Peace
April 10, 2022
Peace is often thought of as an internal state of being. You feel peace settle over you like a warm blanket. Your spirit is a still, deep pool. You are not anxious, or fearful, or unsettled. You are at peace. This is a good peace. A meaningful peace. It’s also more of a philosophical peace, sought after by the epicureans and stoics through removing attachments in life. I would guess it’s a similar idea to some eastern religions as well (hence the inner peace sought by the Jedi in Star Wars).
When we talk about the fruit of the Spirit, that inner peace may be a by-product, but not the central peace in question. This peace is more interpersonal. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isa. 52.7) When God reigns in and from Zion, the result will be peace. This is the peace that will result when God creates “new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” (Isa. 65.17) In this new creation, there will be no weeping or distress, but there will be life abundant, and people “shall build houses and inhabit them,” and “plant vineyards and eat their fruit;” “They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—and their descendants as well.” This will be where “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.” (Isa. 65.17-25, recalling Isa. 11.6-9, Gen. 1-3, and Deut. 27-28, especially 28.30)
How can this state of affairs be? How can the world be at peace like this? In Deut. 28, that peace is a gift from God due to his covenant people “diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today…” We see in the Old Testament that Israel does not observe all those commandments, and so receive the curse. Therefore, when the time was right, God sent the Messiah to become a curse for us, so that we might be redeemed from the curse of the law. (Gal. 3.13) We don’t have to live with the threat of the curses from Deuteronomy 28 hanging over our head. Jesus died so we could be freed from that curse.
We don’t have to be afraid of the curse, but that doesn’t solve the peace problem. How can we be at peace if we aren’t restrained by the Law?
In the past, we have not had peace because we “were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods.” (Gal. 4.8) Our lives were characterized by biting and devouring one another, by enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, and things like these. But in Christ we have been freed from this way of living, these works of the flesh. In Christ we can live by the Spirit, and so be people who do not use our freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. By putting others first in self-giving and other-centering love, peace begins filling the earth.
—John Coffey
