by Colin Halstead, Renewal/Recovery Ministries
At this Christmas season, like each holiday season, I hear an assortment of songs, see a myriad of signs, and listen to conversations about “peace.” Even secularists tend to trumpet the theme of “peace on earth” at the time of the nativity with peace vigils and open calls for end of the conflicts around the globe. Year-round in our own city, I see bumper stickers further promoting this idea as they encourage me to: “Visualize World Peace.”
The prophets foretold that the coming Messiah would bring peace on earth. The heralding angels repeated this theme as they proclaimed, “peace on earth, goodwill towards men,” to fearful shepherds on that amazing night. However, in hindsight, the life of Christ seemed to bring anything but peace, both during His life on earth and the years that have followed His return to heaven. Did Christ fail to keep the promise the angels’ proclaimed? Have we, His followers, failed? Or…do we have differing understandings of the peace that was promised?
According to Christ, a lack of conflict was not the type of peace He was bringing to the world:
Matthew 10: 34-36 (NIV) “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For, I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
Whoa…what happened to the peace-wielding Messiah? It seems that He is telling us just the opposite: division and conflict will be a result from the gospel. And this begins with those closest to us, our families. By choosing the economy of the kingdom, they have decided to align themselves with God instead of with the world.
Consider the peace He does promise His children in this present age. In John 14, Christ tells us that we are offered His peace not as the world gives, but the kind that keeps us from fear and troubled hearts. Later in John 16, He tells us to live in the peace He gives:
“I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But, take heart, I have overcome the world.” John 13:33 (NIV)
I have mentored several young men and vivedly remember discussing “the peace that passes all understanding” with one in particular. He prayed for peace, expecting that God would calm the world around him in order to bring him peace. I encouraged him by saying that the peace that Christ provides to His children is a peace for un-peaceful situations and times. He has since learned to see peace in this way. Christ Jesus lived a life at peace when all around him was definitely not peaceful.
There is coming a day when Christ will return and set up His eternal kingdom; peace will reign upon the earth in the sense everything and everyone will be at peace. But until then, the peace that passes understanding calms His children in the midst of the circumstances. We believers can live in peace with one another, (What a testimony!) and we can be at peace with others as we walk with Christ. While the true transformation of the world comes from the peace that Christ gives to each individual as they put their trust in Him, we can be the salt and light of peace as we live now in this world. A world full of His surrendered followers would be a world at peace!
