The Peaceable Fruit of Righteousness
W. Clarkson Isaiah 32:17, 18 And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.… Righteousness and peace may be supposed to be entirely separate things; by those who look only on the surface they may even be imagined to be opposed to one another. In fact, they are closely and even vitally related to each other. I. THOSE WHO ARE INCAPABLE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ARE UNRECEPTIVE OF PEACE. To them peace is simply incommunicable; it does not come within the range of their faculties. The horse, the swallow, the salmon, the unintelligent and irresponsible animal, may have quietude and comfort, but it cannot enjoy peace, in the fullest and truest sense in which we use that word. It is only capable of that sense of satisfaction which attends a perfect adjustment of its circumstances to its bodily nature; but that is not peace. Peace is that spiritual contentment which results from inward as well as outward harmony - from a sense of rectitude, a consciousness that everything is right in its most important, most sacred relationships. They who are beneath the sense of responsibility, and are therefore incapable of righteousness, can never possibly attain to the possession of peace; they are constitutionally below it. II. THEY WHO HAVE LOST RIGHTEOUSNESS MUST REGAIN IT BEFORE THEY CAN HAVE THE HERITAGE OF PEACE. 1. This is so with the comer, unity. When the country, or the company, or the Church has fallen into disorder because it has fallen into error and the commission of wrong, there is but one way to regain the harmony which has been lost. Absolutism will never yield it. Force will not secure it. Compromise will not permanently restore it. Nothing will avail until righteousness is re-established. Justice must be done to those to whom it has been denied. Rights must be conceded to those who have fairly won them. Relations must be adjusted to changed conditions; every one and everything must make way for rectitude. In no other way whatever will the path of peace be found. 2. It is thus with the human soul. We have all wandered from the way of wisdom and of righteousness; we have refused to God the love, the reverence, the service which is his due and which it is our highest interest to render. We have thereby become disordered, disquieted, confused; instead of dwelling in "a peaceable habitation," in "quiet resting-places," we have become inhabitants of a realm of condemnation, reproach, peril, , agitation, misery. There is no way back to the home of rest which we have left behind us but by a return to righteousness; that is to say, by repentance, the turning our back on the sinful selfishness in which we have been living, and becoming right with God, accepting the gracious offer of his Son our Savior (Matthew 11:28, 29). (1) Rejection of truth may give a false security; (2) absorption in worldly pursuits or in pleasurable excitements may provide temporary indifference; but only righteousness, only the restoration of the soul to its true relation to God, by repentance and faith, will give peace. III. RIGHTEOUSNESS WILL ENSURE PEACE BOTH IN POSSESSION AND IS PROSPECT. It will effect: 1. Reconciliation with God, and the consequent "peace which passes understanding" - a blissful, satisfying "rest unto the soul," which is incomparably more precious than any earthly satisfaction to the body or the spirit. 2. The inward and abiding rest which belongs to spiritual harmony; this is the invariable consequence of the soul being in a right relation with the Supreme, and with its fellows, and of all its faculties being rightly related to one another. 3. A peaceful departure from the present life. 4. A home in the quiet resting-place of the heavenly land. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever. WEB: The work of righteousness will be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever.