Peace Be with You

Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And we’ve been thinking this week about the fact that there seems to be a shape to this fruit. There are nine of them, but they belong to three triplets: love and joy and today, now, peace.

In Romans 5:1, to which we’ve already referred this week, Paul spoke about peace in an objective way: Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. The alienation is ended. The enmity has been brought to an end. Paul is speaking there not about something that we feel, but about a new state of affairs. Peace has been declared. The battle is over. The war is finished. But in Galatians 5, he’s taking that further. He’s saying not only are we at peace with God, but we actually experience peace with God.

I’m sure at the back of his mind is the Old Testament word shalom, which was far more than simply a feeling of being at peace. It was the experience of being made whole and well—coming home, knowing that you belong, no longer being a stranger, being a member of the family—that sense that there is a well-being in your life that wasn’t there before.

And of course, you remember how, after the Old Testament sacrifices had been accepted, the high priest would come forth and lift up his hands and bless the people and say to them: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you shalom.”

I think maybe that’s the best way to think about the peace that the Christian enjoys. Not that Aaron has come forth to pronounce the benediction, but a greater-than-Aaron, our High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, has come forth from His death and resurrection, and His first word to us is: “Shalom. Enjoy the peace. I am doing all things well in your life, and I will make you whole.”

Don’t you remember that when Jesus appeared to the disciples on the evening of His resurrection, that was actually the first word He said: peace. And this is what the Apostle Paul is speaking about here. It’s the very same thing that the great early Christian theologian Augustine experienced, isn’t it? You remember how he says in his Confessions that our hearts are restless? God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.

I was brought up as a teenager on the Rolling Stones’ words, an anthem of the sixties: “I can’t get no satisfaction, and I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried.” And where there is no satisfaction, there can be no peace. But here for the simplest and newest believer is the privilege and blessing of the gospel that the Lord Jesus says to you, “My peace is now yours.”