Let us see how the word “peace” is used in the Bible.
1. In the Old Testament.—The Hebrew word is shalom, with which we may be said to be familiar, for we have turned its Arabic equivalent into “Salaam” and use it as an English word. Only three times is any other word in the Old Testament translated “peace” (Dan_8:25; Dan_11:21; Dan_11:24), and the Revisers have changed “peace” into “security” each time.
But shalom is a wider word than the English word “peace.” Its fundamental sense is well-being. It sums up the ideas of inward and outward good, and may in any particular case have a more loose or more definite meaning, according to the mind of him who uses it. The common inquiry, “Is he well?” (lit. “Is there shalom to him?”) was answered by the one word “Well” (shalom). When David asked what progress the war was making, the Hebrew is “David asked for the shalom of the war.”
But in countries often ravaged, and among people often ruined, by war, every blessing of life was found in peace. Thus the incidental meaning of the word has permanently displaced the original; and we translate it by an expression which never suggests to us the idea of completeness, but only that of tranquillity or rest.
In the security of our modern travel we scarcely realize how much uneasiness was caused, in days when there were too many whose hand was against every man, when a company of travellers descried the approach of another band. It would be an anxious question, Are these friends or enemies? Does their coming mean war or peace? And the salutation of peace was a welcome relief of well-grounded apprehensions. It is in this way that we can explain most of the Old Testament passages where this salutation is found. Thus, when Joseph’s brethren timidly accosted Joseph’s steward, with excuses for an incident of their former visit which, they feared, exposed them to suspicion, how reassuring was his answer, “Peace be unto you” (Gen_43:23). So, again, when there came to David in the hold men from Benjamin and Judah, who, he feared, had come to betray him into the hands of his enemies, much needed was their answer of peace: “Thine are we, David, peace, peace be unto thee; peace be to thy helpers, for God helpeth thee” (1Ch_12:18). But, most of all was reassurance necessary when men felt themselves closely brought into the presence of God, who, their consciences told them, was justly displeased for their sins. Thus an angelic vision caused Gideon only alarm, and he cried: “Alas! O Lord God, because I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face” (Jdg_6:22); but the Lord said: “Peace be unto thee, fear not; thou shalt not die” (Jdg_6:23). And the same reassuring salutation, “Peace be unto thee; fear not,” was given to Daniel when he fainted at an angelic visitation (Dan_10:19).
2. In the New Testament.—Just as in the Old Testament so in the New there is one word which pre-eminently stands for peace. It is the word eirene: we see it in the English “eirenicon.” Now we should have expected that this word would generally mean either peace as opposed to war (which is the common meaning of the word in classical Greek), or else welfare, prosperity, its chief meaning in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. But it is not so. Certainly it is used a few times for peace as against war, and oftener (though chiefly in salutations) for welfare. Its commonest meaning by far, however, is the peace which flows from reconciliation with God, “the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God, and content with its earthly lot, whatever that is”—as Thayer puts it. Nothing could more strikingly illustrate the inwardness of Christianity, says Findlay. [Note: Single-vol. Dictionary of the Bible, 696.] More than that, nothing could show more clearly that Christianity is the religion of the Cross.
But we must be careful that we do not misinterpret the word. After the resurrection Christ appeared to the disciples and said, “Peace be unto you” (Joh_20:26). Let us take these words and consider what meanings they might possibly have.
(1) Let us suppose that the word “peace” carries with it the Old Testament idea of thriving or prospering. A man has peace, it has been well said, when things are with him as they should be; and peace then is the absence of causes which would disturb the well-being of a society or of a man. It is that well-being conceived of as undisturbed. Such a word naturally fills a great place in the history of civil society, of nations. Peace in the political sense of the term means pre-eminently the absence of war. “The peace,” in the language of Englishmen, still means the state of things which followed upon the close of the great struggle with the first Napoleon at Waterloo. Peace in this political or civil sense has its place and recognition in the Bible, as, to take a single instance, when we are told that there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, so that Solomon had peace all round about him. Such peace of the nation, resulting from freedom from invasion and from war, is again and again referred to in the Hebrew psalmists and prophets as one of God’s best blessings; and it has always been prayed for by the Christian Church. Many beautiful collects to this effect were composed in the dark days when the old Roman Empire was breaking up beneath the repeated and successful assaults of savage races, when it seemed as if all that was strong and stable in human society and life had well-nigh come to an end. And of a like character and spirit are the versicles adapted in the Prayer Book from the Old Testament: “Give peace in our time, O Lord, because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God”; or the comparatively modern prayers that peace and happiness, as well as truth and justice, may be established among us by the consultations of Parliament, under the blessing of God, or that the King may study to preserve the people committed to his charge, in peace, as well as in wealth and godliness. Certainly these are prayers which cannot, especially since the Great War and in the present state of Europe and the world, be said too earnestly by any man who believes that God really does govern the world, and that war is among the most dreadful scourges that can afflict the human race.
(2) But the peace which Christ breathed on the Apostles was that which is needed by a spiritual society. And this peace might mean, first of all, freedom from interference on the part of those who did not belong to it. No doubt as they listened to the sounds of the Jewish mob out in the street, resting as they were in their upper chamber on that Easter evening, the Apostles thought of this sense of the blessing. It was for them an insurance against rough handling—against persecution. Certainly it was no part of the design of our Lord that Christians should be at constant war even with Pagan or Jewish society. On the contrary, the worshippers of Christ were to do what they could to live in social harmony with those who did not know or love their Master. Christians were to “follow peace with all men.” They were to submit themselves to every ordinance of man, that is, to the heathen government of the Empire, for the Lord’s sake. They were to do good unto all men, although the household of faith had a first claim on them. They were not even to shun heathen fornicators, St. Paul says (because in that case, he adds, they must, living in such a city as Corinth, go out of the world), but only Christians who, knowing better, dishonoured thus their Master’s name.
And yet, if the Apostles had thought that this was the meaning of the blessing, they would soon be undeceived. Pentecost was quickly followed by imprisonments, by martyrdoms. For three centuries the Church was almost continuously persecuted. No doubt it was right to pray—and men did pray—that they might lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty, but it was with reference to this meaning of the word that our Lord Himself had already said: “Think ye that I am come to send peace on earth? I tell you nay, but rather division. I am not come to send peace, but a sword.” He knew that a pure and heavenly creed such as Christianity could not but excite hostility in the human heart wherever it did not compel faith and love. He knew that this hostility in the long run meant persecution, and He would not encourage unwarrantable expectations. No; the peace of Easter evening was not an insurance for the Church against the world’s persecution. Christians have prayed for some sixteen centuries at least, in the words of one of the most familiar and beautiful of our collects, “that we, being delivered from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness.” But the peace which Christ promised is independent of outward troubles. It certainly does not consist in their absence.
(3) Does the blessing, then, refer to concord amongst Christians? No doubt our Lord had said, “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another” (Mar_9:50). He had said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one towards another” (Joh_13:35). He had said of others that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mat_12:25). He had pleaded in the hearing of His disciples “that as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, they also may be one in us” (Joh_17:21). He had hushed up disputes about pre-eminence by His own example of ready and complete self-sacrifice. No doubt, also, peace, in this sense of concord among Christians, is much insisted on by the Apostles as a great and most precious grace. The Corinthians are bidden (2Co_13:11): “Be of one mind: live in peace.” The Thessalonians are told (1Th_5:13): “Be at peace among yourselves.” The Ephesians are entreated to keep “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph_4:13). The Hebrews are to “follow peace with all men, and holiness” (Heb_12:14). Timothy is desired, as a Christian bishop, to follow peace as well as righteousness, and faith, and charity. The Roman Christians are warned that the kingdom of God is not adherence to their private notions about meat and drink, but “righteousness and peace” (Rom_14:17). They are desired to “follow after the things which make for peace” (Rom_14:19). The Galatians are told that peace—peace with their brethren as well as with their God—is the third of the fruits of the Spirit. Certainly it was meant—we cannot doubt it—that peace should reign within the fold of Christ. He who is the author of peace and lover of concord so willed it; but neither here nor elsewhere did He impose His will mechanically upon baptized men. Such is our human imperfection that the very earnestness of faith has constantly been itself fatal to peace. Controversy, no doubt, is a bad thing, but there are worse things in the world than controversy. The peace of indifference to truth—the sort of peace which is often exhibited as a pleasing contrast to the distracting controversies of the Christian Church—is really purchased at the cost of a man’s complete degradation—the degradation of the man who voluntarily closes his eyes to the gravest and most interesting question that can interest a thinking being. Controversy with all its evils is better than that; and controversy is as old, or all but as old, as Christendom. Corinth, Galatia, Jerusalem were full of it, each one of them, in St. Paul’s day, just as every portion and section of the Church of Christ—the Church of Rome, most certainly, being no sort of exception to the rule—is distracted by it now. It may well make us pray God to inspire continually the universal Church with the Spirit of unity and concord, as well as of truth; but its existence does not forfeit the great gift which our Lord made to His Apostles on the evening of Easter day; for that gift was a gift we cannot doubt it—chiefly and first, if not exclusively, to the individual soul.
(4) The words which our Lord spoke must have recalled the saying in the supper-room “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you” (Joh_14:27)—an external peace, produced mechanically or by force, within the power of the world sometimes to give. Augustus had secured it a few years before for the great Roman Empire. A travesty of inward peace might for a while be given to the single soul by pleasure or by occupation, but illusions of this kind do not last, and they leave matters worse, far worse, than ever when they break up. The peace of Christ—“my peace,” (Joh_14:27) He calls it—is that heavenly tranquillity of the soul which belongs to the new regenerate life of man, to man’s eternal life, begun here in the sphere of time, and ended beyond the grave. It is the light of His countenance who is called five times deliberately in the pages of the New Testament, “the God of peace” (Rom_15:33; Rom_16:20; Php_4:9; 1Th_5:23; Heb_13:20). It is His light falling upon the spirit of man, and conferring on it something of the calm, tranquil dignity which belongs to the highest strength and goodness—which belongs to His eternal life. In thirteen epistles St. Paul prays that his correspondents may have grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ; grace first, that is, God’s active favour; and then its fruit in the soul—that great gift of inward harmony with God and with self from which the peace of the Church, and ultimately the peace of all civil society, must really radiate.
