk and an endeavor. Unless we understand the meaning and implication of the terms we will probably mill around contributing to the confusion rather than promoting the peace.

     It is not a mere dramatic gesture which prompted the apostle to remind us he was a prisoner. Certainly one who was shackled to a Roman guard, awaiting death, would not waste his time writing trivia. There is something impelling about words written in prison with the gray shadow of death moving stealthily closer. Witness the impact of the writings of John Bunyan and Dietrich Bon-

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hoeffer. From the dungeon of the Mamertine prison in Rome these words come with a special passion. We dare not deny their urgency.

     To walk is to progress in a given direction, and it is to progress with regular and consistent steps. Vocation is the word for calling, so that literally, the saints are urged to walk worthy of the calling to which they are called. This is universal rather than specific or limited. The religious world has long had an idea that God calls certain men to preach or to be missionaries. There is nothing in the Word upon which to base this. The fact is that all of us are called to the side of Jesus to share in subduing the world to him. This is our vocation. Paul's vocation was not tent-making. That was the means by which he supported himself while fulfilling his calling. Our call is to serve, and to walk worthy of it is to behave consistently and to act responsibly.

     The worthy behavior is here described by five great terms. Barclay calls them jewels. He says they are basic to the Christian faith. With most of them he deals in his book Word Studies in the Bible. I believe they are absolutely essential to the maintenance of unity among fallible beings like ourselves.

     Lowliness is a word which owes its existence to the Way. It describes a virtue which the pagan society looked at with disdain. It was regarded as ignoble and inferior. Our best current translation is humility, which the heathen social culture regarded as cringing and servile. It was never regarded as a worthy approach to behavior by those outside of Jesus.

     Yet it is the person who stubbornly insists upon having his own way about everything, the one who regards the world as "his oyster," and who will stoop to anything to gain his point, who is the real threat to unity. Almost every congregation has someone who acts like "a spoiled brat" in the divine family, throwing a tantrum or indulging in a spell of pouting if he does not get his way in a business meeting. Sometimes such individuals, in their egotistical spirit, try to bludgeon others into agreement by coercion and threat of leaving or witholding their money. Such unscrupulous persons always blame those who will not kow-tow to their dictatorial demands as causing the trouble when no group can continue to function while it is dominated by such high-handed tactics. They are "flies in the apothecary's ointment" and they cause it to stink.

     Lowliness is not feeling sorry for oneself. It is not a cringing, cowering attitude. Rather it results from an honest and fair evaluation of self. It is the result of taking off our mask and getting a good look at self in the mirror of real life. It is what happens to character when we start living and quit putting on an act. I doubt that anything else ever shook me quite as much as the startling realization that what I thought of as being "loyal" to Jesus by debating my brethren, was actually a tool for furthering division. And the tragedy of it was that I liked it. Incredible as it seems, it was almost as if I were glad that divisions had come so I could prove my valor.

     Notice that the apostle enjoins "all lowliness and meekness." These are not characteristics to be adopted in business meetings or when a public assembly is discussing a subject. They are not jackets to put on when the weather changes, or external wrappings to be donned to face crises. They are not just a way of life but the life of The Way. They are not to be partial but complete.

     The original word for meekness was used for an animal which had been trained to obey and which could be guided by the bit and reins. Once when I was out west, I stayed with a man who trained horses. The first day I was in his home I made the error of referring to it as "breaking horses." He quickly corrected me. He thought of a spirited horse as a noble creature. He refused to break it. He told me that what he did was simply discipline an animal to re-

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spond to a superior authority, the will of a master.

     When the Spirit plucked this word out of the vocabulary bag and dropped it in here as Paul was writing, He had this same thing in mind. Meekness is not weakness. A horse is as strong while guided by reins as when it roamed the plains as a mustang. But his strength is now channeled for constructive use. The Anheuser-Busch Breweries with headquarters in our city, maintain a stable of huge Clydesdales which annually win prizes for the floats they draw in such spectacular pageants as the Rose Bowl parade. They are not weak, but they are disciplined, and they work together in harmony at the touch of a master's hand. That is meekness as the word is here used.

     God may break our hearts but he does not crush our spirits. A broken and a contrite heart he will not despise, because it is divested of false pride and that frightful bloated egotism which wants to do its own thing. But soldiers need vibrant spirits to endure hardship. Music cannot be made from strings that sag or hang loose. We must respond as one when the Master strikes the keyboard and the symphony of life is being played.

     The next term essential to the fulfillment of the divine ideal is that of long-suffering. The Latins used it for the indomitable spirit. It described the man who would never give in. Beaten down, he would never surrender. I recall a boy like that when I went to a little rural school. Most of us fought everyday although it was strictly forbidden. That is probably the reason we did it. It doesn't take much to start a fight when you are eager for the fray and would "rather fight than switch,"--or study, either. We had a routine to follow when we got a victim down where we could pound on him and work him over. He had to say "calf rope" before we would let him up!

     I have no idea where the term originated, nor what it meant. It was a country expression and I suspect was a term of surrender indicative of what happened when a running calf was roped and snubbed to a halt. But the lad to whom I referred would never say it. Even when a bigger roughneck sat on him and beat the daylights out of him he would not give in or give up. I talked to his mother about it and she told me that when he was small she undertook to make him say he was sorry for some misdeed. She wore out two peach tree switches and whipped him until she got out of breath and had to stop for fear of getting a heart attack and leaving a stubborn orphan. He did not flinch during the beating, and like a sheep dumb before his shearers he opened not his mouth.

     That was long-suffering among the Romans. They cultivated it to such a degree they would never make peace under defeat. If a Roman legion was backed against a wall they would die to a man without giving in, and the final survivor would die swinging the sword while it grew slimy in his grip from his own gore pouring from his wounds.

     But the new covenant scriptures were not written in Latin. They were written in Greek and here the word had a wholly different bearing. It referred to that spirit which rejects retaliation and puts up with men who are bitter, recriminating and malicious. Chrysostom called it the spirit which had power to take revenge, but which never does so. All of us have seen congregations of saints ruined by those who sought to "get back" at someone because of a slight, sometimes real, but often fancied. Peace will never dwell in a family or in a congregation where members allow wrath to be coddled and nurtured in sick minds.

     Francis Bacon wrote, "In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior." He said in the same essay, "A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." I think there is a tremendous spiritual value to be gained from a knowledge that you could step into the arena with one who is flinging taunts and in-

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sults at you and slap him into the top tier of bleacher seats, but you refuse to do it and get your hands dirty. It is hard to fling tar without getting a little of it on yourself. No one with good sense should fight a skunk with a short stick, and it is unlikely you'll accomplish much by poking at a rattlesnake with a ballpoint pen.

     Preachers must really cultivate long-suffering if they love the cause. Many congregations have someone in them who was born in the objective case and the kickative mood. When such an attitude is coupled with a suspicious mind and a long tongue it not only kindles a fire but it keeps throwing brush on it so it will not be extinguished. A confirmed busybody is not only a big nuisance but a genuine source of difficulty. There must be a pretty intensive desire to use the shelter of the pulpit to tell such people off, but there is the possibility that they are a little off before you tell them. Restraint is better than revenge. There is a Spanish proverb which says, "No revenge is more honorable than the one not taken." The poet Juvenal, who wrote about the time John was on Patmos, said that, "Revenge is always the joy of narrow, sick and petty minds."

     Probably religious editors are worse offenders than most. Every sect seems to rally around a journal. The field of journalism is not exempt from men who crave notoriety by snapping and snarling at every person who differs with them. If there are no issues they contrive one, as they have no other reason for existence than that of agitation. When brethren who are attacked are a little sensitive it is hard to keep from fetching an editorial kick at the tormentors but to do so does not contribute to peace. It involves one in an effort which demands time and energy and which forces truly important things to suffer from default. It does not seem like good judgment to let your car run off into the river while trying to swat a mosquito who thinks he is a hummingbird. The best way to deal with an attack upon you is to write a stinging rejoinder and throw it in the wastebasket without publishing it.

     Forbearing is a good word, closely allied to the preceding expressions. To be forbearing is to be tolerant, and to make allowances for others. Unfortunately, the discussion about fellowship the last few years has made a lot of brethren as nervous and jumpy as a mother kangaroo in a room full of pickpockets. They are upset and edgy, and the cold sweat breaks out on them at the dire thought that they might mistakenly regard someone as a brother who did not trim his sails by the orthodox wind. No one is more jittery than those who have to sort out everyone who is going to heaven and save God the trouble.

     To them tolerance is a dirty word. But it must be remembered that tolerance is not the endorsement of anything that is wrong. It is merely enduring one who thinks it is right. And we are positively told that we must make allowances for one another in love. If we make no allowances for others none will be made for us. And we are going to be in dire need of mercy. Not all ignorance is deliberate and one can be mistaken without being a rebel. There is something sadly askew in an imperfect heart which demands perfection in all others except itself. Fortunately, the final judgment must be left to God and not to the brethren. If it had not been so arranged there would have been no use for heaven and hell would have been bursting at the seams. It is obvious that anyone who thinks of himself as going to glory must realize that God will have to overlook a whole lot of ignorance and some pretty seamy behavior.

     Our real problem is in the love department. As human beings we are not only inclined to be selfish and childish, but we are that way. We want to love only those who love us, and we want them to be first. We flatter our ego by feeling very close to those who are like us and who see things as we see them. We're afraid we'll waste a little love where it will not be appreciated, and as

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low as some love tanks are there is a chance they will run dry before we get around. What we do not realize is that love is of God. It is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given unto us. Of course, He cannot pour it out or pour it in if we hold our hand over the spout. Some brethren are so jittery about the Spirit they do not want him to pour anything on them, in them or about them! They don't want to be "withdrawn from."

     Our divisions did not come over "issues" at all. And they will not be settled by debating issues. If we argued every issue to a frazzle and then argued the frazzle off, new issues would spring up and factional souls would wave them as factional banners and there would be new divisions and new heartaches. No one is more divided or bitter than those who split off to keep the Lord's church pure. We did not divide when issues were introduced or for a long time afterward, but we divided when we quit loving one another. The way to overcome division is to resume loving each other.

     I mean start loving one another where we are and as we are. It is downright silly to wait until people see everything as you do to show your love for them. Just about the time you get things patched up one of you may learn something new and if you do that will upset the unity apple cart again. It would help a lot of brethren, especially preachers, to start being honest about love. Every time you mention it as the unifying dynamic they interject, "I have always loved everyone." If they love them like some of them do me, God help everyone! Who needs enemies as long as he has some brethren?

     It hardly seems very loving to me to misrepresent your brethren, but I suspect a lot of folk have a warped idea of what love is all about. Love is from agape. It is the essence of God, the divine nature. It was difficult to capture this in a human word. Words are vehicles of thought and the concept of the divine essence was so magnificent there was no vehicle adequate to convey it. The Spirit adopted an unusual word, a strange one to the common Greek, and invested it with a sense it never had before. Even yet the spirit infused into it is so tremendous we are always whittling it down or deflating it to fit into our puny souls.

     When some partisan defender derides or sneers at love as the only dynamic which can fulfill the very purpose of all law and bring peace to a fragmented world, he does not realize that he is belittling the very essence of God and asserting it is incapable of restoring order in a disorderly universe. Agape is unconquerable and indestructible benevolence. It is that active and benevolent good will which stops at nothing to achieve the good of the beloved object.

     It is not a fluctuating emotion at all. It is an act of will, the admission of the divine essence or nature into the human personality and the projection of that nature-- healing, restoring and recovering broken relationships. I have been accused of believing that love can solve every problem on earth. I gladly plead guilty to the charge. I not only believe it can do that, but I believe it is the only force in the universe that can. It is not love or something else. It is love or nothing else. Without love gifts are nothing. Without it sacrifices are nothing. Without it we are nothing.

     It is one of the most difficult assignments of the Spirit to forbear one another in love, that is, to make allowances because of sheer love. This kind of love is not for frightened, pussyfooting, wire-walking members of an institution who are trusting to their mere membership to save them. To know this love one must die. He must count all of his past attainments as garbage. He must throw them on the refuse dump. It is impossible to have agape without a cross--your cross.

     A lot of good people will never be able to see how love can conquer division while differences exist. That's the only time it can conquer it! It is no problem to me. I simply esteem my brethren as

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being of more value than my opinions or ideas. I will not allow something for which my Lord did not die to come between me and my brother for whom He did die. Nothing that Jesus has not purchased with his blood is as important to me as someone he has bought with it. Once I could not see some of my brethren for a piano, now I cannot see a piano for my brethren. That does not cure the difference but it does cure the division, and the Bible does not say that difference of opinion is a sin but it does say that division in the family of God is a sin. The way to unite is to unite, not to debate about it.

     I am not commanded to love my brother's ideas. I am told to love my brother. The Bible does not say to let "idea love" continue but to let brotherly love continue. I intend to do that because one who does not love his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life. You cross the frontier from death unto life because you love the brethren. He that does not love his brother abides in death. That is not a pleasing prospect for me.

     God does not limit my love of brethren to those in the restoration movement or any other movement. We do not become brothers by enrolling in a movement or by identification with a faction, but by being born again. And I am going to love all of God's children wherever they are. I do not want to love merely in word or speech but in deed and in truth. I do not intend to sham it, fake it, or make a pretense. I am going to love my brothers for real and I am going to show it!

     I shall recognize them, share with them, go among them, labor with them as far as they will allow me in whatever enterprise appeals to my conscience as being scriptural. I shall make allowances for them in love. You do not have to be forbearing with someone who agrees with you on everything. My brethren need not love me for me to love them. Agape is love for the unloving and unlovely. It is unconquerable good will toward those who count themselves as our enemies. Jesus came from heaven to earth because he loved and I want to go from earth to heaven for the same reason.

     Unity in Christ is not something that we shape but something in which we share. We do not achieve it, we appropriate it. It is a creation of the Spirit and not a coalition of man. It is called the unity of the Spirit because it originates with the Spirit and is ministered by the Spirit. It is the Spirit dwelling within which binds us to God and to one another. If the Spirit dwells in me and the same Spirit dwells in you, we are together in Christ whether we admit it or not. I'm in unity with every person on this earth in whom the Spirit abides. I do not care where they are.

     In the old covenant peace was associated with salvation and this meant to be made whole, to restore to the original state of wholeness. It meant more than cessation of hostilities or a time when war was not being actively waged. A man once told me that he knew the most peaceable couple in the community. They never exchanged a cross word. Neither ever interrupted the other. They were this way because they were not on speaking terms. Peace is not quietness based on hostility or contempt.

     The word eirene, the word for peace can be best defined in terms of relationship. The bond of peace is the tie that binds me in proper relationship to my brethren because I am in a proper relationship with God. Peace grows out of

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an inner consciousness of acceptance with God, a sense of justification by faith or trust in the righteousness of Christ.

     In a world of war I am called to wage peace. I will be blessed only if I am a peacemaker. I will also be called a child of God. So I must proclaim peace, plead for it and press it upon men. I must not be deterred by those who seek strife and ensue it. No task is nobler than to attempt to mediate peace in God's fragmented family. Frequently nothing else is more misunderstood.

     Knowing this, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to John Adams, on October 12, 1781, in which he said, "I have never known a peace made, even the most advantageous, that was not censured as inadequate, and the makers condemned as injudicious or corrupt. 'Blessed are the peacemakers' is, I suppose, to be understood in the other world; for in this they are frequently cursed."

     Peace will never be restored by universal conformity. The minds of men can no more all think alike than their faces all look alike. Peace was never ordained upon uniformity of opinion, ideas or interpretation, but upon faith. And faith rests upon facts and not upon deductions from the facts. That is why our walls will not be broken down by metaphysical debate but by love.

     Recently I read a statement made in a speech by a French priest, Msgr. Chevrot, who could see that creeds and dogmata were losing their power over the minds of men. He said, "The ramparts behind which men protect themselves from each other seem able to defy the centuries: but they are not safe against erosion. A day comes when the mortar crumbles, the stones come apart, and the walls of the citadel collapse. My brothers, we are separated today; if we have not got ladders long enough to climb the walls which separate us, we have a force that can undermine them, the force of our love. Let us love one another as Jesus loved us, and he, our Christ, will throw down these impassable walls."

     In my next article, if the Father wills, I will take up the seven planks in the platform of unity. Until that time may God bless us all in peace! Let us grow in grace and knowledge of the truth.