The second week
of Advent focusses on peace. I suppose
that the first week’s focus on hope hits us first in a more personal way. I say, ‘I hope’. But when we speak of peace, we often have
grander notions in mind, like peace in the Middle East or in Ukraine. In today’s lesson, we will start with the
idea of peace on earth but end up with a focus on the peace of the Church, in
our families, and in our own lives.
Governments
We have heard
the phrase, ‘Peace through strength’. It
is perhaps most associated with policies of governments during the Cold War,
but ‘peace through strength’ was the heart of imperial Rome, the pax Romana. The first emperor, Augustus Caesar, boasted
that he had brought piracy under control and fought numerous wars to establish
peace in the empire.
Yet we have
learned to fear governmental power. An
article just yesterday, entitled ‘Slipping through our fingers: How democracy
is being eroded’, mentions multiple ways in which the Labour government is
taking power away from the people in the UK.[1] It mentions the elimination of trial by
journey for lesser crimes. It has
promoted the use of digital technology to identify citizens such that
government is able to monitor and control citizens’ access to work and
movements. It has postponed council and
mayoral elections. Hereditary peers are
being removed from the House of Lords, allowing the appointment of compliant
peers. The article suggests the
government’s decriminalization of abortion to term and pressing ahead with an
assisted suicide bill are examples of its understanding of the role of government
to be to manage rather than serve the people.
Now, the mention
of these examples may have awakened your own political instincts and concerns. Yet, despite my own views on such matters, I
would note that God’s people have existed under various governments, sometimes
being persecuted and even killed, at other times ruling with the rulers. God’s people served in the powerful courts of
ancient Persia, Israel, and Rome. Even
in the Old Testament, a government of judges, from Moses to Samuel, was
replaced with a government of kings. The
Old Testament sets its hand on this scale, preferring judges to kings. This was not because they were more effective
but because they were more reliant upon God.
Yet, in Isaiah 11, God’s provision of salvation comes through a
king who acts as a judge. How can God’s
solution come through an inferior sort of government? Why was God's Saviour not one who did away with the monarchy and return to the judges of Israel?
The answer is that this coming king would be a righteous judge ruling in the fear of the LORD. We should recall
that Isaiah 11’s promise of a coming king is a continuation of the promise in
earlier chapters. In Isaiah 9, he is
called the ‘Almighty God' and 'Prince of Peace’ (v. 6). According
to chapter 11, the coming king
·
is a hereditary successor to King
David, the son of Jesse
· has the Spirit of the LORD rest upon him
· receives through the Spirit God’s wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, and knowledge and fear of the LORD
The coming king would be a righteous judge bringing peace on the earth.
Righteous Judgement
This means that
he will judge the poor with righteousness and the meek of the earth with
equity. He will not judge by what he
sees or hears. One of the great errors
theologically and politically in our time is the confusion of equity with
preferential justice. Theologically, we
have heard for decades that ‘God is on the side of the poor’ from Marxists
pitting the poor against the rich. On
this view, God’s being on the side of the poor means that He is against the
rich, just as Karl Marx attacked the bourgeoisie in favour of the poor. More recently, the term ‘equity’ has been
used not to mean equality but privileging the poor. Social Marxists have extended this view to
mean more than the economically poor but any group disadvantaged or perceived
to be disadvantaged. Consequently, they
have advanced people in one group over another in jobs and programmes while
disadvantaging those whom they have perceived as belonging to a privileged
class.
Note that the
king who judges righteously will not judge this way. He will not judge with his
eyes or ears but with what is righteous.
Elsewhere in Scripture, we learn that this means judging each person
rightly, not according to their class, whether poor or rich. Exodus
23.2-3 says,
You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear
witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, 3 nor
shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.
Leviticus 19.15
says,
You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the
poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.
And in
Deuteronomy 1.17 we read,
You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and
the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is
God’s.
Judging
partially can also be associated with corruption in government. We read in Deuteronomy 16.19,
You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and
you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and
subverts the cause of the righteous.
God, Scripture
teaches, is an impartial judge and takes no bribe (Deuteronomy 10.17; Job
34.19; Luke 20.21; Acts 10.34; Romans 2.10; Galatians 2.6; 1 Peter 1.17). Therefore, His people must not be corrupted
by bribery (Deuteronomy 16.19; 2 Chronicles 19.7; Proverbs 24.23; 28.21;
Malachi 2.9; Eph. 6.9 and Col. 3.25; 1 Timothy 5.21; James 2.1, 9).
The main problem
with a justice system that views one group preferentially is that it opposes
giving justice to one group. The group
most often disenfranchised is the weakest group, which the Old Testament does
not claim to be victims but simply those without protectors or property or
power in society. Thus, we read in
Deuteronomy 27.19,
‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the
fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
These groups are
repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament.
In the New Testament, James says,
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to
visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained
from the world (1.27).
There are two
sides to this coin. If you take away
justice from one group, you offer unjust privilege to another group. Psalm 82.2-4 says,
“How
long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the
wicked? Selah
3
Give justice to the weak and the
fatherless;
maintain the right of
the afflicted and the destitute.
4
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
Proverbs 24.23-26 string together three related
proverbs on this point:
Partiality in judging is not good.
24
Whoever says to the wicked, “You
are in the right,”
will be cursed by
peoples, abhorred by nations,
25
but those who rebuke the wicked
will have delight,
and a good blessing will
come upon them.
26
Whoever gives an honest answer
kisses the lips.
James succinctly states, ‘But if you show partiality, you are
committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors’ (2.9). In his case, James is particularly concerned
with a church showing partiality to the rich, although the more general law
against showing partiality covers any injustice arising from preferential
treatment of one group over another.
All this is background to Isaiah’s vision of a king
who would judge righteously. The problem
with kingship, God pointed out, was that the king would establish a palace and
require of the population a large number of slaves and increase government taxes. Yet a just king could have the power to judge
righteously, and this is what Isaiah hopes for in chapter 11. Subsequent chapters promise a reversal for Israel
under a righteous king and for kingdoms surrounding Israel where injustice was
the norm. One of their great sins was
pride over other nations that led them to abuse and subjugate others.
John the Baptist and
Jesus
Now, when we come to the ministry of John the Baptist,
we see that his ministry was a preparation for the coming of this king. Once again, the prophet whose words we are
following is Isaiah. From chapter 40,
Isaiah envisions the coming of a ‘servant’ of God, and what is said about this
servant is what has already been said about the righteous king. The word ‘servant’ could even be translated
as ‘slave’, but the emphasis is on the service that this one will render: he
will do what God says in bringing justice on the earth. The one John pointed to was the one who would
do the will of God.
The little that Matthew tells us (3.1-12) about John
the Baptist’s preaching is that warned people of their sins, called on them to
confess their sins in repentance, be cleansed, and bear fruit in keeping with
their repentance. Baptism in water was a
symbol of this. He told the two,
powerful religious organisations, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, to repent
before God’s judgement came. John
pointed to one to come after him, to Jesus, whom he said would baptise them
with the Holy Spirit and fire (v. 12).
What Jesus ministry would add to John’s ministry was the giving of the
Holy Spirit, who would provide a divine cleansing and an empowering to live
according to God’s Law. The baptism of
fire refers to God’s coming judgement. People would have to choose between Spirit-gifting to be God's righteous people on the earth or God's judgement. The coming of God's reign, the Kingdom of God, meant both.
What does this all have to do with the theme of peace
at Christmas? The angels announcing
Jesus’ birth in Luke’s Gospel say, ‘Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’ (2.14).
Yet, we do not get peace on earth.
In fact, Jesus says at one point to His
disciples, ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have
not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (Matthew 10.34). How do we put all this together?
The answer is
that Jesus’ ministry of God’s kingdom on earth comes in two stages. His future, second coming will fulfill the
expectations that we have been speaking about: a coming king who will bring
righteous judgement on the earth. The
first coming of Jesus was to establish the conditions for righteousness on the
earth, that is, to bring forgiveness of sins.
Matthew reminds us that Jesus’ name means ‘salvation’, for He would save
His people from their sins (1.21).
Matthew adds that Jesus was also the Immanuel of Isaiah 7.14, meaning ‘God
with us’. Jesus was the presence of God
on earth bringing salvation to a sinful people.
Just how God would do this came as a great surprise to all of His
disciples, in fact, to everyone. Instead
of reigning from a throne and establishing justice on the earth, He was raised
up on a cross as a blood sacrifice to save His people from their sins.
Micah's Prophecy
Micah was
another 8th c. BC prophet in Israel, a contemporary of Isaiah. Both prophets prophesied that God would allow
Israel to go into captivity for sins but that He would also restore His
people. Both prophets speak of the
coming ruler of Israel who would bring this restoration. Both say that he would come from the line of
King David, and Micah says this by identifying his birthplace in Bethlehem of
Judea (5.2). He says that he will ‘stand
and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of
the LORD his God’ (5.4). What this means
for this flock, for His people, is that ‘they shall dwell secure’ (5.4) and ‘he
shall be their peace’ (5.5). This
prophecy is not only for a future time, when Jesus comes again, for Paul says
that Jesus is our peace (2.14).
A Peaceable People
How, then, can
we claim peace when there is destruction all around us? We need to understand that God’s kingdom has
not fully come, that His will is not fully done on earth as in heaven. This is why we pray for the coming of His
kingdom and His will even now. The
answer to this question is that Jesus has established for Himself a peaceable
kingdom in us, His Church—a people who witness to the coming peace that He will
one day bring. This peace is nowhere
found in the institutions of man, neither in governments nor in institutional
churches. It is a peace in a people
washed clean in baptism and filled with the Holy Spirit.
Thus, when we
celebrate the advent of Jesus’ peace on the earth, we are reminded of the
challenge this places upon us. We are
God’s peaceable people in a world of hostility and sin. We can only be this witness if we point
people to Jesus, who, by His sacrifice for our sins has won a people for
Himself. What God’s peace looks like in us
is described by Paul in his letter to Titus:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all
people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to
live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting
for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior
Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to
purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good
works (2.11-14).
We are, then, to
be a peaceable people but also a witness and warning to the world of God’s
peace through our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
We will not find God’s peace in governments of this world but look to
the coming of Jesus. For the present, we
are challenged to live peacefully with all.
Peace in our Own Lives
This message is
not only about governments and powerful institutions, it is about every aspect
of our lives. Paul’s letter to the
Ephesians is a letter about the peace and unity that Jesus is establishing even
now as He rules from the right hand of God.
It is a peace with God, who has saved us from our sins. It is a peace between Jews and Gentiles in
God’s people. It is a unity in God’s
people, separated from sin and growing up into Christ, our head. It is a peace in the home between wives and
husbands, parents and children, masters and slaves. In fact, Paul goes so far as to defend
divorce from an unbelieving spouse on the basis of being called to peace: ‘But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it
be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to
peace’ (1 Corinthians 2.15). Note
in these words, ‘God has called you to peace’.
As Paul says, ‘And let the peace of Christ rule
in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body’ (Colossians 2.15).
Thus, this Advent week, we are reminded that Christ Jesus is the promised heir to the throne of David who would bring the peace of God to this world. He did so by establishing the basis for peace, removing our sins through His sacrificial, substitutionary death on the cross. He thereby bought for Himself a people to become His peaceable kingdom on the earth until His future coming, when He will establish peace once and for all in this world. Presently, as His people, we have access to and are under His rule. We are invited to let the peace of Christ rule among us, in the Church, in our families, and in our own hearts.
[1] Laura Dodsworth, ‘Slipping through our fingers: How democracy is
being eroded,’ The Free Mind (5 Dec.,
2025); Slipping
Through Our Fingers: How democracy is being eroded (accessed 6 December,
2025).
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