What does it mean to be a peacemaker in your everyday life as a Christian?
What characteristics might you need to develop as an individual? What actions should you take or avoid?
Here’s how God made peace between himself and us, as described by Paul:
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and 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. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. (Colossians 1:19–23)
The only way that Christians can truly make peace between ourselves is to keep what Jesus did for us in mind. His willing sacrifice of a perfect life is the only thing that can truly inspire us to repentance – and it’s only that repentance which can reconcile us to God.
That same attitude of repentance, and a willingness to make sacrifices of our own, is what will enable us to seek and maintain peace with each other.
An eye for an eye
How should you respond if you are hurt or insulted or mistreated by someone? And what if that person is a fellow Christian?
In the laws given in the Old Testament, there’s a general principle that if someone deliberately harms you, you have the right to exact the same harm on them. It’s summed up in the term “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (see Leviticus 14:19-20).
Anyone who is familiar with the teachings of Jesus will know that he taught there was a better way to respond than this. We’ll look at what he said in a moment, but it’s probably fair to say that as Christians we tend to see the notion of “an eye for an eye” as a primitive or even barbaric way to resolve a dispute.
That’s actually not the case. The point of an “eye for an eye” was to ensure that if retribution was carried out for some wrong commmitted against a person, it could only be done in proportion to the original offence.
What does that mean? It means that if your neighbour stole one of your sheep, you were entitled to take one of his. If your neighbour punched you and knocked out one of your teeth, you were entitled to knock out one of his.
That may still seem barbaric, but the purpose of it was to prevent acts of retribution from escalating out of control. For example, your neighbour steals one of your sheep, so in response to teach him a lesson you steal two of his. In response he steals four of yours, so you steal eight of his, and so on.
Or suppose your neighbour fights and kills a member of your family, so in revenge you kill two of his relatives, then he kills four of yours, you kill eight of his, and so on until there’s a full-blown civil war going on.
In that kind of situation, both parties feel that they are in the right and have been unjustly wronged by the other party. When both parties hold that mindset, it’s almost impossible to get them to back down and let the other side have the last word, let alone to reconcile.
Think of how many conflicts around the world today could fit this pattern. Let’s take Israel and the Palestinians as an example. Both sides are convinced that they are in the right and have been wronged by the other side. Both sides believe they can point to historical atrocities carried out against them by the other. There is no simple answer or way out of this conflict.
That’s what the law of “an eye for an eye” was intended to prevent. In theory at least, under that law the punishment for a wrong was proportionate to the wrong and neither party felt the need to push the matter any further.
Yet humans being what we are, we often tend to feel safer taking action or threatening violence to ensure the other side is too afraid or too weak to attack us, rather than trying to reconcile with them and remove their desire to attack us.
A better way
Jesus, of course, taught an even better way:
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth’. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
(Matthew 5:38–42)
As he did on more than one occasion, Jesus took a commandment from the Old Testament law and made it even more challenging to follow. He told his followers not even to apply or demand proportional retribution, but rather no retribution at all.
If someone physically harms you, you aren’t allowed to hit them back with equal force – you should simply walk away. If someone takes something from you, you aren’t allowed to take or demand something of equal value from them – you should simply walk away.
Does that mean that if you’re the victim of a crime you should do nothing about it, not even inform the police? I don’t think he was saying that. His point was that you must not take retribution or punishment for a wrong into your own hands.
When you are wronged by someone, it’s not easy to let it go. If you’re in a dispute or an argument and you’re convinced that you’re in the right, it’s very difficult to step away and let the other side have the last word. This seems to be particularly true today when Western nations are increasingly divided along political lines. Some people almost appear to see political disagreement or conflict as a matter of life or death.
That doesn’t mean you should never stand up for what you believe to be true and right, or oppose what you believe is mistaken or evil. What it means is that you should never allow these disagreements to become personal conflicts. This is such an easy trap to fall into, particularly on social media. You must try to question or criticise a person’s beliefs or actions, not the person themselves.
Peacemakers not peacekeepers
What about times when you’re trying to calm down a dispute or conflict between two other people or groups, instead of being part of one yourself?
Last time we saw that there is a distinction between genuine peacemaking and mere peacekeeping. Peacekeeping means monitoring a situation and preventing any circumstances in which conflict might begin. For example, if two people within your church are in conflict over some point of belief or over something one or both of them have done, peacekeeping might involve ensuring that the two are kept apart, perhaps seating them at opposite ends of the room during the service, and forbidding them from seeking each other out afterwards.
Peacemaking, on the other hand, would involve bringing the two individuals together and finding a way for them to reconcile. That is not easy. Sometimes it’s impossible. If two people truly have faith in God and have made Jesus the central foundation of their identity as Christians, then that shared faith should enable them to reconcile no matter what other differences they might have.
The problem, of course, is that all of us at times allow other things to take precedence in our lives. For example, national or local pride, race, gender and political views are aspects of identity which are increasingly beginning to fracture the Western societies within which many churches exist. The same societal fragmentation will inevitably affect our churches as well unless you and I and everyone else makes a conscious effort to ensure that Jesus is the foundation of our identity.
A Bible passage which I’ve personally always found to be both humbling and inspiring at times when I’ve been part of a conflict with another Christian is Hebrews 12:22-24:
…but you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Some things are worth arguing over. Some things, perhaps, are not. I find that these verses really help me to put into perspective the things that really matter if you’re a Christian, namely the future hope of living in God’s presence forever and the blood of Jesus that makes it possible for you and I to be there. That Christian brother or sister you find it so hard to agree with or get on with may just have their name written in heaven alongside yours.
Nihilist to Christian 