Many evangelicals believe war is inevitable. But that shouldn’t stop us from praying for peace.
Sometimes it takes new horrors of war to remind us that our world is not a peaceful place. Against the long-standing backdrop of violence in Myanmar, Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and beyond, Russia’s aggression in Ukraine took center stage for months this year.
As Christians, we believe the world is supposed to be at peace and that, one day, it will be. When John the Baptist was born and his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied God’s arriving redemption, it culminated with a vision of peace (Luke 1:67–79). Zechariah declared that God “has come to his people and redeemed them” from “living in darkness and in the shadow of death.” He would “guide our feet into the path of peace.”
When shepherds heard of Jesus’ birth soon after, that announcement too came with an invocation of peace. A host of angels glorified God, and out of all the blessings that could be given at Christ’s incarnation, they offered “on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14).
The message God sent to the Jewish people, as the apostle Peter later summarized, was “the good news of peace through Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36). As Christians, we have a gospel of peace (Eph. 6:15), a Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6), both the peace of God and a God of peace (Phil. 4:7, 9), and a final hope of peace in a renewed world with no more death or crying or pain (Rev. 21:3–4).
That hope is not only for the future. Peace is not only for the eschaton, but that is too often how American evangelicals speak of it.
We tend to talk as if longing for peace and pursuing it is the province of Neville Chamberlain, Jimmy Carter, and John Lennon, …Continue reading… www.christianitytoday.org
