The peace of God starts with repentance, continues through meditating on the word of God and doing the will of God, and eventually ends by making us peacemakers to the community around us. There is a great biblical story demonstrating the peace of God in the heart of a mature believer. It was James, the brother of the Lord.
James sets a good example of this kind of divine peace. James was the brother of Jesus, a leader in the early church, and probably the author of the book of James (not to be confused with the apostle James, the son of Zebedee). Back in the book of Acts, the church was dealing with a serious question: “do Gentiles who convert to Christianity need to be circumcised, and do they need to observe the Law of Moses?”
There was a lot of debate on the issue as we can observe in the Book of Acts 15. Peter saw the vision of Gentiles converting to the Lord already in Acts 10. And Paul and Barnabas brought a similar report from their First Missionary Journey how the Gentiles received the word of God. But the question was: should the Gentiles be obliged to keep the Jewish law just like the Jews? The former (now converted) Pharisees were sure the old law is necessary. But according to Peter or Paul, Jews and Gentiles were saved by grace, so why put the Gentiles under the rules that the Jews never could keep? James stands up in this situation and makes a call:
Acts 15:19-20: It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.
For the first, the Gentiles don’t need to be circumcised or put under all the Mosaic customs. And for the second, they should abstain from certain foods affected by blood and from sexual immorality. Rather than following a Jewish law that they did not understand and would have stolen their peace with God, they were to refrain from things pertaining to the idolatry that was practiced in the pagan culture. This compromise set everyone at peace again: the apostles were in agreement, and the story moves on. That was a remarkable example of peace! James handled a hot-button issue in a way that honored God and made peace in a heated debate. Antioch was the place where most early Gentiles were converted. It was the place where they first labeled believers as “Christians”. There was no controversy in the city after Paul, Barnabas, Judas, and Silas brought the message to them of how to live a moral Christian life. There was a lot of grace all around!
. Acts 15:30-31: So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. After spending some time there, they were sent off by the believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them.
Imagine what it would be like if more of us followed James’ example. We’re not all church leaders, but we can follow the Spirit and look for ways to bring peace to those around us. Let us be peacemakers! God reconciled the world with Himself through Jesus Christ:
2 Corinthians 5:18-19: All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
We are true ambassadors of Christ if we bring the message of reconciliation to people. But it is both on outside and inside. Before we can spread the good news of the gospel, we need to be reconciled with God ourselves and walk according to the principles of God’s peace!