When we read of the Genesis account of God’s creation of the world, a Hebrew word, shalom, is used to describe the state of peace Adam and Eve were in. The root word means "to be complete" or "to be sound." They were at peace: with God, within, and with others. We often use the phrase, “It’s all good.” Well, it was. It’s a word that implies wholeness, completeness, unbrokenness.[1]
So, it’s a good start for the world. And then they lost it. #sin. Now, to quote Kenny Wayne Shepherd, “everything is broken.” Look what happens in the first few chapters of Genesis after the Fall: sin crouching at our door, inner turmoil, murder, a world in which everything is “evil continuously” (Genesis 6).
And here we are, thousands of years later, and we still feel the ripple effect of this. We live in a broken, sin-ravaged world. We see it in the news: the scandals surrounding World Cup Soccer; the turmoil in Ukraine; the exposure of sin in the church; the trials covering the sins of Hollywood. We see it in our marriages, families, work, friendships, and even church. We see it in the ways in which we deal with depression, anxiety, guilt, shame… The nursery rhyme was right: this world is Humpty Dumpty, and no kings or people will put it back together again.
When the angels appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus, they proclaimed a message of peace:
“Glory to God in the Highest; and on earth, peace to those on whom His favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)
So what is this favor? And what is this peace?
The shepherds were probably watching a temple flock destined for sacrifice as they watched them from a tower called the Midgal Eder, the 'watchtower of the flock,' a lookout and a place of refuge close to Bethlehem for their flocks in case of attack. Shepherds brought ewes there to give birth. The priests maintained ceremonially clean stalls, and they carefully oversaw the birth of each lamb, many of which would be used in sacrifices.
So in one sense the thought that these shepherds were favored made sense. They were God’s people whose lives were being used to further God’s purposes in the world. But being ‘favored’ had not brought them the peace they were expecting. There was hardly a more obvious reminder than the palace that cast a shadow over their tower.
Herod’s mountain fortress, the Herodian,[2] overlooked the town of Bethlehem. The Herodian was built on top of an artificial mountain that Herod had created specifically for him. According to Josephus, there were originally two hills standing next to each other. Herod paid thousands of workers for years to demolish one of the hills and level off the other. He built his massive palace-fortress into the top of the remaining hill. This seven stories high palace contained a garden, reception hall, Roman baths, countless apartments, an enormous pool, a colonnaded garden, a 600-foot-long terrace. The buildings alone covered forty-five acres. The Herodion’s circular upper palace could be seen for miles and literally overshadowed surrounding villages.
Herod made his name when he smoked out refugees hiding in cliff side caves, pulled them out with long, hooked poles and dropped them down the sheer cliff.
Herod once laid siege to Jerusalem. The soldiers raped and slaughtered the women and children, and the Jewish soldiers were tortured and chopped to pieces.
Hundreds of friends and family members and political rivals were tortured or slaughtered on the slightest of accusations.
Herod went to Jericho to die in agony, hated by everyone. Fearing that no one would mourn his death, he commanded his troops to arrest important people from across the land and execute them after he died. If people would not mourn him, at least they would mourn.
It’s in this context that the angels said they were there to proclaim peace on earth to those on whom God’s favor rests. So what is this favor? Where is the promised peace?
The Romans were still in control when Jesus died, and for a long while after. In the first century alone there was massive slaughter of the Jewish people during a rebellion put down by the Roman army.
Look at the life of the disciples. When you are run out of towns and sawn in half and crucified upside down, we wouldn't normally think about that as peaceful, and yet Jesus promised them, “Peace I give and leave to you – just not the kind the world gives.” (John 14:27) He follows that up with an encouragement not to be troubled or afraid – which suggests that troubling and fearful things would happen around them.
The angels and Jesus had a view of peace that is different from how we tend to think of it by wordly measures or standards (which just means that it’s how the empires train us to think about peace in distinction to the Kingdom).
Kingdom peace won’t be self-help techniques. I keep seeing the idea in Christian articles that psychological practices will bring the peace God promised. I just don’t see that in Scripture. I have nothing against different things we can do to focus our mind or calm our body – I’m not opposed at all to medication helping us when used properly - but let’s not confuse that kind of calm with the peace that passes understanding, the peace that only the Kingdom can offer.
Kingdom peace won’t be merely circumstantial. The Bible constantly talks about finding peace in the midst of the storm. David is sent to the battlefield to check on his brothers’ shalom.[3] Jesus tells his followers that they will have trouble in this life, but they will have peace because God loves them.[4] This peace won’t be dependent upon what happens around but within those who have God’s favor. Though peacemakers as salt and light will bring a peacemaking presence into the world, it’s different from having the peace of the presence of Jesus of which the angels sang.
Kingdom peace won’t necessarily be emotional. It may be, and it is indeed lovely when we feel it strongly. However, neither the biblical testimony nor 2,000 years of the church history has shown that followers of Jesus are guaranteed unrelenting mental and emotional health in the sense of feeling calm and collected all the time. I think biblically it’s possible to be at peace without feeling peaceful. And if that caught your attention….let’s go!
Here is my summary of what I think the Bible is revealing about the kind of shalom the angels announced: Kingdom peace arrives when whose I am clarifies who I am and reveals who you are.
Let’s start with whose I am.
“God was pleased . . . through [Christ] to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through [Christ’s] blood, shed on the cross.” (Colossians 1:19–20).
“ 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.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)
“To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (John 1:12-13)
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” (1 John 1:3)
What is the foundation of peace? Reconciliation with God through Christ.[5] Peace begins in us when we are in right relationship with Christ.[6] The biblical analogy is that of being drawn into his family. Thanks to the work of Jesus, we are given the status of righteous children, which we could never earn on our own. This is whose I am. Peace, then is something much deeper and greater than the feeling of being at peace. Being at peace is a state, a status, a standing of righteousness before God and within His family.[7] No matter what happens or how we feel, we stand in a reconciled space. The foundation of my peace never shifts. The peace that Jesus has provided for us with God never leaves me.
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Peace arrives when whose I am clarifies who I am and reveals who you are.
How does knowing whose I am clarify who I am? Well, I now have a primary way of thinking about myself. I am a child of God, adopted into the family of the King, an heir of the spiritual riches of the Kingdom.
The fact that we as human beings are image bearers of God already means we have an inherent value, worth and dignity, but this is something more. This is a reminder that God gave himself in Jesus to save us broken, sinful image bearers, mend our broken peace, and proudly claim us as His own.
No matter how I feel about myself, it doesn’t change the status I have. To use another biblical analogy, I am a temple in which God dwells. His Spirit lives in me, transforming, empowering, changing. I am not simply the sum total of my successes and failures, as if doing the math of my life = value. Something far greater is at work, and it is a far greater thing than any earthly things that are part of who I am.
There are lots of things that fight for the right to characterize us (another way of thinking about identity). There are the things that make us go, “Ah, so this is who I am.” We may or may not want to be known for them, but they feel so overwhelmingly a part of us that this is what it means to be Anthony (substitute your name here). You might think, “Thank you God for me! This is amazing!” or, “What is happening? Why is this me?” And when we arrive at conclusions about “who I am” in this way, we are in trouble.
It becomes easy to excuse our failures; we say, “That’s not who I am!” when everybody around us knows it’s exactly who we are because #experience.
It becomes easy to magnify our successes; we say, “That’s who I am!” when everybody around us knows that’s not our usual self because #experience
It becomes easy to identify with our failures; we say, “That’s who I am- a failure!” as if we are failures rather than being a person who sometimes fails.
But when we really grasp whose we are, we realize that none of those things are the starting point of who we are. We start with whose we are. We begin with, “God has claimed me as His own. How does God see me? How would God define me?” And when we are part of the family of God, that answer to who we are is simple: “A loved child of the King, an heir of the Kingdom.”
I think we all struggle, at least at some point in our life, with the question of identity. In our world we usually here these terms associated that with sexual or gender identity, but that’s just one way people work through questions about who they are or try to establish something in or around them which to orient their life. But it all swirls around the questions of, “What matters in me, what characterizes me, and why do I matter? What is the True North in the compass of m life???” We do it with all kinds of things:
Money (I am rich/poor, and thus I matter/I am a failure)
I am a good looking human being (or an ugly one) and I add value to the world (or detract from it)
People respect and like me (or don’t) so I must be a good person (or bad person).
Look at my job! Only smart and talented can do this (or I’m dumb, and anybody could do this.)
I have multiple degrees/ I can fix anything/ I am unusually strong and relentlessly healthy/ I am a great musician/I run a household that should be featured in magazines…
Please hear me. Success in these areas are not bad things, but they are foundations of shifting sand. They are part of you, but they are accessories. They may be wonderful, but they are not the core of who you are.
If you are a human being - rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, smart, dumb, strong, weak, sick, healthy, popular, lonely, depressed, happy - you are an image bearer of God. And if you are a follower of Jesus - rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, smart, dumb, strong, weak, sick, healthy, popular, lonely, depressed, happy - you are at reconciled peace with God because of the person and work of Jesus. You. Are. A. Child. Of. God. This is whose you are. This is who you are above all else. [8]
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Peace arrives when whose I am clarifies who I am and reveals who you are.
When Paul was writing letters to the start-up churches helping them to better understand the true message of the gospel, he wrote to the church in Ephesus, which was having trouble forming a church community with both Jewish and Gentile converts. Here we begin to see an explanation of peace that ripples out from us and into the world:
“Remember that at that time you (Gentiles) were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace…. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.“ (Ephesians 2:12-17)
The reconciling peace Jesus offers expands the family, reconciling us with those who feel “far away.”[9] God calls out the human barriers (the ‘isms’[10]) that divide us (Ephesians 2:11–22), dissolving the antagonism across those lines and giving us the resources to reconcile with others in unity and love through continual forgiveness and patience (Colossians 3:13–15).
We live in peace with others when we relationally enter into the “ministry of reconciliation” that God began in us (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)[11] And that peace happens when we are committed to paying forward the reconciliation God has given to us through Jesus.
Blessed are the peacemakers; they will be called children of God.[12]This is what it looks like when the favor of God rests on us, and the peace He offers to the earth changes the world for our good and God’s glory.
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[1] The Greek word for peace in the New Testament comes from a verb (eiro) which means to join or bind together that which has been broken, divided or separated. It’s where we get the word “serene” (free of storms or disturbance, marked by calm. https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/peace/
[2] Picture from Eitan Ya'aran.
[3] 1 Samuel 17:18
[4] John 16:33 – read the whole chapter for context.
[5] In both the Old and the New Testament, spiritual peace is realized in being rightly related—rightly related to God and rightly related to one another. From the Holman Bible Dictionary. “Peace, Spiritual.” www.studylight.org
[6] God, "Yahweh Shalom" (Judges 6:24 ). The Lord came to sinful humankind, historically first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, desiring to enter into a relationship with them. He established with them a covenant of peace, which was sealed with his presence (see Num 6:24-26 ). Participants were given perfect peace (shalom shalom [l'vl'v]) so long as they maintained a right relationship with the Lord (see Isa 26:3; 2 Thess 3:16). https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/peace/
[7] “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Ro 14:17-note)
[8] I wonder if this is the “perfect peace” (or shalom-shalom) that brings “quietness and confidence forever” (Isaiah 32:17) to those who steadfastly set their minds on God (Isaiah 26:3). (As noted by Tim Keller in “The Meaning of Shalom In the Bible”)
[9] There is a cultural/societal implication to this, but I don’t have time to talk about it today. “An end to physical violence. Shalom can include the end of hostilities and war (Deuteronomy 20:12; Judges 21:13),” but at least once in the Old Testament it’s peace when at war,[9] so it has to be more than that. “An end to oppressive injustice. Peacemakers help to establish socially just relationships between individuals and classes. Jeremiah insisted that unless there was an end to oppression, greed, and violence, there can be no shalom, even though false prophets insisted there was (Jeremiah 6:1–9,14; compare Jeremiah 8:11)” Read more in Tim Keller, “The Meaning of Shalom In The Bible.”
[10] Racism, sexism, classism, etc. Differences that people use as an excuse to judge, divide, and oppress.
[11] Shalom experienced is multidimensional, complete well-being — physical, psychological, social, and spiritual; it flows from all of one’s relationships being put right — with God, with(in) oneself, and with others. (Not an exact quote, but from Tim Keller)
[12] Matthew 5:9