Justification and Reconciliation as Peace

Paul’s letters are saturated with peace. He mentions the phrase, God of peace six times, calls Christ our peace, refers to the peace of Christ, the peace of God and peace from God. He does more than just use peace as with a theological dimension though. At least as often, he speaks of peace as an ethical admonition. “Let us have peace with God” he tells the Romans. “Let us have peace with each other” he encourages the Thessalonians, Romans and Corinthians. To the Ephesians he says to “keep the bond of peace” and to Timothy he commands to pursue peace (a command echoed in 1 Peter, Hebrews and Romans). And he also, along with the author of Hebrews, calls us to “live at peace with all.” As mentioned in the first post, the term ‘peace’ is also mentioned in every Pauline letter which is more than most if not all other claims to centrality of Paul’s thought can say.

Just with the above survey alone it should be clear just how important and central peace was to Paul’s thought. This allows us to view other teachings of Paul’s within the context of peace, starting with his important theme of justification.

Justice, first of all, should not be seen as separate from righteousness. The root words are actually the same in Hebrew. Whereas in English righteousness is usually understood within the personal realm and justice within the legal, in Hebrew thought no such separation existed. Though writing in Greek, Paul’s thought is thoroughly Jewish. As such, he speaks with an assumption of the kinship between justice and righteousness. It is a mistake to view, as we have so often done especially in Western Christianity, terms such as justification in merely forensic ways which simply allow the individual to get off without paying the punishment of their crimes. It must be linked to the social. Paul sees justification as a means of reconciliation between God and sinner with the intent of restoring fellowship. This is meant to branch out further and further into the social realm and reach everyone around us.

In Romans 8, Paul explains that through Jesus, we have been set free from the law of sin and death. By condemning sin in the flesh, we now do not have to live according to the flesh, but are able to live according to the Spirit. In verse 6 he is clear: “the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”

Put another way, justification for Paul means that God has made things right with the sinner. Sin no longer stands as a barrier between us and God. He has broken it down so that we may be one. Later we will see that in Ephesians this means we will become one not only with God, but with others as well. For now though it is enough to understand that we who are sinners are enemies of God, but through Jesus we are now justified and thus reconciled with Him. Reconciliation is a synonym with peace as we can see by the parallel of Romans 5:1 and 5:10.

Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Romans 5:1

While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.
Romans 5:10

Here it is very clear that we are reconciled to God and have peace with God through justification. Ephesians is similar when it says in 2:14 that Jesus “is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” so that he may “reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross.” In Colossians 1:20 it is written that God dwelled through Jesus “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” 

For Paul, justification was not simply some private affair between God and each individual person. This righting with God, while perhaps individual at first, necessarily branches out to reach everyone around us. Justice simply does not exist without righteousness. We cannot expect a world of shalom while we have dissonant relationships with God. We saw this in Isaiah 2:1-4 where weapon transformations and shalom take place only after all nations go before God’s presence. For Paul, justification was the first step and really the watershed moment in which shalom comes to Earth. It is in this way that Jesus himself is our peace. And it is through this peace that we now have with God that allows us to follow the Spirit instead the flesh. This is where the call for high moral standing that we find in Paul comes from. To simply look at his justification talk within the lens of “justification by faith, not works” is to miss the main point Paul is trying to make. Justification is not by our works surely, but it also not not merely to wipe clear our slates clean so we can avoid punishment. It is the means by which we become new creations which live righteous lives according to the guidance of the Spirit. Works do not save us, but they are a necessary part of the equation of salvation because if we are still living against the grain of the Spirit then neither we nor anyone around us is living in peace.