The relationship between peace and the finished work of our salvation in Jesus Christ is repeatedly emphasised by Jonathan Cahn in The Book of Mysteries.
Although I have read less than half the book, which contains 365 mysteries set out as daily devotions complete with a mission for each day, Cahn’s teaching on the need for us to live and act from the peace of our salvation completed by Jesus has already made a heartfelt impression.
Shalom Aleichem
In the “Shalom Aleichem” mystery on day 137, Cahn highlights the theme of completion and peace.
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He says the only record of Jesus saying “Peace be to you” takes place when He greeted His disciples after the resurrection. In fact, he said it twice in the same encounter.
“Peace only comes after the atonement is made. So it was only after Messiah died on the cross and rose that peace could be given,” says Cahn.
However, he informs that the Hebrew word shalom means much more than peace. Shalom means safety, rest, prosperity, wholeness, welfare, completion, fullness, soundness, and even well-being.
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This is confirmed by GotQuestions.com that reports although peace is an accurate translation of the Hebrew term, shalom implies more than lack of conflict.
According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, shalom means “completeness, soundness, welfare, peace.”
An internal sense of peace
“Shalom is applicable to an external peace between two entities, such as individuals or nations, and to an internal sense of peace within the individual.”
Rabbi David Zaslow, in The Deeper Meaning of Shalom, says the Hebrew word shalom does not mean “peace” in the English sense of the word. It comes from a Hebrew root-word that means “wholeness”.
Zaslow says “wholeness” is the source of peace — the knowledge that all opposing energies are somehow linked and part of a single whole.
“True peace must have wholeness as its foundation.”
So, the shalom greeting of Jesus was his peace, fullness, rest, completion, well-being and wholeness through His blood by which we, who accept Jesus as the only begotten Son of God and our Saviour, have been reconciled with God and have peace with Him.
The seventh day
The relationship between completion, peace and rest is also revealed through Cahn’s explanation of “The Seventh Day” mystery in which he reminds that God laboured for six days, bringing creation into existence.
“He finished His labour at the end of the sixth day, then rested on the seventh day. But the creation is fallen and without rest or peace, so the work of God is now to bring forth a new creation, a redemption.
“And redemption comes through … Messiah who finished His labours on the sixth day of the week, which is why they rushed to take Jesus down off the cross and place His body in the tomb … because the sun was setting and the seventh day was nearing.”
Cahn says Jesus finished His labours so that the Sabbath could come … the sign that His work was complete … that His labours over the new creation were finished.
“And so the Seventh Day has come … a new rest, a new peace, a new blessing, a new completion, for all who enter the new creation through the Sabbath of Messiah.”
With that in mind it is easier to understand John 19:30, So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.
The days of future past
Cahn highlights the theme of completion and fullness again in the mystery of “The Days of Future Past” when he reveals how the Hebrew of Scripture knows no time.
He says the Hebrew language has no absolute tense concerning time, but rather of the perfect and imperfect.
“The perfect tense speaks of an action that’s finished, thus complete, perfect. The imperfect tense speaks of an action that’s unfinished and thus, incomplete, imperfect. So in Hebrew you only have two choices: to live in the perfect or imperfect. If you live always striving to finish that which is unfinished, to complete that which is incomplete, if you lived trying to be saved, trying to be loved, to be good enough, worthy, complete … then you’re living in the imperfect tense … and you’re living in the imperfect. And living in the imperfect tense never works, because that which comes out of incompletion can never be anything other than incomplete.”
Cahn says to live in the perfect tense you must learn the secret of living from that which is already completed, to do from that which is already done, to triumph from a victory already won.
And what is it that is already accomplished, complete, finished and perfect, but the work of God, salvation — the completed works of the Messiah.
Cahn says: “Yes. For that which is perfect is that which is finished”.
He encourages us to live in the Hebrew perfect: “Do all things from His finished work. Triumph from the victory already won. Live from completion”.
After all, we are assured in Philippians 1:6 that: He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Completion and peace
Intrigued, I looked among the devotions that I had not read yet to see if there are more related to completion and peace.
Day 291 describes the mystery of “The Day of Time and Timelessness” that deals with Isaiah 53 — the prophecy of the Messiah who dies for the sins of others. Cahn reveals that it is written in the present, future and past tenses, which is extraordinary.
Cahn explains the reason as follows: “it is the event of God’s redemption … an event in which are contained the past, the present, and the future, every event of every sin … in the past tense and covering all the sins of the past … in the present tense and covering every present sin … and in the future tense and covering all sin that is not yet but which will be … It is the event of tenses and times, of past, present and future, that no sin and no event is beyond its power to touch and redeem. For the love of God is not bound by time … It is time that is bound by the love of God. What happened two thousand years ago on an execution stake in the land of Judea is a mystery … the day of time and timelessness and yet containing all time and times in the love of God.”
“Your future is already contained by your salvation and covered by it. Ponder this fact and, by it, be at peace and live in confidence,” says Cahn.
However, with the confidence of living in the peace of reconciliation and atonement with Our Holy Father comes the humbling responsibility of witnessing to His only-begotten Son, Lord Jesus Christ’s Good News … as well as the rejection, oppression, affliction, humiliation, wounding, and bruising that He, although sinless, suffered silently on behalf of us prodigal sinners … as a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter in complete payment for the shalom blessing of our salvation.
