Advent Week - Peace

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   Quite a number of years ago, back when VHS tapes were still a thing, I was taking an independent study class through Eastern Oregon University. On one of the video-taped lectures, the professor posed the following challenge to the students in the class: define the word 'peace' by what it is rather than by what it is not. This is a difficult thing to do, because we often want to describe peace as the absence of conflict or the cessation of hostilities. Yet both of these describe peace by what it removes rather than what it provides.

   Ephesians 2 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture for presenting the gospel. It accurately describes our condition as people who are hostile and disobedient to God, people who are "children of wrath, even as the rest." However, hope is found in a simple two-word phrase, "But God." God Himself, our Judge, is also our Savior. The Father makes us "alive together with Christ" and saves us by grace through faith apart from works. Our hostility is not simply with God but with one another. In vv. 14-18, Paul writes, "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. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have access into one Spirit to the Father."

   This week as we think of the theme of peace, let us dwell on what peace is. It is the presence of reconciliation between parties formerly at odds (my definition), humans to one another and humans to God. However, even more than this, peace is a Person, the "Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6). Because of the Savior whose birth we celebrate, we can know Peace in the deepest, truest, and most meaningful way possible.