What Is Peace?
What is peace? And how do we find it? These are questions our World is desperately seeking answers for today. They are searching everywhere: looking to philosophy, religion, drink, medication and materialism. And yet they never find it. They are looking everywhere, except to the one once called by the ancient Sage Isaiah, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9).
I once heard it said that whatever the sin of the wider culture is becomes the sin of the church. The predominant lack of peace of the wider society can easily become our affliction within the house of God as well. Yet we already have it! It is hidden right there in His very own words. Peace not as the world gives, he leaves with us (John 14:27). He himself is our peace (Ephesians 2:14)!
Maybe we are seeking for the same cultural values (satisfaction, safety, comfort and entertainment to name a few) that the wider world wraps in a package and tries to sell us as “peace,” rather than seeking the real meaning of peace, He himself? Maybe this is why we, even as Christians, are having so much trouble finding it? We are looking for the wrong thing.
“Peace I give you, not as the world gives,” comes in the context of Jesus’ final teaching to his disciples. Just before his betrayal, arrest and impending death, he promised them that the Holy Spirit would be given to them as their means to continue to abide in him (John 15) even in his absence and though the hatred of the world would soon become their cross to bear.
Safety comfort and worldly satisfaction may not be ours to obtain as Christians following after our Lord. But none of this is true peace. True peace allows us to find Him in the presence of our enemies in the very midst of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He is our peace!
With this understanding, may the peace of Christ, which surpasses all human understanding about what peace actually is, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord (Philippians 4) this advent season.
This post was originally published in the in-house magazine for Moody Bible Institute, Spokane.