Hebrews 12:14 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Hebrews 12:14

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Of course, this means first of all peace with fellow believers, but it also means peace with unbelievers, with all people. ‘If it be possible,’ says the apostle Paul, 'as much as lieth in you, [as much as depends upon you] live peaceably with all men’ (Romans 12:18). The Greek word ‘follow’ means pursue eagerly, like a hunter. Your prey is going away from you; you have got to follow it. Now to follow peace with all men is something which is often quite difficult to do. So this hunting analogy is used: ‘pursue peace’; you have to work at it. You have to maintain your guard, watch your lips, control your own passions, if things are done to you which are inflammatory and unreasonable, because your goal is peace and it is as if it is running away from you and you have got to pursue it. You have got to be friendly and cooperative in the place of business, approachable and helpful with neighbours, because you are the representative of Christ, the Prince of Peace. ‘Do good to them that hate you and pray for them, which despitefully use you and persecute you’, says Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. Human beings are always at each other's throats, always contentious. There is hostility in every human heart; people criticise their colleagues and their neighbours constantly; they bicker and envy; there is much gossip, suspicion and spite. In the world peace is comparatively rare. If you have somebody who is a peaceable person seems to be quite generously natured, but unsaved and quite calm and content and so on, it's short lived. ‘And holiness’ – pursue it, without which no man shall see the Lord. This particular word for holiness is has a particular meaning; it is more often translated as ‘sanctification’. He is speaking about our inner moral condition. Not only our moral condition with regard to sexual matters that we are clean in heart and pure, with no sinful visualising or fantasising or anything of the kind, but pure in every respect with integrity. Ensure no lies are composed or invented within us, no dishonest gossip, but inner purity. O to be good people within in our hearts inner purity to be humble people within unselfish people within what a goal. Pursue it, otherwise it runs away from you, minute by minute. The devil will put into your heart selfish desires, selfish thoughts. Watch your motives and your thoughts and the things you daydream about. Raise your eyes to higher standards.‘Without which [without this inner purity] no man shall see the Lord’. This does not mean that a Christian can be lost because he knows that he lacks greater purity of heart. It is not demanding perfection on earth. When you die God will make you pure and will finally complete the great work of sanctification. There has been a progressive improvement in our hearts and lives throughout the journey of life, and in that last day, when we pass into eternity, we shall have that inner perfection given to us and see the Lord. The reasoning is this: when you think about what will happen and how you will need to be entirely purged by God, you will strive much harder for purity even now in this life. How can I be careless and casual about inner purity when the future will purify me entirely to stand before God? Can I say now as a Christian, ‘Let God do it all on the last day. Meanwhile, I will permit impurity in my heart and dishonesty and all these things’?

Application

Now at conversion there is a huge blow struck against that tendency and we receive a new nature, but kindness and humility and graciousness have to be maintained and expressed. A Christian is to follow peace, forbearance, yes sympathy: ‘He is unconverted, she doesn't know the Lord. I was like that and worse, and maybe sometimes unworthily, I still am like that’, we have to say to ourselves. ‘I deserve to go to hell eternally for the lack of peace in my life.’ It is very sad when you hear Christians sometimes speaking about the people in their office or in their district as though they were beneath contempt. So we pray and we are to live peaceably with all men, to be approachable.

As you strive for purity and pray for it and fight against sin and temptation, you will want to see more of him and that will motivate you to please him more still. That sense of Christ will give you all the courage you need for life. What elation and joy and anticipation, it gives you!

Questions

What does it mean to see God? Surely no man can see God and no man will see God. The Scriptures teach that, and yet they also teach that we will see Christ: he has become a man. The God–man will wear that, now glorified, body through eternity. So in a sense we shall see God, because we shall see him in our eternal King and Saviour. We will be amazed and astonished when we enter glory and we see Christ and all his divine attributes somehow reflected in his glorified body. Then again, we shall see God in a metaphorical sense because we will sense his glory and his favour and his love, and we shall somehow grasp the very divine attributes. It has been said, and I think it is true, that from the day we enter heaven an awareness and understanding of the infinite majesty and glory and holiness of God begins to be imparted to us. It will take all eternity. That is a contradiction in terms, but throughout eternity we shall be increasingly grasping the wonderful things of God.

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Hebrews 12:14 Commentary and Bible Study