Young people loyal to Christ find the world is not an easy place. We are burdened in prayer for you because the age is not getting better. Judge it by its literature: if there is filth in a book, it will sell. I know nothing of its cinemas except from the pictures outside, and they are lurid enough. It is an age of lust, of impurity, of infidelity: an age without standards. Can young people be Christian in it? They can! The God of peace can keep them. If sanctified by the God of peace, we can be at peace.
What causes lack of peace? The first thing is sin. The God of peace has sent His Son, who has made peace with regard to the sin question by the blood of His cross. Then there are our circumstances, which never seem to be altogether what we want. Yet in them we may know the peace of God keeping our hearts and dwelling with us. Again, there are adversaries, the chief being Satan. There is a war on, from which there is no discharge. Young men and women, you cannot lay aside your armor, and you must not allow it to rust.
Yet the biggest enemy you have–Private Enemy Number 1–is self. God’s answer is sanctification– being set apart to God. We are to co-operate, but it is the God of peace who sanctifies us, and will do it completely. There are dangers in connection with this doctrine, for nothing is more miserable than separation for its own sake, when it becomes sanctimoniousness–an obnoxious thing. Some who think they are sanctified are simply conceited. The God of peace will make you pure. It is not easy; there is a lot of dirt about today, but if you are exercised, the God of peace will preserve you–spirit, soul, and body.
The body is not a vile thing. It is holy, and you are to keep it holy, for it is the whole man, the whole woman, that God wants. In this country, I am afraid, many have chosen the goddess of lust and pleasure, and she will corrupt them. It is the God of peace you want. But this God of peace is the God of power as well, for the greatest manifestation of power is seen in the resurrection of Jesus. He is the Great Shepherd in His risen life, and He imparts the might of it to us. What we need, every one of us, is to be living our lives in the power of the risen Christ.
I recently read a book on the early Christian martyrs, and it is really astounding what these people did; things you would have thought impossible to flesh and blood. How did they do it? They lived in the consciousness that Christ is living. Is your Christ only a wonderful Person, who walked the road to Calvary, treading the steps to the cross? Or is He the living Christ with you, energizing you with the power of His risen life?
He is the God of promise as well. He made the covenant, and it shall be performed. Indeed, there is no time with God: for Him to promise is for it to be done. This is an age of broken promises–political, social, and business. You cannot believe anybody’s promise today. But with God the guarantee is the blood of the everlasting covenant.
The prayer (Heb. 13:20-21) is that we may be made perfect in every good work. The idea here is that of fitting or adjusting. Is that possible? Yes, God’s work will be perfected in us. Paul says that he had not yet attained, but he did not sit down and say it could not be done. Rather, he was pressing on. Are you pressing on? If you are set for it, God will work to fit you, and you will get a good way along the road that leads to the perfect day–the endless summer of His presence.
He will perfect us in every good work, not in order that we may make a name for ourselves here, but that we may do His will. God has a purpose for every one of us. One of the evils of today is the aimlessness of much of our living. God has a plan; He has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son.
Donald Ross, pioneer evangelist and publisher of the Witness and Our Record, early assembly magazines, wrote this more than one hundred years ago. What would he think of this generation! Yet his answer would be just the same.