Blessed are the Peacemakers

This beatitude shows that one of God’s core values is a commitment to relationships. God’s desire is that a people be rightly related to him, to one another, and to themselves.

Jesus, in speaking here of peace, doubtless used the word Hebrew word shalom. That word captures all the above meanings. On the individual level it means health and wholeness. On the interpersonal level it means not just the absence of conflict, but a positive disposition and friendship toward the other. In regard to God, it means salvation and deliverance (see psalm 85, psalm 122, Isaiah 57:19 etc.).

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

If peace is relational wholeness at various levels, then a peacemaker is one who helps bring this about. Because peacemakers share with God the agenda of relational wholeness, they are not aiming at victory. Shalom is not the peace of devastation and death. It is the peace of reconciliation and life.

To be a peacemaker you must lay down your own interests. That is, you cannot stand to gain from the outcome in one way or another. If you are an advocate, you must advocate in the direction of a “win-win” situation. A peacemaker helps both parties come to a better place.

At times this can be difficult because one party seems obviously in the wrong, or obviously abusing his power over the other party. But peacemaking is not simply inverting the power structure, so that the oppressed becomes the oppressor. Jacques Ellul notes that while Christians may at times advocate for oppressed people, when the cause of the oppressed triumphs, they may need to advocate for the former oppressors who are now liable to become victims of those who seek revenge for former oppression.

Peacemakers seek to restore relational wholeness. This means helping the parties involved in a conflict to love each other as themselves. This involves helping them hear each other and see each other. The peacemaker leverages his love for the parties of the conflict to help them do this, in a way similar to the way God’s love for us helps us love one another. Peacemaking is not just arbitration and conflict resolution; it involves sharing love.

Thus peacemakers must be conscious of being loved. Being a peacemaker builds on the other beatitudes: peacemakers are conscious of being wanted and being given the kingdom; they are conscious of being comforted; they are not agents of conflict but understand that the earth will be theirs; they are advocates not of their own rightness, but of God’s; they value mercy because they have received it themselves; they are not chasing after those things that would bring them into competition with others but rather have abandoned them all for the sake of seeing God.

All of these things reach their peak as the peacemaker fully takes on God’s agenda and becomes his representative in a situation, to the point where people speak of a family resemblance: “You are a child of God.” The peacemaker walks in blessing and thereby becomes a blessing.

Peter talks along these lines in 1 Peter 9-12 as he quotes from Psalms 34:

Do not return evil for evil or cursing for cursing; rather, bless, knowing that you were called to this, and that you yourself shall inherit blessing:

“For whoever wants to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

“Let him avoid evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it.

“For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears open to their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

This beatitude emphasizes that God is all about peacemaking — about bringing shalom. Romans 5 tells us that Christ brings us peace with God. Christ’s death was for the sake of reconciliation: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and committing to us the word of reconciliation.” Thus peacemaking is integral to God’s very plan of salvation — bringing reconciliation with God and reconciliation with one another.