"Blessed Are the Peacemakers"

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" (Matthew 5:9).

This is the season when the word peace is seen on cards, heard in songs, and preached in sermons. It is a good word, and an even better experience. What is peace? And why do there need to be peacemakers?

Sin and Satan and the world destroy peace. Sin separates us from God, brings us under God's wrath, and creates enmity with Him. This is the major problem in our world today. But sin also creates tension and turmoil between people. Theft, betrayal, fighting, greed, oppression, and lust destroy relationships in families and communities. The world is full of these sins, and Satan is at the bottom of it all, tempting, agitating, accusing, and destroying.

Into this mess came the precious Son of God. Sin was all around Him. There was wicked Herod who would kill the babies in an entire region to pacify his ego. There was the Roman empire built on oppression and greed, betrayal and murder, violence and lustful pagan worship. There were religious leaders and factions who were more interested in personal prominence than in righteousness, more concerned about preserving their religious sham than about understanding true faith.

The world needed a Peacemaker. It needed someone to bridge the awful canyon between a holy God and fallen men. It needed someone who could dissolve the hatred and strife between a man and his neighbor, between a husband and wife, between a black man and a white, between a Jew and his Gentile neighbor.

Jesus was God's gift to our troubled world.

The peace Jesus brought was not a parley; it was not a compromise worked out by shuttle diplomacy between heaven and earth. Jesus dealt with the root issue --sin. He dealt with it by giving His life for sinners. He, the righteous Son of God, became poor to transform sinners into God's children and offer to them the riches of heaven.

All true peacemakers must follow the steps of heaven's Peacemaker. They must deal with sin to bring men and women to peace with God and peace with one another. They must be sacrificial. They must know how to give up things temporal to obtain things eternal. They must approach their enemies, their suffering neighbors, and their estranged family and kin with hands and feet that are pierced with Christ's. They must know the love that voluntarily gives up comforts and life itself for the needs of the world.

Blessed are the peacemakers! Those who walk in these steps of Jesus will rightly be called the children of God.

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