The Peacemakers
1Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. 2He opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. 7Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. 10Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, said that those who make peace will become children of God. The blessings that come once we are God’s children are beyond anything we would dare to imagine, but one thing is certain: we will live forever in the place Jesus has prepared, beholding the glory of God. To make peace with sinners, God had Jesus, who had taken on human flesh, nailed to the cross and caused him to pour out all his water and blood. Jesus knew the whole of God’s plan, and he offered himself as the peace offering, becoming the instrument of that peace. If we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, lay aside human thinking and human ways, and stand firm in faith for Christ’s sake, God will commend us as peacemakers and give us the blessing of becoming his children. In his final moments, as he breathed his last, Jesus declared that all was finished, and that moment shows how heavy the calling of peacemaking is. Unless we die and endure for the work of God as Jesus did, we cannot be peacemakers.
Luke 6:27-32 records how a peacemaker behaves. Jesus told us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who mistreat us. If someone strikes you on one cheek, he said, offer the other as well; if someone takes your cloak, give them your tunic too; give to everyone who asks, do not demand back what has been taken, and treat others as you would want them to treat you. If you love only those who love you, there is no credit in it, he said, because even sinners love those who love them. But if you love your enemies, do them good, and expect nothing in return, your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High. With these words Jesus was showing that anyone who believes the Kingdom of God is real can live according to the will of God. Honestly, could you live this way? If someone struck your right cheek, could you turn the left and invite them to strike that too? If someone seized your cloak, could you hand over the only tunic you had left and tell them to take that as well? Could you pray a blessing over the person who insults and curses you? Such things are beyond human strength, yet he said they are possible in faith.
Jesus was saying that once we grasp how precious the salvation of a single soul is, we can give up the world’s honor, its boasting, and its greed, and sacrifice ourselves. Human nature could never manage what he describes; but those who hope for the Kingdom of God can show love as Jesus Christ did. As long as we stand at the center, we cannot do it, because we never count the other person more in the right than ourselves; but the humble, who have gone down to the lowly place as Jesus did, can. If a soul can be saved, there is no shame in embracing the other person, and no fear of having less when we share what is ours. God tells us that because he gave us life freely, and his gifts and grace freely, we too should give freely to others. Selling the word and spiritual gifts for money is unbelief that hides the glory of God, and using the word as though it were one’s own is antichrist.
If we would even make a show of trying to forgive others as fully as God has forgiven us, we could keep from sin. And if we embrace other souls as Jesus loved and forgave sinners up to the moment of his death, we would be able to walk into the Kingdom of God smiling. Such forgiveness and love are, of course, beyond human strength, which is why the Holy Spirit must help us hold to a right faith. Peace requires forgiveness, patience, love, reconciliation, and mercy, and these are acts that take courage and resolve. How could anyone love the person who curses them, or turn the other cheek to someone who has just struck them? And when someone is taking our cloak, which of us would strip off the very tunic that covers our shame and hand that over too? Yet Jesus is telling us that if we are born again as new people, filled with the Holy Spirit, we are fully able to do this as citizens of the Kingdom of God. He made it plain that if you cannot let go of your pride and your human righteousness, you will never manage it; but if you fix your eyes on salvation, it is not impossible.
We often pray something like this: God, I can’t understand how that person thinks, and I can’t forgive what they have done. Please change them, so that I won’t have to suffer. Sure that our own judgment is right, we are dictating to God what his judgment should be. Suppose you go through life convinced you are right, and then one day you stand before God and learn that you were wrong and the other person was right. What will you do then? If, even once, we trade places in our minds, putting ourselves where God stands and where others stand, and think it over deeply, we can become peacemakers who stir up no discord. Before complaining that someone else makes us uncomfortable, we must ask whether the enemy unsettling our feelings has been ourselves all along. Only when we ask whether we criticized and judged others because we share their very faults, or decided they were wrong because our standard was ourselves and the world, can we become gentle peacemakers. And the mistake people make most often is assuming that God’s will and their own thinking always agree. Those who are sure they are always right see nothing in others but faults and are forever trying to correct them; in the end, that is what keeps them from growing. Unless we give up the notion that our every thought and judgment follows the word, we will not understand even if Christ himself speaks to us. When the sun is strong, it is hard to see what is ahead; put on sunglasses, though, and the glare is cut off, and everything comes into sharp focus. In the same way, once we are gripped by the conviction that we are right about everything, that righteousness of ours blazes like the sun, so it is wise to shade it with the word, much as we put on sunglasses.
When Jesus told us to love our enemies, he was setting before us a law that only God can keep, one that rises above the calculating give-and-take of human relationships. People fix their own limits and draw lines, but God embraces even his enemies, and because he does, he gives us courage, telling us that we can do it too. Even those of us who know we were saved by God’s unconditional love find it hard to forgive someone without conditions and accept them as they are. But if we are sanctified by faith, we can love even our enemies. So the Lord said that only when you remove the beam from your own eye can you see the speck in your brother’s eye. As long as there is a beam in your eye, the beam is all you can see. It is like the way the color of your sunglasses changes everything you look at. Unless you realize that the beam is your own unbelief, your evil character, your lack of ability, you cannot see the good done by your brothers and sisters in faith, your neighbors, and your family. It is not that you are wise and therefore quick to spot other people’s faults; you recognize them the instant you see them because they are your own. Those who have matured in faith hear in another person’s faults the voice of God telling them to correct their own, and they repent. If you repent, counting the other person’s faults as your own, you can become a peacemaker and be called a child of God. Those who know their own failings do not lose their temper or lash out at others; they plead with God to make them new through his word and his wisdom, and this is how they are able to fulfill well the calling of God’s children.
When the apostle Paul prayed that he might die daily, he was wrestling, in the end, to be rid of his own sin and failings. As we grow in faith, we see how lacking we are, and we cannot help crying out to the holy God. We must learn to lay ourselves down for the saving of souls. How can we build up our homes and our churches rightly if we do not live by the word? If we shout whenever our temper flares, weep whenever our feelings are hurt, and say and do whatever we please, we cannot be children of the holy God. The word, the knowledge, the honor, and the possessions heaped up in a heart that has not been born again are so much rubbish. It is like food: however much work went into a dish, no one eats it once it has gone into the trash. Outwardly we may act cultured and well-mannered, but if we cannot love our enemies as Jesus said, then no matter how much of God’s word we know, it is of no use to us. Loving your enemies, in other words, is something you truly need, for your own sake. To deal with an enemy, we have to carry out evil plans, which means that in the end we cannot help sinning against God. If you endure, then, in order to love even your enemies, you will keep from sin, and God, seeing you strive to live a good life, will take up the matter of your enemy himself.
Exodus 20:24-25
24You shall make an altar of earth for me, and shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. In every place where I record my name I will come to you and I will bless you. 25If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of cut stones; for if you lift up your tool on it, you have polluted it.
A life that comes through refining and suffering by faith is hard and full of pain. Not even a splinter in the hand comes out without pain; how much harder, then, to lay down the righteousness, stubbornness, and pride we have stored up over so many years. There is only one way to give up human righteousness: to offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice and carry the cross with Christ. Like the priests who blew the trumpet and led the people to the place of sacrifice, you too must sound the trumpet and lead many people into worship. God’s love is the love that gave up his only Son to death. Stephen prayed that those who were stoning him would be forgiven; if, like him, you live for the glory of God, you can reveal his good purpose wherever you go without straining to do it. If you work from a lowly place so that saints may be at peace with saints, and people with people, you will receive the precious blessing of being called children of God. Even human parents spare nothing for their children; how much more, then, will God, who rescued us from death and adopted us as his own, hold nothing back from us?
You cannot receive God’s blessing without effort of your own. If you want to meet good people, you must first serve with love and sacrifice yourself to become a good person. If you want a good faith, you must first obey the will of God. For the sake of your faith, you need to set aside time to read the Bible and pray, and to work at having a kind heart that can embrace others. If you do not change, you will find it hard to live a happy life. God has always given back more than his people offered him: when they did good in humble places, he made others honor them in return, and when they took up their calling, he caused them to be lifted up. Those who brought a sacrifice to God as a peace offering gave, according to their means, a bull or a cow without blemish, a ram or a ewe without blemish, or a male or female goat. What stands out about the peace offering is that, unlike the burnt offering, it was never a dove. A shared meal followed the sacrifice, and since a dove was not enough for many people to eat together, it was not used. Other offerings required a male, but the peace offering could be male or female. The reason is that the peace offering existed to bring about reconciliation and communion between God and people, and close fellowship among people themselves. It shows that in the peace with God we enjoy through the blood of Christ, there can be no distinction of male or female, young or old, rich or poor, high or low. The peace offering carries thanksgiving: though original sin had left humanity spiritually dead in transgressions and sins, the mediation of Jesus Christ has brought us to peace with God. It is an offering made to God with gratitude that looks back over the years one has lived, and with gratitude for the future as well. Of the animal that became the offering, whatever was to be burned was burned and sent up to God, and the meat was shared and eaten by everyone together. Just as Jesus became the peace offering and made peace between God and sinners, we too must now take up the work of making peace. I would ask you to picture yourself as the offering presented to God. If you burn up the self that lived apart from God, arrogant and proud and unable to give itself up, and offer it as a pleasing aroma he will accept, you will gain new life.
Unless your evil nature dies with Jesus on the cross, you will keep on grasping at a life lived for yourself. You will grumble at those who do not recognize you, and you will sin to possess more than others. Unless you die completely with Jesus Christ, you remain in God’s sight a blemished sinner. Everyone carries loneliness, worry, and anxiety that no one else knows about, and unless we lay these down at the foot of the cross, we will live in fear. If we lay down at the cross the burden of a heart tormented by greed, temper, and worry, we can enjoy a rest so peaceful it is astonishing. What God wants is not a ritual sacrifice but your heart, truly born again, like a vessel freshly made. God has said that he himself will bless those who believe that he is alive and strive in this way to become a living sacrifice. The pagans built man-made altars of stone or metal. They fashioned lavish idols of gold and carved them out of stone, and so they leaned toward outward appearance and form rather than the sacrifice itself. Because preoccupation with outward appearance and form causes the true spirit of worship to be lost, God commanded that the altar be made of earth. Just as one must give full attention when offering sacrifice to God, in the hour of worship we must worship with all our heart, in spirit and in truth. When an altar was built of stone, God said that stones dressed with a tool were polluted and must not be used.
Stone chipped and shaped with a tool looks far better, but God said that stone worked by human hands is polluted. In the same way, if we offer worship shaped and polished by human righteousness, human methods, and human zeal, God does not accept it. Many churches today, against the will of God, are raising lavish buildings of stone cut and dressed with tools so that they will look splendid. And the people in them offer formal worship that has nothing to do with God. Sadly, they labor at a service that has nothing to do with the word and expect a great reward, but the glory of God is not something human effort or zeal can lift any higher. We must keep firmly in mind that formal worship, offered without truly knowing God and without genuine faith, may draw his rebuke instead. The tool that cuts stone carries the meaning of laying waste, destroying, and killing. It is, in other words, an instrument that breaks peace. It lays waste the work of God, destroys the places that labor to build his Kingdom, and kills the lives that were rescued by the word. You must never become a tool that obstructs the work of God. I hope you will not try to shape with a tool the worship, offerings, prayers, and service you bring to God, but will walk rightly with him in truth and in the Holy Spirit. Wherever there is a saint who makes peace, joy and thanksgiving always overflow. Peacemakers restore broken relationships and fan the embers of faith, and so they set in motion a work that gives life to churches and homes. God calls such people his own children; he has blessed them so that they may enter heaven, and he has filled every lack they have in this life.
Where there are those who make peace, there are also those who shatter a peaceful atmosphere. When such a person arrives, everyone grows restless and drifts away. The laughter stops, worry and fear take hold, and the happiness in the room is gone. Immature people break the peace like this.
What kind of person are you? You are children of God: are you people who, always and everywhere, carry joy, hope, and expectation, and help others to love God and be happy? If you say you believe in God and yet wound the heart of everyone you meet, God will rebuke you severely. I hope you will be holy people of God who sacrifice themselves in lowly places so that others can love one another. If you hold to such a faith, God will protect you so that you can take on more of his work, and he will give you the precious grace of heaven. Now it is your turn to show God your faith. If you put people at ease and bring peace to their relationships, you will be a good person whom everyone recognizes, and you can live without shame as one who has met God. A servant cannot grasp all that the master intends, but a son knows the whole plan behind his father’s work, so as long as he obeys, he will not fail. At first he may not understand his father’s deeper purpose, but as he goes on obeying with a humble heart, he comes to understand it. You too, if you keep obeying with a good and wise heart, as Jesus obeyed even to the giving of his life, will come to live in peace and happiness. May you always be holy peacemakers within the grace of God, overflowing with joy and thanksgiving.