PEACE is one of the regal words of the Bible. Its splendour is burlesqued when it is used to describe merely the absence of fighting. Peace is not a negation, a cleared space from which combatants are warned off. Peace is the New Testament word for the realization of God’s purposes of salvation. To make “peace on earth” is much more than patching up quarrels and persuading men to shake hands and be friends. It implies the establishment of right relations universally, the reign of righteousness over every continent, the enthronement of love in all men’s hearts. This is the goal of the vast evolutionary process by which God is leading the race upward and onward.
It is very significant that the radical meaning of the original word is suggestive of union; two sundered things are brought together again. And the gift of peace means a recovery of healthy fellowship between the soul and the eternal God. Now let it be understood at once that the gift of peace does not imply perfection. There may be a general “rightness” in the relationship between man and wife, and yet there may be an occasional misunderstanding, even a temporary outburst of temper, while nothing fundamental becomes crooked or perverse. A general “rightness” or healthiness of the body is consistent with an occasional chill or superficial scratch or pain. There may be a temporary derangement while the heart is as sound as a bell. Our Lord acknowledged this possibility in His own gracious teachings. Men may be essentially right with God who are not yet by any means perfect. Even a man who has been bathed “needeth to wash his feet.” And so peace consists essentially in this innermost “rightness” with God. The general life tends towards the highest. Its primary ambitions are fixed upon the good pleasure of God. There is intimacy of fellowship. There is an open road. There is a ladder communion on which the angels ascend and descend continually. The peace that the Lord gives enables the soul to say with glad humility, “I and my Father are one” (Joh_10:30).
