There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.

Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips.  Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways,  and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Romans 3:10-18 (except leading phrase)

Jesus came to show us His way, the way of peace.  Peace is peace with God, with men, and within ourselves.  The peace of Christ surpasses all knowledge throughout all time and is the force that calms the storm.

Peace is the force that kept Jesus through the storms of His life, both natural and otherwise, and kept Him standing upright.  Peace is what the Lord bestowed upon Him, and granted Him when He prayed in the garden.  Peace is eternal.  While the entire visible world will pass away some day, it is the invisible things which will remain forever.  Things like love, peace, hope, and faith, being invisible, are not only more real than the dirt of which our bodies are made, they preexist the universe, for, as God is love, love was before time.

It wasn’t for a love of debate or controversy, but only Truth, that Jesus stood up to the Pharisees and pronounced upon them Woe’s in Matthew 23 and elsewhere.  It wasn’t for love of the crowds that He healed.  He lived with one purpose, and it was enough.  He held within himself, in every chamber of His  heart, the perfect peace of the Father.

It is a peace that is precise.  It is not a sloppy grace, but a precious one.  It is a peace that brought division (Luke 12:51).

The way through the door, the sheep gate, through the lamb, is the Perfect Way.  As Jesus lived, so should we, with all the joy, all the anger, all the exhortation, all the rejoicing, all the sorrow, all the intensity, all the reverence.  A whole man, an complete man, a perfect man, but a man, not some other thing, not some spirit-only thing.  A man, God in the flesh, dwelt among us.

If we look at the Sermon on the Mount as the way to Holiness as a list of what to do and not to do, have we not created a new, non-Mosaic law?  But, looked at another way, as the life and spirit of one fully entrusted to the Lord, it is not so much a cutting knife to make us fit, but a large field in which to grow.

As we expand in His Spirit, and let His life, truth, and love flow through us, day, after day, after day, we will find ourselves in these words, the Sermon, Matthew 5-7.  As we study it, and do it, not ultimately out of religious duty but as a byproduct of the Spirit dwelling within us, as the life we life and the joy we breathe, we will experience it.  If at some place we find ourselves directly contradicting it, it is merely a point where we have chosen not to exalt the Lord as Holy in our lives, yet.  It is simply faith!  Yet, as we are faithful, as we truly believe, the very yeast that begin will convert us there too, and the tree that has begun to grow will overshadow the entire garden, until perfect love casts out fear, and we are free.

You see, it is not in the doing that we are free, but in the being, and being free and filled, that we must be doing what He does.  We must be living what He spoke, for it is the only natural outcome of being filled, overflowing, with His Holy Spirit.  It is the constant river, easy and light, forever free, and slaves to love.  In loving Him, we will find ourselves obeying Him (Luke 14:15), and nothing else.  If we want to do His will, we will know whether His teaching is from God (John 7:17).

Even the cross was the path of peace, the ultimate in peace.  It wasn’t just that He didn’t speak up, because the same path of peace had led Him earlier to cleanse the temple with a whip of cords, but in that He heard, and obeyed, and yielded His will to His Father.

There really is no commonality between light and darkness (2 Corinthians 6:15).  As sure as the light is light, and the dark is dark, so are the weeds weeds, and the wheat is wheat.  As surely as decay never produces life, so surely God’s Kingdom and Spirit bring life, and the other, the only other, only ever produces death, decay, immorality, and pain.

The one thing unique to true Christianity is peace.  No other religion can even make claims to it.  As an unsaved person cannot see nor enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:3-5), and the Kingdom consists of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost (Romans 14:17), it stands to reason, that, among other applications of these verses, these are the very things the world itself cannot see, the righteousness, peace, and joy of God.  Though a Christian may know it, and try to explain, what is sunlight to someone who has been locked inside all of their life?  There is no way to describe it, and yet, to those who live outdoors, nothing could be more natural, more at home, and more inviting, than the presence, warmth, and freedom of the children of light.

Thus it is with the path of peace.  We can stumble at it our whole lives, miss it, and fall down, to get back up again, but it remains, the path of peace.

Only One Thing is needful.  Mary sat the the feet of her Lord, and drank from His goodness.  It was enough then.  It is enough today.  It is the One Thing, the only thing, and it will not be taken away.