Peace, as a fruit of the Spirit, shows us that our relationship with God is where He wants it to be. This daily devotional looks at how the treasure of God’s peace give us tranquility with God, ourselves, and others.
Nuggets
- Peace is a treasure that we must choose to embrace.
- Peace with God shows us our relationship with God is in the right place.
- Peace as a fruit of the Spirit should be tied with joy and contentment.
- How we interact with others shows the peace we feel in our hearts.
- Peace is part of the armor of God, so that it can secure our faith in God.
To read devotions in the Redo for Godliness series, click the appropriate button below.
Devotions in the Fruit of the Spirit from the Inside Out series
Peace, as a fruit of the Spirit, is a validation of our salvation. Let’s take a look.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
Let's Put It into Context #2
Peace is a fruit of righteousness, manifested in an inward tranquility resulting from a balanced life with spiritual order, equity, and truth that implies cooperation, humility, integrity, communication, and cohesiveness.
Manning described it this way as a fruit of the Spirit. He wrote, “… peace, whereby we are at rest with God, and in ourselves, and with all mankind.”
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Newbolt called it a “… tranquility of order …” It blankets us as we work out our salvation steadily and harmoniously.
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Peace is a fruit of the Spirit that translates as a rest of the soul when we are working out our salvation to find tranquility with God, ourselves, and others.
Peace, Our Greatest Treasure
“The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8: 6 NIV)
Peace is a treasure that we must choose to embrace.
Krummacher called peace our greatest treasure. It is, when it means we are at harmony with God, ourselves, and others.
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Thornton told us that peace is a balm to our conscience. Our conscience is the part of our nature that impacts our moral decisions as it points us to what is right and gives us pain or pleasure depending on the choice. It grows out of our genuine salvation.
- Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart. Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
Thornton went on to say that peace is incorporated in a frame of mind. Frame of mind is an emotional state that effects our attitude or behavior.
Hmmm. Does that mean it is our choice to be peaceful? We know we choose our attitude. We also choose our behavior.
I would say yes. We choose to be peaceful by focusing on God and His omnipotence. Omnipotent means God is all-powerful.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Tranquility with God
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4: 7 CSB)
Peace with God shows us our relationship with God is in the right place.
Thornton reminded us that the peace comes from knowing God’s Will and trusting Him for our lives. That brings peace to our conscience.
But it goes beyond that. We can know Him and trust what He wants to do in our lives — and still not obey. We’ve got to get the obedience to the heart level. Obedience means to hear, conform to, and carry out the instructions that God gives us.
Tranquility with Ourselves
“And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (Jas. 3: 18 ESV)
Peace as a fruit of the Spirit should be tied with joy and contentment.
We talked around peace a couple of devotions ago when we talked about joy and contentment.
- Joy, a fruit of the Spirit given to us by the Holy Spirit, is an outward expression of an inward feeling of thanksgiving and the consciousness of God’s infinite goodness that enlivens and comforts us.
- Contentment is being satisfied regardless of the circumstances of our lives.
If a part of peace is living in harmony with ourselves, that means we are content with that life and it brings us joy. That goes back to our discussion of being content regardless of the circumstances.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
The peace in our hearts is an indication that godliness is there, also. Newbolt reminded us how godlessness is a plague to our peace.
Tranquility with Others
“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful” (Col. 3: 15 ESV)
How we interact with others shows the peace we feel in our hearts.
Thornton wrote that peace “… is called the fruit of the Spirit, in opposition to hatred, variance, emulations, wraths, strifes, etc., which are reckoned among the works of the flesh.” What Thornton was saying was we should not sin against others.
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Peace is also tied with unity. Unity is an inward, spiritual feeling of harmony found through Christ that manifests itself in outward actions that foster the spread of the gospel.
What does peace foster among others? Thornton wrote, “To promote peace among Christian brethren, cultivate a charitable and forbearing temper.”
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We know charity is an old-fashioned word for loving. Forbearance is a word we know as patience.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Devotions in the What Is Charity? series
It is all about the family of God living and working together in harmony. Yes, there are going to be squabbles.
But we have to work them out to glorify God. We should never let it impede the mission of the church.
Let’s refocus the lens. Why doesn’t God want to give this peace to non-believers?
Murray wrote, “There is in the universe a Spirit of right, a Spirit of goodness, a Spirit of love, and this we call God. This Spirit is an energetic Spirit. Its object is to have everybody to do right — to have everybody good, and to establish the reign of universal love — love towards Himself as the beautiful embodiment of these sweet and sublime principles, and love to all lesser ones whose nature and condition make them the object of benevolent designs and the recipient of benevolent efforts. … It is the Father’s Spirit lovingly contending with the child’s spirit, striving to bring it into sympathetic alliance with that which is good.”
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God does want everyone to be recipients of His peace. He does, however, make a condition on who receives His peace that passes all understanding (Phil. 4: 7 CSB). He saves that peace for those who will submit to Him.
Tranquility Because of Armor
“and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6: 15 RSV)
Peace is part of the armor of God, so that it can secure our faith in God.
Newbolt called the peace of God our armed escort. That makes sense when we know that it is part of the armor of God. We’ve talked about this before.
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To read a related devotion, click the button below.
We can only find peace through faith in Jesus. Disciples get this contentment through the assurance that our sins have been forgiven. We no longer have to pay the price for our sins.
Yes, we will still be subjected to the consequences of sins while we are on this earth. But we are no longer spiritually dead once we admit our sins, believe on Jesus as Savior and Redeemer, confess God as Sovereign Lord, and demonstrate that commitment by following our job description.
The Disciple’s Job Description
Complete Job Description
Once we become disciples, we have the peace of God because we know we are no longer alone in facing the trials and temptations of this life. We know we can “cast [our] burden on the Lord, and He will support [us]; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken” (Ps. 55: 22 CSB).
Peace comes when we know what we believe and why we believe it. When we live that out consistently, it is accompanied by peace. That will make us ready when the trials and temptations come.
We are more confident that we can withstand the darts. We are ready for anything. We know that, with God fighting, the darts will be extinguished.
How does God give us peace? We know we can depend on God because He knows the past, present, and future (I Jn. 3: 20). This calms our fears and should shape our desires.
Making the Connections
I loved this. Thornton wrote, “None but the paths of wisdom are the paths of peace; and the blind cannot pursue, because they cannot discern them.”
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- Wisdom is an enlightened acceptance of God’s principles that leads to knowledge, discernment, and good sense that is put into practice through salvation, increasing our goodness and virtue.
- Discernment means we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
- God’s goodness is His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.
- Holy means to be set apart, perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
Can you tell that I liked Thornton’s sermon? He said something else. He wrote, “Never conclude that all must be fatally wrong, who do not think just as you think. We cannot find two faces exactly alike; why then should we expect to meet many minds that in every respect correspond with our own? If you really love and pursue peace, you must judge favourably and speak candidly of others. When a breach is made, you must try to close, rather than widen it.”
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We would be wrong if we thought everyone has to think the way we do — even about interpretations of Scriptures. We look at things based on what God is telling us individually and corporately. We hook this to past experiences and our values.
No one else shares these. My sister and I may have been raised the same way, but once we stepped foot off the farm — even to get on the bus to go to school — we had different experiences.
We put different importance on moral things. We are who God made us to be.
We are “… fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139: 14 ESV). But we are made differently.
That means it is going to take some work to live in peace.
How Do We Apply This?
Thornton wrote that, to achieve peace, we should “keep in the sphere where Providence has placed us.” I read that to mean we should stay in God’s Will.
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- Strive to do good for others.
- Pray for those who threaten our peace.
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We said that love and joy define our relationship with the Father. I see peace being so, too.
True, it does make a good segue to the fruits that define our relationships with others. But that is a discussion for the next devotion.
Father God. You give us the fruits of love, joy, and peace to define our relationship with You. Those make the relationship so sweet. We pray that these fruits are evident in us because that means we are exactly where we should be in You. Amen.
What do you think?
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