Most men get impatient with too much debating, analyzing, and risk aversion. They just want to do it! This comes out in our walk with the Lord. “Jesus, just tell me what to do, so I can do it. Give me the mountain to be taken, and it will be done by tomorrow.” This podcast can’t promise to make life that simple; but we are committed to helping you have a concrete picture of what your mission from Jesus is. Today we look at our calling as agents of reconciliation, a phrase used by Paul and described by Jesus in the last two beatitudes, “Blessed are the peacemakers—those devoted to restoring relationships broken by sin—and those who, in the process of restoring rightness, suffer because of taking a stand for such righteousness.”
Understanding our call to be peacemakers requires realizing that relationships form the building blocks for human flourishing. God designed humans to need harmony in four foundational relationships of life: his relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation. In fact, harmony in these four relationships, is what is meant by the biblical term for peace, SHALOM. SHALOM and the Greek word for peace, EIRENE, mean more in the NT than just a cessation of hostilities; they refer to total well-being both personally and communally (ESV Study Notes: Matt 5:9).
Of course, peacemaking is necessary because our race’s rebellion against God shattered this SHALOM—the relational well-being of the entire universe. The unity and peace God had woven into this world, SHALOM, began to unravel when Adam and Eve sinned. Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkett explain the devastating effects of the fall on all of humanity’s relationships. “Their relationship with God was damaged, as their intimacy with Him was replaced with fear; their relationship with self was marred, as Adam and Eve developed a sense of shame; their relationship with others was broken, as Adam quickly blamed Eve for their sin; and their relationship with the rest of creation became distorted as God cursed the ground” (When Helping Hurts). The SHALOM of creation was shattered by sin.
But the Prince of Peace has come to fix all four broken relationships and reweave SHALOM. Paul says it this way, All this is from God, who through Christ RECONCILED us to himself and gave us the MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION; that is, in Christ God was RECONCILING THE WORLD TO HIMSELF. Notice that Paul does not just say, “God was reconciling individual Christians to himself,” but, “reconciling the world to himself.” Jesus has come to restore all four broken relationships. This work of restoration, the reweaving of Shalom, is the spread of his kingdom of righteousness—“right-ness” over the planet. This ministry of reconciliation is the work of peacemaking, which Jesus referred to in Matt 5:9.
BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED SONS OF GOD
The gospel work of RESTORING the life God intended for humans to experience in all four relationships broken by the fall is described by author, Hugh Whelchel. When these relationships are functioning properly, we experience the fulness of life God intended—SHALOM. We were originally created to have peace with God. From this perfectly intimate relationship with God and a heart focuses on our Creator would flow the peace in our hearts that we long for and the peace with others we struggle to find. Sin shattered this peace…When we live out the original purpose of these relationships, people are able to fulfill their callings to love their neighbor and glorify God through the work they do in their churches, families, communities, and vocations (All Things New: Rediscovering the Four-Chapter Gospel). Let’s consider some practical examples of “peacemaking” in all four relationships.
A. Peace with GOD. Being a peacemaker begins with faithfulness to pray for and seize the opportunities to lead others to faith in Christ. Paul points out the most obvious way to be an agent of reconciliation. In Christ God was…entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:19-21).
Few Christian men I know (including myself) are satisfied with the level of our commitment to sharing our faith. For this reason, one of the accountability questions on the Check 6 card that our ministry uses is: Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I pray for your strategy to share Christ with them. I have discovered firsthand that God loves to answer such prayers. Last fall, I was praying for an opportunity to deepen my friendship with our next-door neighbor. I knew men build friendships by doing stuff together. But he doesn’t like football (which means he is REALLY lost!)—So I couldn’t bring him to the high school games my son is coaching. While I was praying and wrestling with what activity we could do together, I returned home from a weekend away and discovered that a major branch from one of my front-yard trees had fallen towards my neighbor’s yard. I was barely out of the car before Joe was over at my house offering to help me clean it up with his power pole saw. You have to be careful what you pray for!
Over the last 18 months, I have also been privileged to watch and pray for one of my Check 6 brothers who set out to love well a Spanish-speaking relative who had married into the family. My friend has completed over 365 straight days of Duolingo Spanish to better reach this relative. Last week, Bob rode along with his relative in the truck he drives at work and appealed to him to get right with the Lord because his young son needs his father to be the spiritual leader. God is not calling us to be Billy Graham—just to look at the circle of our relationships and ask God, “Who should I be praying more intentionally for opportunities to share Christ with?” Those relationships aren’t there by accident.
B. Peace with OTHERS. Taking the initiative to restore a broken relationship. Being a biblical peacemaker does NOT mean peace at any price, appeasement, or fearing confrontation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Biblically, I am responsible for restoring broken relationships, both when I’ve offended another and when the other has offended me. Jesus taught: If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matt 5:23-24). I happen to be someone who takes this verse literally. Many years ago, while serving as a church planter, one of our ruling elders was leading the pastoral prayer. Rick had a way of praying that drew me to the throne of God. I was getting ready to stand up and preach—and I always viewed my sermon as an offering to God for him to use as he chose. I started to review this verse, “If while you are offering your gift at the altar you remember that you wounded the tender heart of your 4-year-old daughter by yelling at her on the way in to church…go ask forgiveness of your daughter. Then come and offer your gift.” So, I got up in the middle of Rick’s prayer, tracked Karen down in children’s church, confessed my harsh, hurtful, unfair words and asked, “Will you forgive me?” I’m not sure there is a more precious peacemaking principle to me than this one because it preserves a father’s relationship with his kids, and, I suspect, actually builds respect for him.
Jesus also makes it our responsibility to go to the one who has wronged us—instead of talking to others about that offense behind the offender’s back. Most offenses we need to overlook, exercising patience and granting forgiveness in a spirit of mercy, as we saw last week. But sometimes this text applies. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. (Matt 18:15-17). Christ-followers fix broken relationships.
C. Peace, (restoration to wholeness) with SELF. Compassionate restoration has always been the mark of Christ-followers for those whose self esteem has been shattered because they have been used by others. Megan Kane ran away from home at fourteen. By fifteen she was a mother. By nineteen she was a stripper, prostitute, and addict. Eventually, she was downing a cocktail of prescription stimulants and caffeine followed by a bowl of crystal meth just to get out of bed in the morning. Her appetite disappeared. “I was completely empty,” she recalled. “Nothing left inside of me.” Within a few years she faced felony drug possession charges. The prospect of serious jail time and losing custody of her daughter, Taylor, was the wake-up call Megan needed. That’s when she heard about The Way Out recovery program. This ministry has been rescuing women like Megan from Memphis’s prostitution and drug culture since 1992. The outpatient program consists of sixteen classes that help the women deal with sexual and drug addiction, depression, and living within boundaries “These women’s spirits are broken, and their souls are damaged, and they need time to heal,” said director Carol Wiley. So, A Way Out offers that time by providing clothing, counseling, financial assistance, job training, and a Bible. Almost none of the women return to the sex industry after completing the program. Megan graduated in eighteen months. With new life in her blue eyes, and a newfound ambition in her heart, Megan began to study nursing at the University of Memphis. “The important thing,” she said, “was where she was going not where she’s been.” Her new ambitions are to become a medical missionary and help refugees. “Sign me up for a hut,” she said with a smile. (Story--Restoring All Things, Stonestreet & Smith.)
D. Peace with CREATION. Vocation is the calling to develop the earth’s resources; Christians have often been peacemakers in the workplace and marketplace. In the 1970’s the US steel industry was facing enormous competition from Japan. This financial pressure caused enormous hostility between management and labor. For Pittron Steel, a small foundry in western Pennsylvania, this meant for labor—a workplace of poor conditions, labor unrest and racial hatred. For management, it was a place of broken promises and a three-year loss of six million dollars. For 84 days the union had been on strike. Committed Christian, Wayne Alderson, one of the few members of management who remained, looked over the freezing men warming themselves by the oil barrel fires on the picket line. He recounts, “I thought of all that the families of these striking men, who were receiving no paycheck, were going through and what we, as a company, were going through. It was so unnecessary. So useless. Yet, I also understood that the strikers were not wrong. If I were a union man under these conditions, I would have closed the plant down. I would have struck.” Alderson was suddenly named the Vice President of Operations. Knowing the truth about Pittron’s financial condition, he took the initiative to meet unofficially with the union committee head, Sam Picolo. He persuaded the union leaders to trust a new management approach that Alderson would lead called The Value of the Person.
On January 20th the workers returned to work. Alderson began to spend time down on the floor of the foundry with the laborers, shaking hands, finding out about their families—something the laborers had never seen before from management. He started a Bible study in a storeroom “that was dirty enough” to use, because it brought white shirted management together with the grubby laborers. For the first nine months of this new approach, not a single grievance was filled, and there was a 26% increase in productivity. Alderson’s successful “Value of the Person” management approach turned Pittron around and spread to other companies. He summarizes this approach: “Love. Dignity. Respect. Three simple words can transform a culture, a way of life, a continuous journey of individual and organizational change.” Restoring harmony between labor and management—an awesome picture of being a Christ-following peacemaker.
No one reading this blog needs to start a ministry to those in the sex trade or stop a union strike to hear, “Well done” for being a peacemaker. But it might be worth taking a few minutes to think about what small thing God might be calling you to do to restore broken relationships around you that are not thriving.
BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE PERSECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (Matt 5:10)—4 OBSERVATIONS
A. Let’s not over-apply “persecution.” Every day, on average, eight Christians are killed worldwide for their faith in Christ (Christianity Today). I doubt that any American in this country, no matter how ridiculed he is for his convictions or faith, is suffering the real persecution that many Christians in the world are. Consider:
- North Korea: Being discovered as a Christian is a death sentence in North Korea. If not killed instantly, you will be taken to a labor camp as a political criminal. These inhumane prisons have horrific conditions, and few believers make it out alive. Everyone in your family will share the same punishment.
- Afghanistan: If a Christian’s family discovers they have converted, their family, clan, or tribe has to save its ‘honor’ by disowning the believer, or even killing them. Christians from a Muslim background can also be sectioned in a psychiatric hospital, because leaving Islam is considered a sign of insanity.
- Nigeria: More Christians are murdered for their faith in Nigeria than in any other country. Violent attacks by Boko Haram, Hausa-Fulani Muslim militant herdsmen, and other Islamic extremist groups are common in the north and middle belt of the country and becoming more common farther south” (The Gospel Coalition).
B. It is worth noting that the eighth beatitude comes last—after Jesus lays out seven other godly attitudes that should be reigning in our hearts. Many times, Christians think that non-believers are antagonistic towards them because they are Christ-followers, when in fact the hostility comes because of attitudes like pride, judgementalism, hard-heartedness. By the time Jesus gets to the eighth beatitude, we know that our attitude towards the lost must:
- Never be self-righteous but full of grace towards others (poor in spirit)
- Be full of grief over our own sin and the way we are all broken (mourning)
- Exhibit Spirit-controlled speech that speaks wisely to bring spiritual health, not rashly like the thrusts of a sword. See Proverbs 12:18 (meekness)
- Be driven by genuine love and care for another (pure in heart)
- Be full of mercy for those in pain, even when it results from their bad choices (merciful).
Persecution should be from standing for what is right, not having bad attitudes!
C. The persecution Jesus’ mentions is not necessarily caused just by identifying with him. It comes from standing for the cause of righteousness. Martin Luther King, Jr., though imperfect, was a Christian who was jailed and murdered because of his stand for righteousness. On April 10, 1963, a state judge granted city officials an unjust injunction banning all anti-segregation protest in the city of Birmingham. King defied the injunction, later penning his Letter from Birmingham Jail:
YOU express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws… The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws… How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.
To bring the matter of standing for righteousness into the present, many US believers are wrestling with what to do about the encroachment of radical gender ideology into our medical schools (resulting in “Affirmation” being deemed the correct treatment for a girl who thinks she is a boy), educational institutions, and the sports world, to name only a few. In 2018 at West Point HS in VA, French teacher, Peter Vlaming, noticing a transgender student about to run into a wall told others to stop “her.” When later discussing this incident with administrators, Vlaming made it clear that his Christian convictions prevented him from using male pronouns to refer to a biological girl. He later said, by way of compromise, that he was willing to use the student’s name and avoid any use of pronouns. But he was fired for this insubordination. This is a tough issue. Many Christians, though willing to call a trans person by her preferred name, are taking a stand against saying that a girl is a boy or a boy is a girl.
D. This beatitude is about making standing for truth more important to you than being liked. In Luke’s version of the beatitudes, Jesus says, Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets (Lk 6:29). I love the Phillips translation, How miserable for you when everybody says nice things about you, for that is exactly how their fathers treated the false prophets. Standing for truth can be costly.
In the fourth century a Christian monk, named Telemachus, believed God was leading him to visit Rome. When he arrived, the stream of humanity in the streets let him to the Coliseum where the gladiator contests were to be staged. The crowd would cheer men, who for no reason other than amusement, would fight until one of them died. Horrified as he realized what was happening Telemachus leapt to the perimeter wall and cried out, “In the name of Christ, stop!” But no one could hear him. So, Telemachus patted down the stone steps and leapt onto the sandy floor of the arena. He made a comic sight—a scrawny man in a monk’s habit dashing back and forth between muscular men, crying, “In the name of Christ, stop!” One gladiator kindly pushed him aside with his shield pointing back up to the stands. But Telemachus refused to be stopped. He rushed into the way of the two trying to fight and cried again, “In the name of Christ, stop!” The crowd began to chant, “Run him through.” With a slash of steel, one of the gladiators slashed across Telemachus chest and heart. One final time, Telemachus gasped, “In the name of Christ, stop!” Then a strange thing happened. As the two gladiators and crowd focused on the still form on the suddenly crimson sand, a hushed silence fell over the crowd. In silence, the stadium began to empty out. Chuck Colson tells us “There were other forces at work, of course, but that innocent figure lying in a pool of blood crystalized the opposition, and that was the last gladiatorial contest in the Roman Coliseum. Never again did men kill each other for the crowd’s entertainment in the Roman arena” (Loving God).
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- How is understanding our responsibility to be agents of reconciliation—peacemakers—enriched by understanding peace as SHALOM—the flourishing that results from harmony in all four foundational spheres of relationships—with God, self, others, and creation?
- Which aspects of being a peacemaker are the hardest for you?
- How can we overcome a desire to be liked by people that is stronger than a desire to stand for truth?
