Christ's Peace
“Christ made peace. His methods were not military or even political, though many expected the Messiah to be a new Saul, David, or Solomon. Similarly, many today expect the gospel to be identified with some social gospel or some political system, with the Left or the Right, with some liberation from social structures of the opposite stripe, which is confused with liberation from sin. It is the same kind of confusion Jesus’ disciples continually made when they expected Jesus to fit into their expectations and their categories.
How did Christ make peace? He whipped the moneychangers, as a father would whip a thief who entered his house, for it was his Father’s house. But he did not allow his disciples to use the sword as a policy, publicly, even to defend the most worthy cause and the most innocent Person who ever existed. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he commanded Peter to put up his sword and reminded him that those who live by the sword perish by the sword. Thus the most just war ever fought, in defense of the most just, most worthy, most innocent Man and cause, was also the shortest. Jesus stopped it almost before it started, apparently allowing it to start only to give his disciples and us an object lesson about his methods for ending it. After stopping the war, he healed its lone casualty, Malchus, whose ear had been cut off. Then, having made peace in this local and physical war, he went on to make peace in the universal spiritual war, the war between man and God, on Calvary.
There too he did not use force but made peace in the most surprising way, by dying. He drained away war down himself, like a sinkhole, or a blotter. He made peace by making himself the universal victim, by suffering all the violence, war, aggression, hate, and harm that the father of lies and of violence could fling at him, by doing nothing in return, by being meek as the slaughtered sheep. He was ‘the meek’ who ‘shall inherit the earth’. By his meekness he won the world and the authority to give its rule over to his disciples when the time is ripe.”
~Peter Kreeft
How did Christ make peace? He whipped the moneychangers, as a father would whip a thief who entered his house, for it was his Father’s house. But he did not allow his disciples to use the sword as a policy, publicly, even to defend the most worthy cause and the most innocent Person who ever existed. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he commanded Peter to put up his sword and reminded him that those who live by the sword perish by the sword. Thus the most just war ever fought, in defense of the most just, most worthy, most innocent Man and cause, was also the shortest. Jesus stopped it almost before it started, apparently allowing it to start only to give his disciples and us an object lesson about his methods for ending it. After stopping the war, he healed its lone casualty, Malchus, whose ear had been cut off. Then, having made peace in this local and physical war, he went on to make peace in the universal spiritual war, the war between man and God, on Calvary.
There too he did not use force but made peace in the most surprising way, by dying. He drained away war down himself, like a sinkhole, or a blotter. He made peace by making himself the universal victim, by suffering all the violence, war, aggression, hate, and harm that the father of lies and of violence could fling at him, by doing nothing in return, by being meek as the slaughtered sheep. He was ‘the meek’ who ‘shall inherit the earth’. By his meekness he won the world and the authority to give its rule over to his disciples when the time is ripe.”
~Peter Kreeft
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