Speak No Peace Until God Speaks

I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly. PSALM 85:8

There is a moment in the life of every Christian who takes sin seriously when the conscience is troubled and the heart is desperate for relief. A sin has broken out, or an old sin has been brought to light, and the soul cannot rest. It is at this moment, Owen believed, that one of the most dangerous deceptions of the Christian life does its work. The troubled believer reaches for comfort, finds it, and applies it to himself before God has given it. The wound is covered; it is not healed.

Owen’s ninth direction addresses this directly: when God disquiets your heart about sin, take heed that you do not speak peace to yourself before He speaks it. Listen for what He says.

Peace is God’s to give

He begins with two observations. First, it is God’s sovereign right to speak peace to whom He pleases and when He pleases. Just as He gives grace freely to sinners, so among His children He keeps in His own hand the giving of comfort. Owen finds this in Isaiah, where God, speaking of the backsliding He will heal, says that He Himself creates peace.

I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him. ISAIAH 57:19

Second, it is Christ’s particular office to speak that peace home to the conscience. When He addressed the church at Laodicea, which had spoken peace to itself falsely, He called Himself the Amen, the faithful and true witness. We may flatter ourselves or trouble ourselves in vain; He tells the truth about our condition.

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. REVELATION 3:14

The marks of self-made peace

Owen then gives rules by which a person may tell whether the peace he feels is God’s or his own.

We speak peace to ourselves, first, when it is not joined to a deep hatred of the sin concerned. A man may go to the right Physician, look to the right promises, and still come away with a false peace, if he has not come to loathe the sin that wounded him. When people truly look on Christ whom they have pierced, they mourn, and they detest the sin that pierced Him. Anything else, Owen says, “is to heal themselves, and not to be healed of God.” It is like skin growing over a wound while the infection remains underneath, to break out again later.

We speak peace to ourselves, second, when we reason our way to it from the promises by our own logic, without the Spirit applying them. Owen draws a vivid picture of a troubled man who searches the Bible for a promise whose words fit his case, and says to himself, “here I will take myself a plaster as long and broad as my wound.” The promise is true, and the man may even be a Christian. But the Lord is not in it. It is the reasoning mind at work, not the Spirit of God. Owen compares it to the wind that passed before Elijah on the mountain: the Lord was near, but the Lord was not in the wind.

And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. 1 KINGS 19:11

We speak peace to ourselves, third, when we do it in haste. God sometimes comforts at once; more often He calls for waiting. Owen puts it tenderly: “God will have his children lie a while at his door when they have run from his house.” Those who heal themselves are always in a hurry.

And I will wait upon the LORD, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. ISAIAH 8:17

We speak peace to ourselves, fourth, when it does not change the life. When God speaks peace, it keeps the soul from returning to folly. When we speak it, the heart is not weaned from the sin at all; indeed, Owen warns, this is the quickest road into a habit of backsliding. And we do it, fifth, when we heal ourselves slightly, with a glance of faith at a promise, rather than mixing the word with faith until it has done its work.

For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. JEREMIAH 8:11

Sixth, he warns that a man who seeks and finds peace about one sin while another, equally serious, lies untouched in his heart has no peace from God at all. “God will justify us from our sins, but he will not justify the least sin in us.” And seventh, true peace always humbles. Owen points to David, who was never so deeply humbled as when Nathan brought him the news of his pardon. “God’s peace is humbling peace, melting peace.”

How to know His voice

All this raises an anxious question, and Owen does not dodge it. How are we to know when God is speaking? He gives two answers.

The first is that faith has, as he puts it, a secret instinct by which it knows the voice of Christ when He speaks. Christ’s sheep know His voice. The bride in the Song of Solomon, half asleep, knew at once that it was her beloved knocking. A believer who exercises himself in daily communion with Christ will learn to tell His voice from a stranger’s. When He speaks, He speaks as no one else speaks; He makes the heart burn, as He did on the road to Emmaus.

And the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. JOHN 10:4

The second answer is simpler and more practical: if the word does your soul good, He is speaking it. If it humbles, cleanses, melts and binds you to obedience, that is His voice. God’s own question in Micah points the same way.

Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly? MICAH 2:7

A balancing word

Owen’s warning here can be misused by anxious souls, who may refuse all comfort for fear that it is self-made. He anticipates this. When God speaks peace, sooner or later, it must be received; and he says that there is hardly anything with which the Lord is more troubled in His people than their unbelieving fears that keep them from the comfort He is willing to give. The point of this direction is not to keep believers in suspense. It is to make sure that the peace they rest in is real. False peace leaves the wound to fester. True peace, given by God, heals it, and leaves the soul humbled, grateful and done with its sin.

Now the God of peace … make you perfect in every good work to do his will. HEBREWS 13:20–21

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Think back to the last time you felt forgiven after a particular sin. Did the peace humble you and change you, or did it simply relieve you?

2. If there is a sin you have been quickly soothing with promises, slow down. Spend time before God about it, and wait for Him.

3. Ask whether you have sought peace about one sin while tolerating another. Bring both to God together.

4. Read John 10:1–16 and ask God to train your ear to know the voice of the Good Shepherd.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You are the Amen, the faithful and true witness. Tell me the truth about my soul.

Forgive me for the times I have hurried to comfort myself, taking a promise as a plaster for a wound I did not want to feel.

Speak peace to me Yourself, and let it be a humbling peace, a melting peace, that turns me from my folly.

And when You speak, give me faith to receive Your comfort without fear. Amen.