Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called sons of God.

Matthew 5:9 ESV

People try to get away from it all–to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you go is more peaceful–more free of interruptions–than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquility. And by tranquility I mean a kind of harmony. (Meditations, 4:3)

While that may sound like self-help advice from mindfulness guru on social media, it is actually from Marcus Aurelius, who was emperor of Rome from AD 161-180. He wrote those words to himself in his private journal that was published after his death. He was a devout Stoic, which is a philosophy that emphasizes discipline and self-mastery. Given the unbridled hedonism that the internet now offers, it makes sense that Stoicism is quickly regaining popularity. Indeed, as the dopamine wears off and the wars and rumors of wars keep looming overhead, people are increasingly taking Marcus Aurelius’ advice: they are looking for peace within themselves. Sadly, that is not the way to achieve true and lasting peace. As we shall see in the Seventh Beatitude before us, true peace only comes from Christ, which He then produces within His people.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

“The Beatitudes,” says John Blanchard, “are not a programme but a portrait, not a directive but a description” (217). We ought to especially keep this in mind as approach this Beatitude, for as with being meek and merciful, being a peacemaker necessitates action.

The truly and eternally happy are peacemakers. As with the other Beatitudes, we can begin by ruling out some ideas that are not being expressed here.

Peacemaking is not the same thing as appeasement, of doing whatever people want to avoid conflict. Indeed, the people-pleaser will do whatever it takes to avoid conflict because he views conflict as intrinsically wrong. Yet the stark reality is that some conflict is necessary. For instance, peace should never be bought at the cost of the truth. In fact, since the truth must prevail, forsaking truth for the sake of appeasement only guarantees a greater conflict still to come.

Neither is Jesus summoning us to dishonesty by ignoring problems, suffering, and sin. Sadly, many churches today fit the description given in Jeremiah 6:14: “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” Especially within the Word of Faith movement, turmoil is often seen as coming from a lack of faith, but Jesus Himself told us that in this world we will have tribulation (John 16:33).

What then does Jesus mean by peacemaker?

As in English, the Greek is a compound word. The first part is peace (ειρηνη), which is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word shalom. While it certainly entails the cessations of combat, shalom often means far more. It refers to wholeness, completeness, and harmony in all realms of life. Indeed, while Marcus Aurelius does not use the word ειρηνη above, his usage of tranquility (ευμαρεια) and harmony (ευκοσμια) match the idea of shalom/eirene well.

Indeed, Wilhelmus a Brakel notes that “this word is derived from a root which means ‘to bind together,’ for peace unites the hearts, and binds people together” (91). Thus, we may do well to think of peace as harmony in the greatest sense of the word: harmony with God, with others, and with our own consciences.

The second part is maker (ποιεω). Like the verb hacer in Spanish, it can mean both doing and making. James uses the same word in 1:22 whenever he writes: “But we doers (ποιηται) of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” It is a word that necessary connotates action.

Putting the two together then see that Christ is not simply describing an inner peace within Christians. Rather, a Brakel’s definition of peaceableness is very fitting:

Peaceableness is a believer’s quiet and contented disposition of soul, inclining him toward, and causing to strive for, the maintaining of a relationship with his neighbor characterized by sweet unity–doing so in the way of truth and godliness. (91)

To be a peacemaker certainly requires that inner peace, “the quiet and contented disposition of soul,” but it must also work outward, “striving” for peace with those around us. Lloyd-Jones notes quite frankly that “it is in practice that you prove whether you are a peacemaker or not” (124). How then are we to do this? How are we to make peace around us?

Again, true peacemaking requires a readiness to contend for the truth. There is a paradox here similar to meekness. Jesus’ great meekness was seen most gloriously in the crucifixion precisely because He had the power to bring it to an end at any time. Meekness requires strength; otherwise, it is nothing more than weakness. Self-control works the same way, for it is most expressed toward our greatest desires. For instance, I have zero desire to gamble; therefore, my avoidance of gambling is not a great display of self-control. In the same way, a person who cannot stand for truth is not a peacemaker but a pushover. Making peace requires having the capacity make proper conflict. Indeed, Jude 3 summons us “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” The key, of course, is noting that we contend for the faith, not for our own honor or reputation.

PEACE FLOWS FROM LOVE

We must also understand that pride fuels strife, while love produces peace. James 4:1-4 tells us plainly what the default cause of fighting is:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Of this passage, Blanchard writes:

The key phrase her is ‘your desires that battle within you’. The word ‘desires’ translates the Greek hedonon, from which we get the word ‘hedonism’, the doctrine that self-satisfaction is all-important. The word ‘battle’ translates the Greek strateumenon, the same militant word used by Peter when he writes of ‘sinful desires, which war against your soul’ (1 Peter 2:11). James is saying that the cause of all human conflict is man’s deep-rooted determination to get his own way, an attitude which inevitably brings him into contention not only with God but with his fellow men. It would be simplicity itself to show that every conflict in human history, from global war to a broken marriage, has proved the accuracy of James’ diagnosis. (215)

Indeed, the insistence of having my own desires fulfilled is ultimately rooted in pride, for it reveals that I value myself more than I value others. Love, however, is the opposite. After all, love, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:5, “does not insist on its own way.” Whenever we act in love, we treat others are more important than ourselves, valuing their good over our selfish desires. Indeed, a Brakel gives us a four-point summary of this point:

“If you are desirous to live in peace:

(1) Crucify your desire for money, honor, and love; it is impossible to have and maintain a peaceable heart without self-denial.

(2) Keep to yourself and let others govern their own matters. Do not appoint yourself as a detective and judge concerning the deeds of others; close your ears for backbiters.

(3) Be always the least—both in your own eyes as well as in your conduct toward others. Endure being wrong, and forgive such deeds (Col. 3:13).

(4) If someone else encounters you in an unpleasant manner, or if you detect the first stirring of displeasure, arm yourself at once and resist strife at the very outset; be completely silent. (100-101)

To quote Lloyd-Jones again:

As peacemakers, we should be endeavoring to diffuse peace wherever we are. We do this by being selfless, by being lovable, by being approachable and by not standing on our dignity. If we do not think of self at all, people will feel, ‘I can approach that person, I know I shall get sympathy and understanding, I know I shall get an outlook which is based upon the New Testament.’ Let us be such people that all will come to us, that even those who have a bitter spirit within them will somehow feel condemned when they look at us, and perhaps may be led to speak to us about themselves and their problems. The Christian is to be a man like that. (125)

CHRIST IS OUR PEACE

But even if we rightly begin to put that counsel into practice, we must keep in mind that we cannot produce a peaceable spirit within ourselves. We can certainly foster peace as a virtue which the Spirit yields in our hearts, but it can only be cultivated once the seed has been sown. For this reason, Beeke and Smalley note that:

True peacemaking eludes the unconverted, who are “hateful, and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). Sinners may have a sense of peace, but it is the false peace of Satan’s undisturbed reign over their lives (Luke 11:20-21), the peace of a graveyard. True peace is from the Lord, but sinners are at war with him… True peace begins with reconciliation between God and sinners by faith in Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1). (829-830)

Contrary to the advice of Marcus Aurelius, true peace cannot be found by looking within. Instead, we must look outside ourselves. Peacemakers must know the God of peace (Hebrews 13:20). In regard to this, Ephesians 2 is perhaps the greatest single chapter on peace in Scripture. You see, our problem of strife and enmity is exactly as the outlined in the two greatest commandments. Although we ought to love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves, we rebel against God, acting as though we were gods ourselves, and we denigrate and hate our neighbor. We have need of peace through reconciliation on both fronts.

2:1-10 describes how we have been reconciled to God in Christ. Here is the summary. Although we were dead in our sins and children of God’s wrath, Christ made us alive with Him and makes us into God’s adopted children. He did this even as we were sinners because He is rich in mercy toward us. Christ did this through the greatest display of grace that cosmos will ever see. We earned God’s wrath, but by God’s mercy, His wrath was placed upon Christ in our place. Jesus was crushed, and we are spared. In our sin, we are dead, ignorantly enjoying the trivial pleasures of this world, but God has given us life in Christ, displaying to us the radiance of His glory as our greatest joy and treasure.

Indeed, in Him, we have the great blessing of being called God’s children, which is displayed in the second half of the Beatitude: for they shall be called sons of God. There is no greater depth of peace and reconciliation than to become God’s children. J. I. Packer rightly calls adoption “the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification” (Knowing God, 206). He notes that as marvelous as justification is, our justification is for the purpose of becoming children of God.

What makes our adoption so marvelous is that it is intimately bound together with our election. Plenty of children have been conceived unintentionally, but an adoption cannot be unintentional. The circumstances leading to the adoption may seem to have just fallen into place, but the very act of adopting a child requires a conscious choosing of him or her or even them. Likewise, God chose us, as Ephesians says, predestining us from before the foundation of the world, to be adopted as His children. Furthermore, in the Roman legal system, an adopted son could not be disinherited precisely because he had been chosen.

Iain Duguid rightly notes:

The result of that transformation in status is peace in our hearts with God. There is no more fear of being cast out; we are part of the family. This central biblical truth is what frees us to say, “What the world thinks about me doesn’t matter. What my friends think about me doesn’t matter. What I think about myself doesn’t matter. Only what God thinks about me matters—and he has declared me one of his adopted children!”

It is from this place of peace with God that we are then equipped to make peace with those around us, which brings us to the next section of Ephesians 2. In verses 11-18, Paul describes how the gospel brings peace and reconciliation between Jew and Gentile, which is emblematic for all divisions of hostility between people.

Jesus reconciled Jew and Gentile by abolishing the outward ordinances of the law that only divided and resulted in hostility. The sacrifices and washings find their perfect fulfillment in the final sacrifice of Christ that has washed away all of our sins. Circumcision has been replaced with a new sign of baptism, which is given all who are in Christ, Jew and Gentile as well as men and women. The feasts and festivals have been replaced by the Lord’s Supper, which is the remembrance of the true Passover sacrifice of Christ for our atonement. No, the law has certainly not been abolished, but it has been fulfilled in Christ. Furthermore, much of the law’s previous ordinances have passed away.

By erasing these ordinances of distinction, Jesus has created “in himself one new man in the place of two, so making peace.” Under the old covenants, there were two kinds of people: Jews and Gentiles. But under the new covenant, there are only Christians. We have become a new creation, a new mankind, “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (4:24). We do not place our faith or confidence in empty rituals and works; rather, both Jew and Gentile now look to Christ as “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

Again, Paul is holding out the hostility between Jews and Gentiles as a kind of a fortiori argument that if God can make peace between them, He can make peace between any earthly division of people. And He is able to do so the same way: through the cross of Christ.

The cross is truly the great equalizer. At the cross, we find that we are just as damned by our sin as our neighbor. Before the holiness of God, there is no sense in arguing degrees of sin because all sin is defiled and worthy of just punishment (notice how peacemaking is necessarily rooted in meekness, in rightly viewing oneself). In light of eternal suffering, no one will think, “Well at least I wasn’t a thief like that guy.” The cross, therefore, places us all upon a level playing field with regards to our sin, but it also restores us by the same work. In heaven, no one will look upon another person with condescending pride in their own good deeds because entrance into the kingdom is only through the blood of the Son. This excludes all boasting from the equation, for we have all been rescued from the same rebellion against God by the same act of redemption upon the cross.

Upon the cross, Christ killed our hostility. He was violent against the violence within our hearts.  The hostility that existed between Jew and Gentile has now been killed by the blood of Christ upon the cross. In order to bring us peace, Christ was far from peaceful with our sin. The violence of conflict is swallowed up by a violent redemption. We rightly stand in an awestruck wonder at the horror and beauty of the cross.

Paul, therefore, rightly notes in Ephesians 2:14: “for he himself is our peace.” And that is true before both Almighty God and fellow man. Apart from Christ, there is no true peace. Indeed, if our peace with God has been sealed through our being called sons of God, it is that very adoption that also seals our peace with one another, for if we are children of God then we brothers and sisters to one another. We are equally made into the family of God, and now keep that peace by continuously keeping in mind that we are brothers and sisters with one another. Beeke and Smalley note:

Equality calls believers to humility. Although Christians may have legitimate authority over each other in the domestic, economic, ecclesiastical, and political structures of this age, no Christ is the Lord of another, and all Christians are fellow heirs of eternal life (1 Tim. 6:2; 1 Pet. 3:1, 7).

AMBASSADORS OF RECONCILATION

But that speaks of the peace that Christ has brought between us as fellow believers. But how are we to make peace with non-Christians, especially with those who may be hostile towards us? Of course, the question of hostility bleeds over into the Eighth and Final Beatitude, so we will save that discussion for next week. But consider how Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:22-26 for us to behave toward those who do not confess Christ:

Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

We should hold out hope for everyone that we meet that they too will become our brother or sister in Christ. Therefore, consider the ministry that all Christians are summoned to make their own:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:16–21)

Because we are now the body of Christ on earth, we are our Lord’s ambassadors (or representatives) imploring others to be reconciled to Him. While the word Paul uses for ambassador is not the same word for peacemaker, Blanchard does note that “the ancient Greek writers Plutarch and Xenophon both confirm that eirenopoios [peacemaker] was used of ambassadors commissioned to negotiate peace with alienated parties, a task which called for enterprise and effort” (222). And that is our task. The blessed are those who have received the peace of Christ and now call for others to receive His peace as well. They have been adopted into the household of God and declare that the adoption process is still open.

Indeed, the gospel is the only true and lasting path of peace. It is quite popular today to state that we have never been more polarized, that we have never been more divided. However, if you spend any moderate amount of time studying history, you will rapidly see that division and disunity are the status quo of humanity. In fact, historical moments of unity are widely remembered for just that reason: they were historical and uncommon. Plus, humanity’s greatest moment of unity was actually a united rebellion against God.

From the moment that Adam and Eve saw that they were naked, a chasm formed within humanity as a result of sin. Babel only sealed this division by adding ethnic dimensions on top of everything. We are separated from one another, politically, culturally, linguistically, and spiritually. The significance of the Holy Spirit’s arrival on Pentecost in Acts 2 ran deeper than being a divine form of Google Translate. It was a reversal of Babel, a visible display of how humanity will now be reunited, for it brought unity while still preserving the beauty of a multitude of languages.

As much as we ought to rightly pursue building a Christian culture, we can look to nothing else for our ultimate hope. No political candidate, no humanitarian effort, no legislation, no organization, no philosophical or sociological ideology, no technological breakthrough, no treaty or agreement, no system old or new can usher in a united utopia for mankind. Christ alone can reconcile us to one another, just as He alone can reconcile us to the Father. Far from standing apart from the ills of society, the gospel is the only true and lasting solution for them. May we, therefore, reject the tendency to view preaching the gospel and reforming the world around us as two entirely separate notions. Instead, the message of the gospel is the only real means of making peace, both with God and with fellow man.

So, proclaim it. Preach the good news of Christ, where God provides an open door for doing so, and pray for open doors. Declare Christ so that former enemies would become much more than friends or colleagues but brothers and sisters within the same family.

And we can begin with the Table before us. 1 Corinthians 11:26 says, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” As we drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper, therefore, we are given a visible symbol of our adoption into God’s household through the blood of Christ. We drink and see anew the wonder that we who were once under the wrath of God now have bold access to His throne as His sons and daughters. And in eating the bread, we have participation in the body of Christ. It is a visible testimony of the communion of saints, of our brotherhood with one another. Thus, these ordinary elements, by faith, become a proclamation to ourselves, to one another, and to the world around us that in Christ alone do we have the peace of God that makes us into peacemakers on earth.

Further Resources

The Beatitudes // Charles Spurgeon

The Beatitudes // Thomas Watson

The Beatitudes // A. W. Pink

Sermons on the Beatitudes // John Calvin

Hero of Heroes: Seeing Christ in the Beatitudes // Iain Duguid

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount // Martin Lloyd-Jones

Sermon on the Mount // R. Kent Hughes