Peace

Now and Then

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 32:15-20

We live in a chaotic world, fractured by war, and full of animosity between nation-states and individual people. James smartly asked the rhetorical question, “What causes quarrels, and what causes fights among you?” The answer is obvious to all who objectively consider the question.

Isaiah comes at it from the other side. He isn’t asking where all the conflict comes from, although that is implied in what he does say. Isaiah tells us what produces peace. “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness, and security forever,” (verse 17).

Isaiah was, as he did throughout the book bearing his name, looking forward to the future when God will set things right and the Prince of Peace will reign. That day is coming. The full reality of the experience of peace on earth won’t be known until then. Nevertheless, through Jesus Christ, we can experience and know peace on a personal level even now.

First of all, when we put our faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin, we are given peace with God. We go from being enemies of God to become children of God. The prospect of God’s just wrath falling on us no longer hangs over our heads because it fell on Jesus on the Cross. He took for us what we deserved, and we are given what He earned.

But we can go further. We can not only have peace with God, but we can also have the peace of God. We can learn to walk by faith and live in communion with God and experience inward peace that comes as a gift from God through the working of the Holy Spirit.

We can also know the kind of peace Isaiah was writing about. As we grow in Christ and experience His sanctifying work, we experience what Isaiah calls the “effect of righteousness…the result of righteousness,” which is “peace, quietness, and security.”

This peace has a future eschatological fullness that we can’t know now, but we are not left without some degree today of what is to come tomorrow. We will have a feast of peace then, and we can have a taste of it today.