“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.” – John 14:27, CSB
Luke 2:14 is a popular verse to read at Advent, as it shares the song the angels declared to the shepherds when they announced Jesus’s birth: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors!” (CSB)
While the phrase “peace on earth” is clearly a beautiful sentiment—and one that has echoed for generations since in songs, holiday greetings, and Christmas decor—it’s hard not to feel like peace on earth is an oxymoron. How can we declare peace on earth when politics has deeply divided the country and, devastatingly, the church? How can we declare peace on earth in the midst of injustice and war or in the personal turmoil of mental illness and familial strife?
It all depends on how we define peace. If we see peace as merely the absence of something—injustice, strife, conflict, disagreement—then, quite frankly, it will not be possible. We live in a broken world, after all. But if we look back at Luke 2:14, the kind of peace the angels declared is a different kind of peace. It’s the Greek word eirene, which refers not simply to the absence of conflict but the addition of something greater in its place. It literally means to restore something to wholeness or completeness again.
This is the same type of peace that Jesus promises to his followers in John 14:27, after reassuring them that the Holy Spirit would remain with them even after he returned to heaven: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.” (CSB)
Both Luke 2:14 and John 14:27 reveal the true essence of eirene.
For when we look at the story of Jesus’s birth, we see that the injustice, violence, and turmoil didn’t dissipate when Jesus was born. In some ways, they were escalated as many people saw his life and teachings as a threat to their traditional rules and religion, ultimately leading to his death on a cross. And then, in John 14, Jesus wasn’t promising that life would be peaceful and easy for his followers—quite the opposite, actually. The disciples would go on to live difficult lives, many of them sacrificing their comfort, finances, and even their lives for the gospel.
In both verses, we see that the promise of peace has nothing to do with the absence of strife. But we do see that it is directly related to the presence of God—first through the birth of Emmanuel, God with us, and then through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of peace is nothing less than the gift of presence. The presence of God is the “something greater.” And it is the reason that peace, when looked at through this lens, is always possible.
This is the sort of peace that God invites us to experience, not just during Advent but all year round: The kind that says we can be at peace in all circumstances, at all times, because we are never alone. And while this sort of holy peace is not necessarily the replacement of conflict, of brokenness, of injustice, we can know with certainty that it is the promise of the eventual restoration of those very things. God will make all things right in his time. And until then, we have the reassurance that Jesus will be with us in the midst of every hard thing we face in this life.
That is why it is so important, especially at Advent, to reexamine how we define peace. Because when we begin to see peace as Jesus himself—and if we believe that Jesus is always near—then we can also believe that peace is always possible.