We’re still looking at the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount and what they mean for us as followers of Jesus. In Kingdom Character, we talked about how the Beatitudes affect our inward lives and our hearts. In this series, we’re looking at what the Beatitudes mean for our outward lives and our relationships. This week, we’re looking at the Beatitude that calls us to be peacemakers.
Read Matthew 5.9.
The world in which we live is full of brokenness—on a global, national, local, and even personal level. As followers of Jesus, we’re not supposed to avoid the brokenness. Instead, in this Beatitude, He’s calling us to go out into the brokenness and bring hope, reconciliation, and peace into it.
The first thing that we need to know, then, is what exactly Jesus means by peace. In our culture, we tend to see peace as simply a lack of conflict. In the Hebrew tradition, though, the concept of peace—or shalom—is much more than that. It’s not just the absence of conflict, it’s a state of peace that brings flourishing and deep satisfaction. Neil Plantinga describes shalom as:
“the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in equity, fulfillment, and delight. Shalom means universal flourishing and wholeness. It describes a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts are faithfully and fruitfully employed, all under the arc of God’s love.”
Question: Reflect on a time when you experienced this type of peace—not just an absence of conflict, but true shalom. How would you describe it?
This kind of existence is what God originally created us for. But with the presence of sin in the world, shalom gets disrupted. Ever since Adam and Eve fractured shalom in the Garden of Eden, God’s been on a mission to restore it to His world and His people. In this Beatitude, Jesus is inviting us into that mission.
Shalom can be present on three levels.
- We can experience shalom on a personal level. Isaiah 26.3 says that God will “keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in [Him].” This kind of peace means that everything is in sync: our minds know what’s best, our hearts want that same thing, and our wills are pursuing that. Experiencing internal shalom means that those three things—mind, heart, and will—are working together in accordance with God.
- We can experience shalom on an interpersonal level. Romans 12.18 tells us to “live at peace with everyone.” It doesn’t say to live at peace with people who are like us, or to live at peace with the people we get along with. We’re called to live at peace—to live in shalom—with everyone.
- Shalom can also be present on a corporate, or city-wide, level. When Babylon exiled the Israelites and took them into captivity, God didn’t tell them to seek revenge or to rise up. Instead, He told them to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29.7). God didn’t want Israel to rise up against Babylon, and He didn’t even want them to just bide their time and avoid conflict. Instead, He wanted them to actively desire and pray for peace in Babylon. This is corporate shalom.
When Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, He’s calling us to be shalom-bringers. He’s telling us to run into—instead of away from—the difficult situations we encounter. He’s calling us to run into places where there’s brokenness, suffering, bitterness, racism, and hurt and bring His hope to them. This is what He means when He calls us to be peacemakers.
Question: Think about your own personal, interpersonal, and city-wide experiences of shalom. What are some areas that you see shalom in? What are the areas that are lacking in shalom?
It’s not enough to simply desire shalom. We’re called to be peacemakers, not just lovers of peace. Jesus wants us to pursue peace. In His day, there were two common ways to do this.
- Many religious leaders believed that they could achieve shalom by doing the right things. They thought that if they could be “good people” and do all of the morally correct things, God would give them shalom.
- There was also a group of people called the Zealots, who believed that the path to peace was through revolution. They believed that they could use power to oust the current, corrupt political leaders and put the “right kind” of leaders in place.
Question: Do you identify with either of these approaches to shalom? What happened when you tried to be a peacemaker using one of these methods?
Jesus, though, rejects both of these approaches to shalom because neither of them changes the human heart. His approach to pursuing peace is significantly different.
Read Matthew 5.44–45.
Jesus’ approach to peacemaking is to inject costly love and grace into places that are shalom-deprived. This is something we see over and over again throughout the New Testament.
Read 1 Peter 3.9–10.
Read Romans 12.20–21.
What these passages tell us is that peacemaking isn’t about simply doing the right thing or having the right leaders. Instead, the essence of peacemaking is filling broken places with costly love and grace. We see this approach playing out around us today, too. Perhaps there’s reconciliation between child and parent when one of them puts aside their own agenda and apologizes with grace. Maybe a conflict at work is resolved when the hurt party brings a peace-offering to the one in the wrong. Neither of these things are easy to do, but they’re examples of the cost of the love and grace that are necessary for shalom.
Question: Have you ever set out to be a peacemaker using Jesus’ approach to it? How was the end result of that different than if you would have used one of the two approaches He rejected? If you’ve never used Jesus’ approach to peacemaking before, think about how a certain situation might have been different if you had.
Read Matthew 10.34.
When Jesus talks about bringing a sword to the world, He’s not talking about literally attacking people with weapons. Instead, He’s saying that the path to peace is going to be one that’s marked by conflict. Bringing peace isn’t about avoiding conflict, it’s about running full-speed into the conflict of shalom-deprived places. This isn’t exactly fun, and bringing peace is inherently costly. So, how do we find the motivation to be peacemakers in the face of conflict and the cost of injecting love and grace into those situations?
Read Colossians 1.19–20.
Jesus doesn’t just call us to inject costly love and grace into shalom-deprived places. He himself paid the ultimate price to do just that by giving up His life. When He died on the cross, He took on everything that could ever threaten our experience of shalom in this world. He took on the sin, brokenness, corruption, and hurt that prevent us from experiencing shalom. When He was raised to life three days later, He declared victory over all of those things. We can put our trust in that victory and not only experience the shalom He’s given, but bring it to the world around us.
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