Deuteronomy 29:19 (HCSB)
When someone hears the words of this oath, he may consider himself exempt, thinking, ‘I will have peace even though I follow my own stubborn heart.’ This will lead to destruction...
Jeremiah 8:10b,11b
Prophets and priests alike practice deceit. "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace.
Ezekiel 13:10
(The prophets of Israel) lead my people astray, saying, "Peace", when there is no peace.
John Calvin (paraphrased from Supplex Exhortatio, 1543)
Peace is not to be purchased by the sacrifice of truth.
Ezekiel Hopkins “The Almost-Christian Discovered”
(False) peace is deadness of conscience and the spirit of slumber.
Thomas Watson “The Art of Divine Contentment”
https://gracegems.org/Watson/art_of_divine_contentment2.htm
There is a sinful silence. When God is dishonored, His truth wounded, and men hold their peace, this silence is a loud sin.
Thomas Shepard
The False Convert Detected
There are many (false) professors in these days that walk loosely, and take too much liberty in their speeches, liberty in their thoughts, liberty in their desires, in their pastimes, and that sometimes under a pretense of Christian liberty. Oh, this liberty that the Devil gives, and the world takes, besots most men with a foolish opinion that all is well with them. By giving the soul cessation sometimes from the act of (a specific) sin: hence they are hardly persuaded that they live in sin, because they cease sometimes from (that) act of sin. Oh! Satan...by giving respite from sinning for a time, Satan gets stronger possession afterward...
The Parable of the Ten Virgins
Never settle for "peace with...sin" that "gives up the fight against sin and Satan."
John Flavel The Method of Grace
There is a twofold peace that ruins most men, peace in sin, and peace with sin.
J.C. Ryle Old Paths "Repentance"
Christ is a Saviour from sin, not a Saviour for man in sin. If a man will have his sins, the day will come when that merciful Saviour will say to him, "Depart from Me, thou worker of iniquity! Depart into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41).
C.H. Spurgeon
Our peaceableness is never to be a compact with sin, or an alliance with that which is evil.
(The Bible) does not say that you shall either have peace with the devil, or peace with the flesh, or peace with the world; but it does say that you have peace with God, which is infinitely better.
“Why Some Seekers Are Not Saved”
https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/why-some-seekers-are-not-saved/#flipbook/
Christ saves His people, not in their sins, but from them.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vy7WbKmYYG4
Christian Unity : An Exposition of Ephesians 4:1 to 16
https://archive.org/details/christianunityex0000lloy/mode/2up
“Speaking the Truth in Love”
Today many teach that you must not say that one view is right and the other wrong; you must not criticize, for to criticize is to deny the spirit of Christ and to be entirely devoid of love. "Speaking the truth in love" has come to mean that you more or less praise everything, but above all, that you never criticize any view strongly, because, after all, there is a certain amount of right and truth in everything.
We must, therefore, ask the question, Is this a right and true interpretation of Paul's statement? Is this what is meant by "speaking the truth in love"?
I answer immediately that it cannot be, for the reason that the Apostle Paul does not simply tell us here to speak lovingly. What he says is "speaking truth" or "holding truth". We are not told by the Apostle to cultivate a vague, loving spirit, but to hold the truth in love. The very word truth, in and of itself, makes the modern popular exposition of the statement obviously and patently wrong.
Furthermore, and this is where the context is so important if the phrase merely denotes a loving spirit, how is that connected to what the Apostle has said in verse 14? If "speaking the truth in love", " holding the truth in love", means that we are to smile upon all views and doctrinal standpoints, and never criticize and condemn and reject any views, how do we avoid being "children tossed to and fro and carried away by every wind of doctrine"? This supposed "loving spirit" makes it impossible to use such terms as "sleight of men", "cunning craftiness", and "lying in wait to deceive".
The very text itself and especially the context, make that interpretation completely impossible; indeed, it is a denial of the Apostle's statement. We must not hesitate to say so plainly.
To put life, or "spirit" or niceness, or anything else, before truth is to deny essential New Testament teaching; and in addition is to contradict directly the Apostle's solemn warning in verse 14. It is to set up ourselves, and the modern mind, and the modern man as the authority rather than the 'called apostle' Paul and all others whom the Lord has set in the Church to warn us against and save us from, this attitude which so dislikes discrimination and judgment.
Never was it more important to assert that friendliness or niceness or some sentimental notions of brotherliness do not constitute Christianity. You can have all such qualities without and apart from Christianity without truth. So that whatever else it may mean, "holding the truth in love" does not mean a vague, flabby, sentimental notion of niceness, fellowship, and brotherhood.
A.W. Tozer
The Divine Conquest
In the First Epistle of John two words are used over and over, the words they and ye, and they designate two wholly different worlds. They refers to the men and women of Adam's fallen world; ye refers to the chosen ones who have left all to follow Christ. The apostle does not genuflect to the little god Tolerance (the worship of which has become in America a kind of secondary surface religion); he is bluntly intolerant. He knows that tolerance may be merely another name for indifference. It takes a vigorous faith to accept the teaching of the man John. It is so much easier to blur the lines of separation and so offend no one. Pious generalities and the use of we to mean both Christians and unbelievers is much safer. The fatherhood of God can be stretched to include everyone from Jack the Ripper to Daniel the Prophet. Thus no one is offended and everyone feels quite snug and ready for heaven. But the man who laid his ear on Jesus' breast was not so easily deceived. He drew a line to divide the race of men into two camps, to separate the saved from the lost, those who shall rise to eternal reward from them that shall sink to final despair. On one side are they that know not God; on the other ye (or with a change of person, we), and between the two is a moral gulf too wide for any man to cross.
The Set of the Sail
A sinful man should be afraid; he has plenty to be afraid of. The consequences of his sins, death, judgment and hell are all awaiting him and he cannot escape them by looking the other way. While he lives on earth there are dangers of every kind facing him and everyone he loves. Any religious teacher that exhorts him to ignore these dangers is unrealistic, false to the facts and a deadly enemy to his soul. The prophet of tranquility is indeed another source of danger to him and should be considered one more object of fear. Where there are mortal perils and no place to hide, fear is the only sane reaction. To dismiss fear while the danger still exists is little short of insanity. Until the danger has been removed, fear should remain. Only that man has a right to be unafraid who has fled for refuge to the mighty Savior. Such a man knows the danger is there, but he also knows that his Almighty Lord will bring him safely through and present him at last faultless before the presence of God. There are in the Scriptures innumerable exhortations to put away fear; but they are all addressed to Gods own children, never to the children of this world. Someone must care, and if a man has not cast his fears on Christ, he must bear them himself. The safety of the Rock is for those who have put their trust in the Rock. All others must face their enemies alone.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel lecture, 1970
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1970/solzhenitsyn/lecture/
The spirit of Munich (the appeasement of Adolf Hitler at the Munich Conference in September 1938) has by no means retreated into the past; it was not merely a brief episode. I even venture to say that the spirit of Munich prevails in the Twentieth Century. The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles. The spirit of Munich is a sickness of the will of successful people, it is the daily condition of those who have given themselves up to the thirst after prosperity at any price, to material well-being as the chief goal of earthly existence. Such people – and there are many in today’s world – elect passivity and retreat, just so as their accustomed life might drag on a bit longer, just so as not to step over the threshold of hardship today – and tomorrow, you’ll see, it will all be all right.
But it will never be all right! The price of cowardice will only be evil; we shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.
WARNING
Horatius Bonar God's Way of Holiness
Seeing we must protest against the world on so many important points, let us try to differ from it as little as possible on things indifferent (of no importance or value one way or the other), always showing love to those we meet with, however irreligious and unlovable, especially avoiding a contemptuous spirit or an air of superiority.