Peace

With an encouraging forgiveness in his voice, Lincoln famously and powerfully ends his address: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations In saying that “God gives us to see the right,” Lincoln admits that “there is none who does good” (PSALM 14:1; PSALM 53:1; ROMANS 3:10-12) and that it is God Who must “open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sin” (ACTS 26:18). When he leads his listeners to “strive on… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations,” Lincoln is leading them to ROMANS 12:18.