Patience, Hope, Peace

Romans xv. 5, 13, and 33

The God of patience and consolation... the God of hope... the God of peace. — Romans xv. 5, 13, and 33.

THE close juxtaposition of these three epithets is -*- remarkable, and I have ventured to rend them from their connection, and to put them together as my text, because I think that, gathering them into one, we may draw some very valuable lessons.

“Patience... hope... peace,” almost as fair a company as that other triad, “faith, hope, charity,” only that these have somewhat sadder faces, and have more to do with care and sorrow. We do not go far in life before we find out that we “have need of patience “; for there are a great many things that cannot be cured, and that must be endured. We do not go very far before we find out that hope is least available when it is most needed, for it is generally but a reflection in the skies of the light of our joys; and it fades when these die down. It is easiest to hope when things are going well with us, and then we want it least. And we do not go far before we find out that, what with inward disharmony, and outward cares and trouble and changes, and the terrible dropping of all things precious from our hands, we can have but little peace.

So my three texts go straight to some of the deepest of our necessities, and show us that the only source of supply for them all is in God. The hold fast that keeps a man firm and upright must be without himself; and the fountain, the waters of which are to reach his lips, must have its source high above his head. ‘^ The God of patience and consolation... the God of hope... the God of peace” — there we get them all; elsewhere we get none of them. But if we put these three fragments together, we get instruction, too, about not only the source of our patience, and hope, and peace, but about the way by which these blessings can come to us from the one source. Now, in order to trace the real sequence in which these great gifts become ours, we begin with the last of these, and note that

I. God is the God of Peace.

Now, of course, that phrase might intend to describe not so much a gift of which He is the source, as an attribute of which He is the possessor. And very beautiful it would be, even in that sense, bringing to our minds the calm, eternal tranquillity of the unmoved and unchanging Source of all that moves and changes. But the analogy of the other two epithets seems distinctly to determine that what the apostle was thinking about in this name, “the God of peace,” was not so much a characteristic of the Divine nature as a gift of the Divine hand to us. Now, in order to come to an understanding of the depth and the fulness of this great phrase, I must ask you to remember the context of one of these three fragments. We read in the thirteenth verse, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” That is to say, whilst God is the source of all true joy in its manifold forms, and of all true peace in its infinite depth, the condition on which to us individually He becomes the God of peace, the source of our tranquillity, is “in believing.” Or, to put it into other words, the peace of God, which comes into all our hearts from the God of peace, comes on condition of our faith and trust. There is a precisely similar filiation of ideas, in another part of this great epistle, where the apostle says, “being justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” where again the link of connection between “the God of peace” and my heart is my faith. So, then, we come to this, that the initial step by which all this triad of blessings can be poured into our hearts is that, trusting in Him, in His Son Jesus Christ, who manifests and brings God to us, we thereby have the calm tranquillity of heart, which is the first of the three linked sisters to make her abode with us. Brethren, the one road to true, solid, permanent peace is the ancient path of faith, that sweeps away the emnity between the rebellious and self-willed heart and God. The beginning of all true rest of heart is that a man’s relations with God should be, consciously to the man himself, and thoroughly, and to the very foundation, set right. Any kind of apparent tranquillity which does not base itself upon childlike amity with God is like the skinning-over of a wound — beneath the surface there lies corruption, and the sore will one day or other break oat with tenfold violence and stench. If there is to be peace, there must first of all be peace with God; and if there is to be peace with God — oh, believe it, — there must be faith in Jesus Christ. Anything else is skinning over the wound, and all its virulence is left untouched.

But, again, the act of faith brings into the full possession of peace, because the very act of trusting, even when the trust is set upon one of our poor selves, breathes calm over a man’s heart. The child goes to sleep in the storm: “my father is at the helm.” The old saying has it that the traveller with an empty purse may sing in the presence of the robber. Yes; and the traveller with the fullest of purses may rest quite quiet if he has a strong guard round him; if he is trusting his escort, he himself will be at rest. Trust is tranquillity, even when it is fixed on a finite and unworthy object. And if we can lift our trailing confidences that so often twine round rotten stays here, and wreathe them about the pillars of God’s throne, we shall stand as stable as it, and “the peace of God that passes understanding” will keep our hearts and minds.

Again, trust brings peace, because in faith there is an absolute surrender of one’s own will to God. When Jesus Christ, close to Gethsemane and Calvary, said, “My peace I give unto you,” what were the elements of that peace that He bequeathed? Mainly this one, absolute submission to the will of God. That is the secret of all peace. When my heart bows either to obey His commandments, however distasteful to sense, or to accept His appointments, however painful to the flesh they may be, some low beginnings of content come to tranquillise the heart. What disturbs us in our daily lives is mainly our wills that kick against the pricks, and are recalcitrant to the providences of God, like some half-tamed domestic animal that plunges, and will not be dragged where the owner would have it, but for all its panting and its growls, has to go. Far better if it went quietly like a dog at its master’s heels. The secret of peace is submission.

And, again, trust brings peace, because it opens the door for, and admits us into, communion with God, the one object the possession of which fills, with a happy emancipation from the necessity of further search, all the powers of our nature. They who are rich need cast themselves into no doubtful speculations, nor torture themselves in the effort to gain more. And he who has God has thereby a heart quieted because it possesses all, a will subdued by love, and a nature satisfied, and therefore content to count its treasures, and not needing to seek by weary restlessness and many journeys here and there and everywhere, for goodly pearls. The one of great price makes rich to all intents of bliss, and is ours on condition of our simple trust.

And, still further, which is but a branch of the same thought, that possession of God which comes to all that trust Him, harmonises a man’s whole nature with itself, and so brings peace within. There is no more contradiction, no pulling of inclination this way and conscience that way, but in the measure in which our faith is vivid, strong, continuous, and, therefore, has brought into ourselves God Himself, in that measure does the ancient strife within cease to rage. If, by faith all the currents of our being set in one direction, the little eddies and backwaters, and the swirl of small whirlpools in the stream, are obliterated and abolished by the suck of the great orb that draws the heaped waters after itself The man whose being sets towards God is at peace, and only he.

Such, then, is the account, as it seems to me, of that one of these three epithets which I regard as the foundation of all, and so we come to the next one. God being the “God of peace” is thereby,

II. The God of Patience and Consolation.

Now, I have often had occasion to remark upon these two words which are here employed, and to point out that the one rendered ‘’ patience” does not mean merely the passive virtue of endurance, but involves likewise the notion of active persistence and perseverance in a given course, irrespective of the obstacles, the sorrows and difficulties, which may threaten to hinder our advance. Brave perseverance, much rather than quiet endurance, is the meaning of the word. The consolation of which the apostle is speaking is rather encouragement than merely consolation.

Now it is to be noticed that these two things, “patience” and “consolation,” which are regarded in our text as the gift of God, are in the immediately previous verse traced to the Scripture. For we read, just before the words with which I am now concerned, ‘’ that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.” No doubt psalm and prophet have often brought patience, and consolation, and encouragement to fighters and sufferers; but it is, I think, beautiful to notice that the apostle at once turns awav from the medium or source in the Scriptures to point to Him who is the true Source and Origin. It is not the Bible that gives you patience and comfort, but it is the God of the Bible, “the God of patience and consolation.” And is it not true, that the peace of which I have been speaking will sorely issue in our hearts in that brave persistence and long-suffering endurance which are implied in this word “patience,” and in the possession within of an encouragement which does more than comfort us for our sorrows, viz., braces us up not only to bear them, but through them to attain more manly and heroic conduct, and more firm and consolidated character? The ^’ peace,” of which we have been speaking, makes all outward trials dwindle and dwarf themselves. What matters it, though all the world outside the Arctic explorers’ little house be white with eternal death and snow, if within there are warmth, and light, and food? He can stand the polar winter, and wait for the faint twilight which shall declare that its reign is passed. And so the man that is living with the peace of God in his heart, can endure what else would be intolerable, and can breast what would otherwise be an overwhelming inundation, and say, “Here I stand, and though the rain falls and the floods come, my foot is on the rock, and I shall not be moved.” The peace of God brings patience.

That same peace not only minimises, but explains the troubles, the oppositions, the petty annoyances, the great calamities, the irreparable losses, and all the ills that flesh is heir to, and teaches us, “He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.” Will it not be easier to be patient when we are certain that what is working upon us is sure, unless we thwart it, to make us better men and women? We are like the great bells in some cathedral tower, which can only give forth music when they are smitten by strong hammers. We should be patient with the blows which beat out the music that else would slumber in our souls. ‘* The God of peace “is the “God of patience and consolation.”

Lastly, being the God of peace and patience. III. He is the God of Hope. If you will observe the context of one of these fragments, you will find that there is given there a genealogy, so to speak, of hope. “The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope.” So, then, faith is the parent of joy and peace; joy and peace are the parents of hope. That is one line of descent; but there is another. If you turn to the other of our fragments, you will find another genealogy given, for the context runs thus: “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.” Then, patient persistence, and the consolation or encouragement which come from the Scriptures and from the God of the Scriptures, again produce hope. There are, thus, two lines of descent, as it were — two series of experiences, both of which issue in the one result, the hope of the Christian life. And the same double source is worked out at length in the passage to which I have alreadyreferred in the fifth chapter of this epistle, where we have, on the one hand, justification by faith and access to God, issuing in “hope of the glory “; and on the other hand, tribulation working patience, and patience experience, and experience again hope. Thus you have the same twofold origin; the bright and the dark, the triumphs and the troubles alike, issuing in the one result.

I have not time to dwell upon this thought adequately, but just let me say a word or two about it. According, then, to this double view of the genesis of hope, it comes from joy and peace in believing, and it comes likewise from the patience and encouragement which God gives us.

On the one hand true Christian hope is the child of present joy and peace, which are the consequences of faith. For all hope’s most radiant pictures are painted with pigments supplied by the experience of earth, and her garments are woven, warp and woof, with the yarn that has been spun on the spindles here below. Experience supplies hope with all her materials; and the condition of joy and peace into which we may come, and shall come in the measure in which we are living lives of faith in the Son of God, is the best brightener of, as it is the surest evidence for, the hope of immortality and communion with God beyond the grave. Our faith in a perfection of future communion with God is but shallow and imperfect, a mere conception of the understanding, with little power to bless or to succour, unless it is built on no philosophical demonstration, nor even upon the words of Scripture, nor even upon the outward fact of Christ’s Kesurrection, but upon the inward experience of the properly infinite and eternal nature of the joys which come by communion with the living God. When a man can say, “Thou art the strength of my heart,” then he can say with a faith which is irrefragable, because it is the voice of his own experience, “Thou art my Portion for ever.” Thus peace issues in hope.

And, on the other hand, the genealogy of hope is traced up to the patience which one of my texts speaks about. He that is able to endure — not with the godless stoicism of a man that sets his teeth and says, “Pour on! I will endure,” but with the loving submission of a child that sees his father’s hand in all — has in the endurance a demonstration far beyond all logic, because it is a bit of himself, of God’s power to sustain, and of the genuineness of his own faith, which makes him certain that He that has been with him in six troubles will not leave him in the seventh; and that He who has led him through life will carry him clean over the narrow gorge of death, and will ever guide his advancing march upon the blessed tablelands ‘^ whereof our God Himself is sun and moon.” Thus, peace begets hope, and patience begets hope.

Christ is our peace, and Christ is our hope. If you take Him for your Saviour, and through Him receive peace with God, then you will have patience to endure, and courage to fight the good fight, and, being victorious over temptations, and kept calm in the midst of strife with the peace that is “allskilful in the wars,” you will be able to see the King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off, and to feed your hope of reaching its shores alike by trials and triumphs, by sorrows and joys, by the tribulations that are in the world, and by the peace that is in Christ Jesus. “By Him let us have peace with God,” and He will give us patience that is never worn out, and a hope that is not ashamed.