How God’s Peace Makes War

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says that Christianity is a “fighting religion.” Of course Christians are right to put a great deal of emphasis on the peace of God. When the angels appeared to the shepherds outside of Bethlehem they proclaim peace on earth. And Paul says that when men and women cast all of their anxieties of God, the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard their hearts and minds. But notice that Paul says this peace will guard our hearts and minds. In other words, God’s peace has come into this world as armor, as a weapon; it has come as a kind of invasion. It is God’s peace that is at war with all sin and evil. There’s a great illustration of this principle found in the gospel when Jesus arrives in the country of the Gadarenes and finds a man in the tombs tormented night and day with a legion of demons. At the demon’s request Jesus sends them into a herd of pigs which then goes rushing off a cliff to drown in the Sea of Galilee. When the people of that country show up, they are very afraid. Two thousand pigs is an enormous economic loss. How many pig farmers lost their jobs that day? How many businessmen were ruined? How many families were effected? It’s no wonder they begged Jesus to go away. But there at the center of the storm sat the man who had the demons clothed and in his right mind. Jesus brings peace. But He brings a peace that disrupts everything. His peace overturns our way of life. His peace barrels into our politics, our economies, our family traditions. And to join Jesus is to join this war, this revolt, this revolution. Some of you are afraid of the fight and so you stay away from conflict; you do not like disagreements. Some of you are too eager for conflict, and you think that any disagreement must be good. Both of these errors please the devil because they feed off of each other and keep Christians from engaging in the real battle against sin and evil. But we are called to wage war with the peace of God. We have been gripped by His goodness, and now we overcome all evil with good.