The Peace Problem

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on you, because he trusts in you.” – Isaiah 26:3

As I waited at a crammed intersection in Delhi, I sat behind the driver’s seat of a tiny white SUV surrounded by about 200 motorcycles, scooters, and other tiny white cars… oh, and cows. Always the cows. The sounds, smells, and feelings of vast amounts of people packed into such a small space is something hard to process in the moment, and even harder to try to explain. But as I attempted to take in as much as possible of what’s going on around me, I noticed the car in front of me has a very common sticker on the back – the Hindi characters “om”. (You know that sound you make when you sit cross-legged on the ground and pretend to be meditating? Well, that sound can be spelled in Hindi, and it is essentially the logo for Hinduism.) I chuckled to myself as I thought about the contrast of the chaos happening around me and the ‘peaceful state’ that logo represents to about 15% of the world’s population. Immediately, I recalled the Muslim neighborhood I had just left and the countless greetings of “Assalamu alaikum” (peace be upon you) that had been given while meeting new friends who actually didn’t have any peace in their lives. That’s when I realized that every person and every religion in the world is trying to solve the peace problem.

Part of the problem with peace is that we know it’s out there – we’ve had small tastes of it here or there – but most people don’t know how to experience true peace fully, or continually. Now, the kind of peace I’m talking about is not a trancelike state of “no worries” or the simple realization that you are not having any drama with other people at that exact moment. In the Old Testament Hebrew we get the picture that peace is completeness – that everything is whole and as it should be in that moment – with God and with others. When the Hebrew concept of peace (shalom) is used as an adjective (shalame) we translate it into English as “whole-heartedly,” with complete commitment. When used as a verb (shalam), it often means to reconcile or repay – literally to make something complete or whole again. THIS is what everyone in the world is looking for – everything to be made whole again. We look into our own lives and we see broken relationships and shortcomings and things left undone. Then we zoom out and look around the world by turning on the news or hopping on a plane and we see that our problems are just one small drop in a 8.3 billion drop bucket. (That’s when it gets a little overwhelming for me.) And all of us just want to see all of that hurt and pain and brokenness put back together. We want to see it all made whole again.

But first we need to identify how everything got so messed up in the first place. Why is the world so broken? Why is there so much emptiness in so many aspects of our lives? In Psalm 38, David laments, “There is no shalom in my bones because of my sin.” Here is the biggest part of the problem with peace. Sin. We don’t have peace in our lives because we don’t listen to God and obey Him. This rebellion breaks everything. It separates us from a holy God and it also affects our relationships with everyone around us. And because God’s instruction has very practical significance, we also often experience incompleteness simply as the natural consequences of this daily disobedience. We have a sin problem both internally and externally. We lack peace both in our own private lives and as humanity on the whole because of sin.

In the Bible, peace and righteousness are often paired. Read these passages slowly.

“The effect of righteousness will be peace.” (Isaiah 32:17)

“Mark the blameless and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace.” (Psalm 37:37)

“Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” (Psalm 85:10)

“Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.” (Psalm 119:165)

“A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:18)

If we want peace in our lives we need righteousness. But we have already established that we have a hard time being righteous (or sometimes even wanting to be righteous) because of sin. So how can we see peace made from the pieces?

I believe that most people don’t realize that the Creator of the universe cares about them and has expressly communicated his desire for his people to have peace. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for shalom and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11) In the Psalms we read that God “delights in the shalom of his servant” (Psalm 35:27). In Numbers 6, just before bringing his presence down to the tabernacle, God communicates his blessing over His people this way in the infamous Aaronic blessing, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

Because of His love for us, God desires to give His people peace! So the only One who could accomplish the righteousness needed for peace came down from heaven with a proclamation from angels declaring “Peace on Earth” (Luke 2:14). Isaiah foretold his coming as “the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6) and the One who bore “the punishment that brought us peace.” (Isaiah 53:5) From His own mouth he declared “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) Jesus came to bring peace. “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:20) His righteousness made the peace we couldn’t (Romans 5:1). He paid the debt we owed that kept us hiding from God. Jesus reconciled our account before God with the pure sacrifice of His blood. His perfectness and completeness and fullness overflows as grace upon grace (John 1:16) to complete us – to fill those gaping holes and bring true lasting peace – both in our personal lives and in the universal sense that affects all of humanity for the rest of time. Praise God for that.

But on top of being the actual peace we need, Jesus also lived and taught in a way that instructs us on practical ways to make peace in our own lives. Faith in Jesus, as the Overcomer of the world (John 16), leads to a lifestyle of trust in Him that leads to more and more peace. As we look to Jesus as our example, the writer of Hebrews writes, “Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart…endure suffering as discipline… No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:3,7,11) Here we see righteousness and peace joined together in Scripture, but this time they are both the fruit of pain and suffering. When we find our peace fulfillment in Jesus, we can begin to tell our mind and body “NO” when our carnal desires don’t match the things God says we need. Instead of trying to find comfort in things we eat, or drink, or smoke, or inject, or watch, we can begin to harvest righteousness and peace as we “consider Jesus” and accept suffering as beneficial discipline.

Another way that the example of Jesus can lead us to peace is his habit of prayer and meditation on the words of his Father. Pulling away from the chaos of daily demands, he drew near to the One who “is not a God of confusion but of peace.” (1 Corinthians 14:33) We also can take time to pull away from the mayhem and confusion of the world and meet with God, read his Word, and set our minds on Jesus daily. Isaiah, praying to God, recognized “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” (Isaiah 26:3)

The Psalms instruct us to “Seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:14) “And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:18) As believers in Jesus, we should be marked as people who pursue and make peace as our faith in Him proclaims to the world that we lack nothing at all. (Psalm 23) “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace…” (Isaiah 52:7) My prayer is that we learn to trust the Lord more and let His righteousness bring us peace that overflows so much that it spills onto others for the rest of eternity. He is worthy of that.