Peace Is More Than the Absence of Conflict
Peace is more than the absence of conflict. Drawing on Jesus' words in the Beatitudes, this blog explores the difference between keeping peace and making peace, showing how Christ reconciles us to God and calls us to courageously pursue reconciliation with others, even at personal cost.
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The Sermon on the Mount
1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
The Beatitudes
2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons[a] of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers: What Jesus Means by True Peace
When Jesus sat on a mountainside and began teaching His disciples, He described the people who belong to His kingdom. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” He said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He went on to bless those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, and the pure in heart. Then He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).
Most of us want peace. But before we can understand what it means to make peace, we have to ask a deeper question: what is peace?
Shalom and the Roman Peace
The people who first heard Jesus lived under what historians call the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. For a couple hundred years, Rome controlled the Mediterranean world, and large-scale war was rare. But that peace was imposed by overwhelming political and military power. Beneath the surface, resentment simmered, and zealots plotted to drive Rome out. There was no real peace, only an absence of open conflict.
God’s peace is different. You cannot enforce it or hand it down from above. It must come from Him, and then we must live it out.
The Hebrew word for this peace is shalom. Shalom is never merely the absence of trouble. It is everything that makes for a person’s highest and best good. It is not only the removal of bad things but also the presence of good things, a life where everything works toward flourishing.
That is why peacemaking goes far beyond being peaceful. A peacemaker actively works to reconcile people who are alienated from one another. A peacemaker doesn't simply enjoy peace; they take up the hard work of creating it where it doesn’t yet exist, turning retaliation into reconciliation.
Here is a simple way to picture it. Peacekeeping is sharing your apple with someone when you happen to be eating one. Peacemaking is planting a tree, growing an orchard, and sharing the fruit with people who have none.
Why Our World Has No Peace
Look around, and peace is hard to find. When it does appear, it rarely lasts.
There is no peace between people. The news is filled with crime, competition, and strife, and an entire economy now runs on online outrage. No peace exists between groups, whether the dividing line is race, culture, geography, income, or political party. And no peace exists between nations, as conflicts flare across the globe and tensions strain even long-standing alliances.
The reason is simple and sobering: we are not a peaceful people. Sin enters the world in Genesis 3, and only three chapters later, Scripture records that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). The problem spread that quickly and that completely.
We are at war with one another, and that war can show up even in the church. Paul told the believers in Corinth that their jealousy and quarreling proved they were “acting like mere humans” (1 Corinthians 3:3), living in their old nature rather than allowing Christ to change them.
Beneath our war with each other lies our war with God. James asks, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (James 4:1). He goes on to warn that friendship with the world makes us enemies of God (James 4:4). Every division, every separation, and every war in our world flows from sin and from our willingness to let it rule our lives. We had the opportunity to choose peace, and we have been choosing war ever since.
The God of Peace Makes the First Move
But God does not leave us there.
Before we could ever act, God took it upon Himself to intervene. In the Wesleyan tradition, we call this prevenient grace, the grace that goes before us. Our God is not a God of chaos, strife, and disorder. He is the God of peace, and His Son, Jesus Christ, is the Prince of Peace.
Through Christ, God has reconciled us to Himself. We were once His enemies, and now we have been brought home. Paul describes it this way: God was pleased “through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20).
Making peace is part of who God is. And this is the heart of the beatitude: those who have been adopted into His family will share the family likeness. His children will be peacemakers, because their Father is a peacemaker.
Through Christ, we receive peace in three dimensions: peace with God, peace from God, and the peace of God.
Peace With God
“Since we have been justified through faith,” Paul writes, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1
What separated us from God has been overcome. Jesus took our sin upon Himself and bore the penalty it deserved. He became the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice. By His blood, our sinfulness has been exchanged for His righteousness, and the hostility between God and us has been brought to an end.
Peace From God
That same peace tears down the walls between people. Paul tells the Ephesians that Christ “himself is our peace,” who has “destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,” in order to “create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace” (Ephesians 2:14–15).
When we are united with one another in Jesus Christ, that bond runs deeper than any other connection we have. It transcends race, culture, income, and zip code. In fact, your bond with a believer on the other side of the world who looks and lives nothing like you is, or should be, stronger than your bond with a neighbor who looks and lives just like you. The old lines between insider and outsider, familiar and foreign, have been erased. We are one family, children of one Father.
The Peace of God
Finally, God gives us His own peace, “which transcends all understanding” and “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).
With that peace, we no longer have to live on guard, braced for the next offense. The arrows of the enemy lose their power, because we have a good Father who sees us, is with us, and is for us. And from that place of security, we can invite others into the fellowship we have found.
Peace was the message of Christ from beginning to end. At His birth, the angels announced “on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). On the night before His crucifixion, He told His disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you” (John 14:27). And when He appeared to them after His resurrection, His first words were, “Peace be with you” (Luke 24:36).
So here is the gospel: God has made peace with us at great cost, and now He sends us to make peace with others at a cost to ourselves. Justification is Christ making peace for us on the cross. Sanctification is the Holy Spirit working that peace in us and then through us into the world.
Peacemaking Is Not Peacekeeping
What, then, does it look like to be a peacemaker?
It begins with understanding what peacemaking is not. It is not mere peacekeeping. When we love peace the wrong way, treating the absence of conflict as an end in itself, we create trouble. We avoid hard conversations, delay necessary action, and allow dangerous situations to grow, all in the name of keeping things calm. We are only stacking up trouble for later.
Peacekeeping puts a bandage over a wound. Peacemaking goes in, removes the infection, and allows real healing to begin. True peace comes from facing problems honestly. Ezekiel warned against those who cry “Peace” when there is no peace, comparing them to builders who whitewash a cracked wall (Ezekiel 13:10). The cracks stay hidden only until the storm comes.
Peacemaking is not appeasement, either. Appeasement is cheap and easy. Peacemaking is costly. It was costly for God, who gave His own Son, and it will be costly for us. The work of reconciliation is hard. It always involves risk. But it is worthy work, holiness in action.
One Portrait, Not Many
It is tempting to read the Beatitudes as a list of different personality types, as if one applies to some people and another to someone else. But Jesus is not describing separate kinds of believers. He paints one portrait of a transformed life, and each line builds on the last.
The person who is poor in spirit recognizes they have nothing to commend themselves to God. Seeing their sin clearly, they mourn over it. That honesty produces meekness, a gentle humility toward others that says, “I, too, am a sinner in need of grace.” They begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Having received mercy, they extend mercy. Cleansed by Christ, they become pure in heart and see God. And now, filled with God’s peace and shaped by His character, they become peacemakers.
This is why peacemaking cannot be manufactured by effort. Without first coming to Christ in poverty of spirit and repentance, peacemaking is just human striving, a kind of do-goodism. True peacemaking is not charity work or moral obligation. It is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), the evidence of Christ’s peace at work within us.
Having the Mind of Christ
The Holy Spirit teaches us to make peace by conforming us to the example of Jesus. Paul writes, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). He then calls us to share the mindset of Christ, who made Himself nothing, took on the nature of a servant, and was obedient even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:5–8).
The world tells us to protect ourselves at all costs and put ourselves first. God’s kingdom works differently. We do not repay evil for evil, and as far as it depends on us, we live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:17–18).
A peacemaker, then, is someone who has been reconciled to God and now seeks reconciliation in the world. That shows up in small places, like how we speak to our families and what we post online, and in large places, like our neighborhoods, our city, and our nation.
Bearing the Family Resemblance
Jesus promises that peacemakers “will be called children of God.” In Hebrew thought, describing someone as a “son of” a quality named their defining character. Barnabas was called the “son of encouragement” because encouragement marked his life (Acts 4:36). Jesus called James and John the “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17), likely because of their fiery temperaments.
To be called a child of God, then, is to bear His likeness. When we make peace, we reflect who our Father is and what He has done.
It is no wonder that Paul so often closes his letters with a call to peace. He ends his second letter to the Corinthians with these words: “Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11).
Oil, Vinegar, and the Emulsifier
In my refrigerator door sits a small glass bottle called a cruet. We use it for homemade salad dressing: oil, vinegar, and a few spices. But every time I pull it out, the oil and vinegar have separated. I can shake it hard, and for a minute or two they blend. Then they pull apart again. Oil and vinegar simply resist each other.
Unless you add an emulsifier. The most common is an egg. Whisk one in, and suddenly the oil and vinegar bind together and stay together.
We are called to be emulsifiers. We are called to find the places where people are not coming together and to bring them together. We are called to step into strife, to stand between those who are divided, and to carry the gospel to those who have never known the life of God. We are reconcilers, mediators, and advocates, allowing God to work in us and through us so that His peace can spread.
The writer of Hebrews urges, “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy” (Hebrews 12:14). Peacemaking and holiness belong together, because peacemaking is the very work God Himself accomplished in Christ.
Where Will You Make Peace?
If you follow Jesus, the call is to give yourself fully to Him and let the Holy Spirit change you from the inside out. Ask Him to give you the mind of Christ so you can be a peacemaker at home, at work, and in your neighborhood. Ask Him to help you notice where peace is missing and give you the courage to step in, speak, and act, even when it means risking discomfort or pain.
Pursue peace aggressively, not with anger or malice, but with tenacity. Enter places where people are at odds for reconciliation, and show a love that holds people together across their differences.
There are many ways to begin. Through mission work around the world, you can help build homes for families in need, care for refugees, bring health care to the sick, share the gospel, and help plant churches. And if that feels like too big a step right now, there is plenty of peacemaking to do right here in Memphis. Our church walks alongside dozens of local mission partners serving those facing homelessness and hunger, refugees and newcomers to our city, children who need help learning to read, families in foster care, and those who are incarcerated. Where is God inviting you to bring peace amid strife?
An Invitation to the Restless Heart
Perhaps you are reading this, and the idea of being a peacemaker feels far away, because you do not have peace yourself. Maybe your heart is restless. Maybe you are weary of striving in your own strength and wondering where relief can be found.
Peacemaking is not natural to any of us. It does not come from trying harder or rededicating ourselves to do better. It flows from a renewed heart. First we experience God’s peace, and then we express it.
So let me invite you to come home. Find rest in Christ, and let Him exchange your life for His. He offers freedom not only from the penalty of sin but from its power over you. Surrender to Him. He will forgive you, empower you to live holy lives, and make you an instrument of His peace. He will call you His child, and through you He will bring His kingdom to bear on your life, your relationships, and the world around you.
TL;DR
- True peace is more than the absence of conflict. Biblical shalom seeks the flourishing and well-being of others.
Through the cross, Jesus made peace between God and us. As His children, we're called to reflect His reconciling character.
Peacemaking is not peacekeeping. Peacemakers don't avoid difficult issues; they courageously confront division and pursue reconciliation.
Peacemaking begins with a transformed heart. Through the Holy Spirit, God's peace flows into our relationships, communities, and world.
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