Jesus as Our Peace
Over the years, I’ve been impressed with the difference personal peace makes in the life of various individuals. Sometimes I’ve been surprised at the lack of personal peace, too. Ironically, some are so driven to have it that it eludes them entirely. Peace is somewhat like happiness in that the more we strive to get it, the harder it is to attain.
I can’t think of anyone I know who likes to be agitated or irritated or otherwise perturbed. But some people seem to be perpetually in that state. The best you can hope to see in them is something approaching “neutral.” They never seem to be able to cross over to the peaceful end of the scale. Others, regardless of the difficult and just plain nasty curves life throws at them, are marked by tranquillity of soul and gentleness of response that is startling.
While we often seek to blame external events for our lack of peace, often as not, it stems from our own weaknesses. When we let our lives get out of balance, neglecting things we know to be important to pursue our selfish personal goals, we can experience inner turmoil. Some things like procrastination, hardness of heart, and jealousy are just about guaranteed to rob us of inner peace. At the same time, we are often unwilling to identify the real problem, so we seek something outside of ourselves to blame.
The Gospel makes it clear that the foundation for inner peace, regardless of our personality or temperament is peace with God. It’s next to impossible to truly be at peace with others when our relationship with God is tense, or worse yet, non-existent. Once we have peace with God, personal and relational peace have some hope of surviving. The challenge is finding peace with God in the first place. To find the clues we need, we must turn to the Bible.
There, we will find that Jesus is strongly linked to the idea of peace. In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, hundreds of years before His birth, Jesus was identified as the “Prince of Peace.” At His birth, the angels proclaimed “Peace on Earth.” Later in the gospels, Jesus declared that His legacy to His disciples was peace when He said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." [John 14:27 NIV]
Then Paul made another connection when he wrote “Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” [Ephesians 2:13-18 NIV]
Here is a good example of what I mentioned earlier. In this passage Paul commented on the hostility between Jew and Gentile of the 1st Century. He then indicated the answer to that animosity came through the Lord Jesus Christ, who, as he put it, is Himself our peace.
When I’m feeling frustrated and out of sorts with someone else, I can nearly always trace the problem back the temporary loss of my peace with God. When my relationship with Him is disturbed, it shows up sooner or later (usually sooner) in my human relationships. While restoration of intimacy with God does not actually “fix the problem” with the other person, it does “fix my attitude.” I’m able to put things into perspective, remembering that Jesus has already died for the offence. My being hostile accomplishes nothing but producing increased hostility in them.
Jesus is our peace. He doesn’t just give us peace, though He does that. He doesn’t just provide us with a living example of a person of peace, though He does that. He didn’t just teach eloquently about peace, though He did that. He, Himself, is our peace. This is one of those spiritual conundrums that keep us from getting spiritually proud, because we can’t fully grasp or explain it. All we know is that without Him, there is no peace.
Ron Hughes
© July 2006
