The Promise of Peace (Pt 3)

Ephesians 2:13-16 (NAS95)

We are in the third and final message of a three-week sermon to teach you how to live victoriously in God’s promise of peace. It is my desire that you will experience the power of the promise of peace in your everyday life, to the glory of God!

This promise is one of the most relevant promises we can manifest to our culture that is currently experiencing a national panic attack (or is it a temper tantrum?). We, the people of God, have the solution; so, let’s bring the peace of God (Jehovah Shalom!) that transcends all human understanding to the world (The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit), by first experiencing Him for ourselves and allowing His presence in us—God’s peace is Himself—to make us both holy and whole. We are called to pass the peace of God to others—the ministry of reconciliation that has been given to all followers of Jesus Christ!

Here is a very quick review that leads us into today’s teaching:

Peace with God that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus means that the promise of peace is not just a vertical and internal reality, it is our greatest witness as it brings external peace between us and other people. Listen to Paul in Ephesians 2:13-16 as he gives the larger context of our memory verse for today:

But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.

This is the Church’s mission! This was radical thinking for the first century Jewish listeners. It is still radical today! In their minds, God loved His people, but the Gentiles were not His people (Hosea 2:23). Passages such as what I just read and John 3:16 were shocking to them because Jesus was challenging the idea that God loved Israel exclusively. Jesus was declaring the parts of their Scripture that the people had ignored: God would ransom the Gentiles through the seed of Abraham—Jesus Christ. This is what Paul was talking about in Galatians 3 and concludes his argument about the seed of Abraham being fulfilled in Jesus Christ in Galatians 3:26-29:

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.

Experiencing the peace of God in both our holiness and wholeness allows us to give God’s love and grace towards others because we have received (faith) and internalized (baptism) it in our own lives—we are now children of God (1 John 3:1). By the Spirit we are to build bridges with people to unite them in Christ alone—our peace through His shed blood on the Cross of Calvary!

Let’s be clear though: God’s peace means that we can have peace with God, we can have peace within, and we can act without hostility toward others. But it doesn’t mean we can avoid all conflict. It doesn’t mean that the battle of the flesh or the brokenness of the fall or the prevailing darkness of the prince of this world won’t be brought to us. As Paul says in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

The gospel ministry of passing the peace is for every follower of Jesus because peacemakers are commanded to be ministers of reconciliation during this ancient conflict—we, the Church are a liberating force seeking to save that which has been bound up by evil and the fall! Paul explained this in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21:

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

The ability to pass the peace to others is only possible because you have a peaceful heart yourself. The holiness of God (Christ in you!) manifests as your ministry of loving your neighbor as you have learned to love yourself. That is why I keep pointing out to you that these three directions of God’s peace align to Jesus’ teaching on the Greatest Commandments. Jesus taught us this in Matthew 22:37-39: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

Furthermore, Paul emphasized in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The “us” in this passage is critical to our ability to pass the peace. It’s not a “me” thing—it’s an “us” thing!

Why are we commanded to love others and pass the peace of God? Because we recognize that God loved “us” (all of us!) first. Our love for ourselves (and for others) isn’t something that we “work up”, it’s a recognition and submission to His love for every man and woman. It’s a love that is transferred upon us through the righteousness of God—His love dwells in our hearts!

Listen to John teach us this in 1 John 4:17-21,

By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

We are brought back into a relationship with God the Father through Jesus’ relationship with His Father. The holiness or righteousness of God flows into our lives from the Father through the way of the Son by means of the Holy Spirit. As we become whole through the progressive process of sanctification, we become the answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-26:

I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.

The ministry of passing the peace that you first received is truly the work of the Holy Spirit! Allow me to pray for you and all of us, in agreement with Jesus’ promise of peace, that in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we walk as His people of peace. Let us pray … Amen!

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