All I Want For Christmas is Peace

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God... For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly... But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:1–8)

What every human heart longs for is not just an end to conflict, but Shalom—life made whole—and it comes only as a gift of God's grace in Jesus Christ.

The Christmas Truce and the Longing for Peace

We're in a series called All I Want for Christmas, and today we're talking about peace—what we truly need from God: peace from God, peace with God, and the peace of God.

There's a commercial that debuted a few years ago for the hundredth anniversary of what has been called the Christmas Truce of 1914. At the beginning of the First World War, on the front lines, troops from France, Germany, and others held an impromptu peace for a single day. After that the higher command forbade it, so it didn't happen again. But there's something about it that is heartwarming, and I think it's heartwarming because every heart deeply desires peace.

Conflict is stressful, tiring, and unhealthy. We long for a conflict-free existence. Year after year there's some war somewhere, then truces and cease-fires and peace agreements—and yet those things often don't last. We all deeply desire peace.

Shalom: The Way Things Ought to Be

But we don't only desire the cessation of hostility or violence. What we want is a life that is whole—a life that is thriving and flourishing. The word translated "peace" in the Old Testament Hebrew is Shalom, still the greeting in Israel today, and in Arabic Salaam, ultimately the same root.

The modern theologian Cornelius Plantinga wrote a book on Shalom in which he says:

In the Bible, Shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens the doors and welcomes the creatures in whom He delights.

Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be. Even people with no faith commitment recognize inside that things could be better—that the world is not as it should be. If I were going to make a list of all I could want, Shalom would have to be on it.

From a Hierarchy of Needs to a Hierarchy of Wants

Last week we began this series talking about grace. I mentioned Abraham Maslow, the behavioral psychologist who in 1943 wrote about human motivation, establishing what became known as Maslow's hierarchy of needs—often pictured as a pyramid of five layers from the most basic needs upward. He taught that for human beings to realize their fullest potential, these needs must be met.

As his research went on, Maslow began to discover greater needs above those five—needs of transcendence and spirituality. He recognized there's more to humanity than the material. We live in a materialist culture with an increasing divide between those who believe there's more to us than material—and those who, like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, focus only on the material makeup of humanity.

Here's what's interesting: in the seventy-five years since Maslow wrote that, the last two or three generations of Americans have had most of their basic needs met. So we've moved from a hierarchy of needs to a hierarchy of wants, and we begin to misidentify our wants as "felt needs." A need is something you require to survive or thrive; wants are the icing on the cake. But we start saying, "I really need that new car, that new purse," or our kids say, "I need this video game because the kid down the street has it."

A Culture of Hopelessness

You would assume that a culture with its needs and many wants met would be satisfied and happy. But you'd be wrong. About a week and a half ago, the CDC released findings showing that for the third year in a row—2016, 2017, and 2018—life expectancy in the United States has decreased for the first time in a hundred years of research. Not by years, but by weeks or months. Still a decrease.

Two things are driving it: opioid addiction leading to premature death, and suicide, which has been rising since 2011—up seventy percent among young women in the last four years. ABC News reported on November 29th that the CDC didn't speculate on the cause, but Dr. William Dietz of George Washington University sees a sense of hopelessness: "I really do believe that people are increasingly hopeless, and that leads to drug use and potentially to suicide. It's difficult to realize your fullest potential if you're hopeless."

Even with needs and wants provided, people are hopeless. We'll talk about hope next week. Today we focus on peace—the Shalom every human being desires.

Peace From God Is Given in Abundance With His Grace

One of the great outcomes of receiving grace from God is the peace associated with it. In the New Testament, grace and peace are constantly found together, especially in the apostle Paul, who wrote about a third of the New Testament. He begins all thirteen of his letters the same way.

Romans 1: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." So do 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon—every one. And it's not just Paul; the apostle John does it in 2 John and Revelation 1, and Peter does it in his letters.

The most frequent blessing associated with grace from God is peace from God. When a person receives grace for salvation, they also receive peace—not just the cessation of hostility, but life as it's supposed to be. Jesus said in John 10:10 that He came to give "life, and that more abundantly." I don't know anyone who doesn't desire that, and I don't think you can experience it without grace and peace from God.

The Gift of Peace Satisfies Our Greatest Need

This peace satisfies one of our greatest needs because it deals with our greatest problem. We live in a world that is broken, and as Genesis 3 teaches, it is broken because of the entrance of sin, and through sin came death, sickness, and war.

The grace and peace from God deal with that problem. In Ephesians 2:14, Paul writes:

For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation... having abolished in His flesh the enmity... so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.

We have both a vertical relationship problem and a horizontal one. We see the horizontal conflict constantly, but it exists because of the vertical conflict between man and God. Like the two young soldiers in that video, reconciliation brings warring parties together.

Justified by Faith

This is what Paul writes in Romans 5. "Therefore, having been justified by faith..." Stop there. Justified means justice satisfied. Put those two words together. On the cross, in His body, Jesus satisfied the just requirements of God's righteousness. God has a bar so high there's no way any of us could meet it, but Jesus is perfect and meets it entirely. So justice is satisfied in Jesus on the cross. Therefore, having been justified by faith, "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Paul goes on: "we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit."

At Just the Right Time, Christ Died for the Ungodly

"For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Every time I read those words, I think of our superhero stories. There's something about that hero-journey arc that grips the culture and makes millions, because there's something in us that longs for a redeemer.

The hero goes through conflict and doubts himself—Peter Parker always doubts himself; the red-caped guy hides out in some frozen tundra while the world is in chaos. Then, at just the right time, the beacon is lit, the signal is on, and he shows up. We love that scenario because it's a cultural connection to the biblical narrative: "while we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."

Paul continues: "Scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us... For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." This gift of peace satisfies our great need.

Jesus, Our Peace Offering

In John's Gospel, John the Baptist announces Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." His mostly Jewish audience would instantly connect that to the Pentateuch, especially Leviticus.

Many of you will start reading through the Bible in the new year—and then you hit Leviticus, the speed bump of the Bible. But in that book, seventy times, are mentioned the peace offering and the sin offering. The Bible is a hyperlinked book, with over thirty thousand cross-references among its sixty-six books. Those sin offerings and peace offerings all point to Jesus. He is the sin offering and the peace offering, for "He Himself is our peace."

He makes peace with God possible because He died for our sins. Galatians 1: "who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age." 1 John 2:2: "He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world." 1 Corinthians 15:3: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." Colossians 1:19–20: "it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself... having made peace through the blood of His cross."

The Peace of God Can Rule Your Soul by Prayer

Only when a person discovers grace and peace from God through Christ's work, and comes into peace with God, can they experience a third kind of peace—the peace of God. Paul writes in Colossians 3:15, "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were also called in one body; and be thankful."

That sounds like flowery spiritual language—but how? Turn to Philippians 4:6: "Be anxious for nothing." That's a command we all break constantly. Imagine driving down the freeway at 80 when a tire bounces out of a truck ahead of you. Your amygdala fires, your heart rate jumps, you taste the metallic adrenaline. In that moment, telling yourself "I will now be at rest" is futile—it takes about forty minutes for that adrenaline to clear. God made you that way. So how do we obey "do not be anxious" in an anxiety-producing, broken world?

God never commands what He does not also give the prescription to fulfill. He says, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

Body, Soul, and the Mystery of Consciousness

Notice it guards your hearts and minds. Christians believe there's more to us than material. There's a unique reality called consciousness that sets us apart, and even materialists like Sam Harris are boggled by it, trying to explain it only neurologically and struggling—because we are not just body, but body and soul.

The bioethics community is now debating when consciousness ceases. Once it was when the heart stopped; then it shifted to brainwave activity; now articles claim consciousness continues after death, because people who clinically died—no heartbeat, no brainwaves, no respiration—are revived and remember things that happened after their time of death.

Consciousness makes us aware of past and future, not just the present. Your dog knows only the present. You order your world for the future—you decorate; your dog isn't painting his doghouse. Ancient peoples located the soul in the loins, then the heart, then the Greco-Roman head. Paul says, wherever it is, God will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, giving peace that surpasses understanding.

Reorienting Your Focus Through Prayer

If you've received peace from God through Jesus, you now have peace with God, and you can lay hold of the peace of God through prayer. Prayer reorients your perspective from yourself to God.

Some forty million Americans are affected by anxiety—the most common mental health issue in our nation. If you frame everything that happens in this broken world through self, you are selfish, and you will be anxious all the time. So Paul says be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer with thanksgiving—shifting your focus. Jesus said in John 16:33, "In the world you will have tribulation, but in Me you may have peace." Peace is accessible.

Then Paul says in verse 8: "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report—if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things." These things are found preeminently in God, so to meditate on them is to meditate on God. And verse 9: "the God of peace will be with you." He is the God of peace—the Prince of Peace of Isaiah.

Perfect Peace and Biblical Meditation

For the last twelve to fifteen years I've taught at Calvary Chapel Bible College, often on Isaiah. One of my favorite verses, Isaiah 26:3: "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You." In Hebrew that phrase is "Shalom Shalom"—peace compounded, the ancient way of adding emphasis. Super-duper peace, as your mind is stayed on Him.

Our culture confuses biblical meditation with Eastern or transcendental meditation. But here's the secret: if you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. Worry is consuming your mind with your problem from every possible angle until you can describe it nine hundred different ways—and it has become the biggest thing in your life because you've surveyed it with a microscope. Biblical meditation moves from a selfish focus on your issue, framing your troubles in light of yourself, to reframing them in light of God. As you do, He keeps you in Shalom Shalom, whose mind is stayed on Him.

A Portrait of Grace and Peace

Perfect peace is God's gracious gift for all who are in Christ. In Christ Jesus and by His grace we can have peace—Shalom—from God, which puts us at peace with God, so we can then lay hold of the peace of God and experience the abundant life Jesus described. It's transcendent, bigger than the five basic needs, and it's totally accessible as we reorient our focus to Him.

And here's the awesome thing: as you interact with friends, coworkers, neighbors, and family, God wants your life to display what Romans 9–11 calls the ministry of jealousy. He wants your life to be a portrait of grace and peace, so others look at you and say, "I want what that person has"—and it's only found in Christ.

So this Christmas, God wants you to know it and to show it, because He wants you to live in Shalom. That's where we'll be when we're with Him; in His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore. We're not there yet, but He wants you to experience it now in Christ, because Jesus came—the Prince of Peace has come into the world. He says, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That's Shalom. And that's why we call it gospel—because it's really, really good news.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for Your Word. It testifies of itself that it is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, and You cause it to cut deep into our hearts and reveal our anxieties, fears, cares, hopes, and wants—so we can see them and understand that we are not finding what we need in new cars, new purses, new pets, or any of that. There is only one source. So God, help us to come to that realization fully and to accept it in You as a free gift of Your grace.

Lord, as You spoke the good news two thousand years ago, there were people who believed and some who doubted, and there are some right here today. I pray You would draw to Yourself those who desire this peace, that they would seek and find—because we find it only in You. We praise You, Jesus.

If today you desire this peace—the peace from God that brings peace with God and the peace of God—it's only through the grace of Jesus, who gave His life for you on the cross so your sin could be dealt with and you could receive His salvation. If that's you, pray with me: Dear Jesus, I know I need You. Would You come into my life, forgive me of my sin, help me to follow You by faith, and let me experience Your peace and Your grace. In Jesus' name, amen.