Blessed are the Peacemakers

 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." Matthew 5:9

The words of Jesus Christ are often taken as instructions on how to live your life. Doing this may have some benefit, but often leads to misinterpreting what the Lord was trying to say. When it comes to the Sermon on the Mount, the words of Jesus are said to be, "How to live a life that is dedicated to and pleasing to God, free from hypocrisy, full of love and grace, full of wisdom and discernment." While this statement sounds good it is not the intent of the message Jesus delivered. There is the assumption that it is possible to perform all that He mentioned. Furthermore, as it pertains to Christians, we are not under the law. Yet, we put ourselves under the law by attempting to incorporate the teaching of Jesus into our lives as if we are commanded to live as He directed. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than when it comes to verses like Matthew 5:9. 

We all desire to be blessed by God. Therefore, when passages that promise us blessings if we behave a certain way appear, we are motivated to live up to their requirements. A peacemaker is "one who makes peace, as by reconciling parties that are at variance." What people tend to believe is that if we reconcile two parties at odds with each other and bring peace between them, then we are children of God. There is nothing wrong with establishing peace between two parties. However, that is not what makes a person a child of God. When a person is born into this world they are spiritually dead to God in their sins. Being spiritually dead to God means that you are His enemy. Romans 5:10 says, "For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" What is it that you need when you are enemies? You need peace. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, He became our peacemaker between mankind and God.

Upon a person believing God and accepting Jesus Christ as their savior, they become a child of God. Jesus said, "Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God ... (John 1:12)" You don't become a child of God because Jesus said peacemakers are children of God. This implies that there is no stipulation attached. You become a child of God by believing Jesus Christ and receiving Him as your savior. Once that happens you are reconciled to God because you have received the forgiveness that He provided for you and had the Holy Spirit of God restored to you. There is no longer any debt owed to God you cannot pay. Any hostility between you and God is over. The war between you and Him has ended. There is peace. Now that there is peace between you and God, as His child, you have become a peacemaker. You are charged with sharing that blessing with the rest of the world.

In 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, it reads, "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 therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God." The blessing that children of God have received through faith in Jesus Christ, is that we are now ministers of reconciliation. We are blessed to be at peace with God and now we take that message to the world as His ambassadors. The message of complete forgiveness of sins and being spiritually alive to God through the restoration of the Holy Spirit is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In His Sermon on the Mount, the Lord was leading people to Himself, so that through faith in Him we could say, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1)." Grace and Peace.