PAUL’S LENGTHY POLEMIC against sin begins his letter to the Romans. After describing the myriad ways in which people by their acts reject God, he concludes that “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom. 3:18) This threatening and accurate statement is immediately preceded by “and the way of peace they do not know.” (Rom. 3:17) It is a partial quote from Isaiah. “The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks along them will know peace.” (Isa. 59:8) To illustrate his point, Paul strings together numerous O.T. quotes. “There is no one righteous, who understands, no one who seeks God. There is no one who does good, not even one. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Ruin and misery mark their ways.” (Rom. 3:11-13)
This ruin and misery, in Paul’s biblically moral and ethical view, comes as a direct result of each person willfully bartering the image of God in which we were created (Gen. 1:27) for an unnatural depiction of this resemblance. “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” (Rom. 1:25) Poor choices lead to bad outcomes; Habakkuk words about God are clear in Paul’s mind. “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.” (Hab. 1:13) And so, Paul says, “God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.” (Rom. 1:28)
The result of these determined immoral choices is that people “become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.” (Rom. 1:29) Jeremiah also speaks of such people. “Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.” (Jer. 6:15) The degeneracy is so powerful that even though “they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Rom. 1:32) The outcome of such perverted behaviors is clear for Paul. He says, “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23a), and he clearly sees this as both a living death and an eternal state of “spirit, soul, and body.” (1 Thess. 5:23) Thus the exchange is made complete, and so is the devastation and anguish that come with it.
“Eirene,” the Greek word translated as “peace,” is not quite the same as its Hebrew counterpart, “shalom.” Shalom has multiple levels of far-reaching outcomes—a peace in which everything created, including mankind, is not just restored but remade into a complete harmonious balance. The infinite cosmos, time and eternity, our sun, moon, and earth, mankind and individual lives, are will be brought into a perfectly tuned relationship with the sovereign creator, God himself.
“Eirene,” in the context of Christianity, is more narrowly defined. It is *“the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot, of whatsoever sort that is. It is also, “the blessed state of devout and upright men after death.” So it is that Paul can add to his earlier ‘For the wages of sin are death’ statement, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 6:23b) And Paul encourages us that “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.” (1 Cor. 2:12) It is this understanding that leads us to more fully comprehend the key to our personal peace: “For he himself is our peace.” (Eph. 2:14) Only in Jesus can we live out, admittedly imperfectly, our lives created in the image of God and restored to that image by our faith in Jesus. “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” (Col. 2:6)
The thought of a restored relationship to God is not new to the Covenant of Grace. There are foundational traces throughout the O.T. In Malachi, God says “Return to me, and I will return to you.” (Mal. 3:7). With more definition, Jeremiah prophecies “This is what the Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’” (Jer. 6:16) Jesus explains these promises in this way: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11:29) Here and here alone is a tranquility that flows from one day to the next, and from here to eternity.
Q. Do I guard my peace? (cf. Prov. 4:23)
*Strong’s 1515.
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