![]() In the second benediction, the power of our walk is given. Wherever we go-bright and joyful or depressed-this benediction and its ground are ours. It is most important that the young Christian should fully grasp the blessedness of this truth. How blessed it is to know this! The future may be dark we may have many trials and many temptations we may stumble but nothing can affect the value of the cross. Nothing but the work of Christ is the ground of peace for us: not feelings, not attainments- nothing but the work of Christ. We cannot dwell on our experience: it is but a poor and a humbling thing to think of-utterly valueless to contribute to our peace. Should these lines be read by a timid believer-fearing to call himself a child of God and to look up into His face with thanksgiving-let him hear this benediction and see those wounds, and he cannot doubt that peace is his. Can Satan accuse? To what purpose, when the finished work of Christ confronts him? He can but read his doom there, and nothing else. Can conscience trouble? No, for God is greater than conscience, and He is satisfied with that atoning death. There is no wrath now, and there can never be wrath again for those who have availed themselves of those wounds. God has been glorified by that death, and every righteous barrier to perfect love manifesting itself to the lost has been removed. The wounds tell us that “the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). His hands and side remind us of that wondrous cross of the substitution of the spotless lamb for the defiled sinner. Christ’s person, His earthly ministry-words and works full of blessing-all these can only be truly appreciated after we see the work by which peace has been made, by which God’s righteousness has been declared, and His love manifested to guilty rebels. This is the starting point of the enjoyment of true peace. And when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side” (vv. In the first, the ground of our relationship-peace-is fully and forever established. Each greeting suggests a truth, and they are found in the order in which we need them. In this greeting, three times repeated, we have the fullness of blessing suggested and most fittingly applied to our need upon earth. How fitting, then, that the Lord Jesus should greet them in blessed contrast to all their fears-“Peace be unto you.” The darkness, the earthquake, the awful accompaniments of that death-the death of all their hopes too-spoke of sorrow, anguish, despair, and divine displeasure. They had heard from His own blessed lips the cry that He was forsaken of God, as well as persecuted by man. They had just seen their beloved Lord and Master snatched from their midst and delivered up to death. ![]() It was after the resurrection that He three times pronounced the blessing upon the disciples, “Peace be unto you.” How appropriate it was that these should be His first words to them gathered together. We may be sure, then, that whenever He opened His mouth it was to utter that which was not only true, but also the appropriate and needed truth for the occasion. The words of our blessed Lord were always “pure words,” always suited to the occasion-words of kindly love to the repenting sinner, of solemn warning to the wavering, of awful denunciation to the proud, careless, and self-righteous. ![]()
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