Jesus told His disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
The Biblical concept of peace is different from what we might expect. We oversimplify it to mean “an absence of conflict”. While this is true, Biblical peace, the “shalom” of God, is much more. Jesus was promising a different kind of peace, that the world cannot give. It implies not only that conflict is absent, but that something is complete and whole.
This adds quite a bit of meaning to the angels’ message of “peace on earth”. In Jesus’ birth, there was much more than a cessation of fighting. There was a fullness and completion coming to the people of God. No longer would there be a wall of hostility between man and God. There wouldn’t even be a neutral relationship. The peace that Jesus brought renewed the broken ties with our Creator and made us a part of His eternal family. It took us back to the relationship He created us to have with Him.
This week, we will be studying a passage from Isaiah 11 that gives us a beautiful description of the renewal of God’s creation. Let’s look together to learn more about the peace that we were intended to have from the start.