Peace in the Midst of War
By: Holly Smelser Schaefer from Harrisonville, Missouri
In Ephesians 6, God presents us with an image: we see a soldier, fitted out in full armor at the ready for action. God says that the feet of this warrior, who is able to wrestle against rulers of darkness and stand firm against a host of evil, are to be shod “with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” Peace?
Yes, this soldier decked out in war gear in deadly earnest has strapped to his feet a preparation, a readiness, a vigilance for the message, “peace!”
This doesn’t make sense in our physical world, but we are also spirits, even though our carnal eyes are blinded to the spiritual world, those heavenly places through which we walk or stumble beyond our understanding, we are surrounded by unseen principalities and powers and rulers, hosts of spiritual beings both wicked and servants of the Lord of hosts (Eph 6:12; 2 Kings 6:17). Looking into God’s revelation of the spiritual world can illuminate why this soldier is so keen on peace.
In the beginning, on this good earth, God, who is spirit, walked with man in the garden (Gen 3). Man, however, chose different company, and has continued making the same choice ever since. We ally ourselves with a war monger, who lied about God’s goodness and love (Rev 12). We join ourselves to the Enemy of God and the Murderer who is ever eager to destroy us (John 8:42-47; 1 Pet 5:8). Satan has always known that having a carnal mind which seeks the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and pride of life sets us at enmity with God, our Creator and source of life, and he used that understanding of human nature to play Eve to her destruction. James tells us that “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (1 John 2:16; Rom 8:5-7; Jas 4:4). Our very nature, then, puts us in the horrible state of treason. We are traitors, at war with our Creator instead of at peace, cut off from the garden, from life, from His presence, and shackled to a soul-destroying alliance with Satan who enlisted us for war and death among the hosts of the sons of disobedience (Gen 3:24; John 8:34; Eph 2:1-3; Eph 5:6).
A holy God cannot be with us, sinful and the enemies of holiness: “Your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear” (Isa 59:2). David said in the thirty fourth psalm, “the face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth” (Psa 34:16). What terror and grief for us, to see the extent of the breach, the chasm of separation that exists between us and our God. John tells us, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, so if we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie” (1 John 1:5-6). There is no fellowship. There is no peace. Without God, in our natural state, there is only blind stumbling in darkness and alienation from the life of God, according to Ephesians 4:18.
And yet, even in the moment of separation, God provides a shadow of a hope of reconciliation between enemies in Genesis 3:15. God promised war between “her seed,” a man, and Satan. He promised that our accuser would be crushed, and a man would do it. Satan, our liege lord who we chose in our sins, would lose, so the war, with us on the wrong side was a hope incomprehensible. What of our sworn allegiance with Satan? His defeat would be ours to share. Yet a man, like us, would be victorious with God. This man, seed of the woman, is foretold again as a blessing for all nations and a ladder reconnecting man and God (Gen 12:3, 28:12). A Son of Man , like us, would be the victor, the Prince of Peace (John 1:51; Isa 9:6).
Enmity with God, reverberating through our lives, brings enmity also among ourselves from the sons of Adam and Eve until today. In Matthew 22, Jesus predicates the command to love your neighbor upon the first command, to love the Lord your God, neither of which humans before Christ had succeeded in accomplishing. Lack of peace with God makes peace with each other impossible.
However, Daniel and Micah offered hope with prophecies in which that promised Son of Man appears again. He is one who is able to go near to God and is given a kingdom comprised of all nations and languages in unity, a kingdom in which many nations of peoples would flow up into the house of God together, beating their swords into plows, learning war no more (Dan 7:13-14; Mic 4:1-4). Peace with the Lord of hosts seems to lead to peace among the hosts. Peace is not a possibility among the hosts of Satan, an army characterized by bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, and malice (Eph 4:17-31). Yet, with the Son of Man, there is hope.
Then bursts upon us the joy of Ephesians. The hope is realized! The seed of the woman, that Son of Man is here in Jesus Christ revealed to be Son of God (Eph 1, 4:13). We are inconceivably granted grace and peace by God (Eph 1:2). In Him, that man, Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. We have been bought back from the hosts of darkness, redeemed by God (Eph 1:7). Not only are we no longer enemy traitors, but we have been adopted by the one we betrayed to be sons and heirs (Eph 1:5)! The impossible has come because Jesus has come and “preached peace” with God to us “who were afar off” and restored access to the father (Eph 2:12, 17). Jesus Christ, jointly a son of man and the son of God, is our new Lord. Also, not only enmity with God, but enmity with our brother has been absolved. Jesus is also our peace, making all nations into one body, one host which is his kingdom, the church as Daniel and Micah foretold (Eph 2:14, 1:22-23).
Understandably, our walk through the heavenly places is transformed. As we are urged in Ephesians to leave sins in which we walked under our previous commander, the letter rallies us to walk in good works and in a manner worthy of our incomprehensible calling in the Lord’s hosts (Eph 2:2, 10). Is this the call to war? It is not described so in Ephesians. Instead, our new mission is to be characterized by lowliness and gentleness and longsuffering (Eph 4:1-2). Now, walk in love (Eph 5:2). Walk in the light, seeing with spiritual vision the heavenly places around you (Eph 5:8). We are walking again with God as in the beginning, redeemed and restored, adopted and at peace with God and man; now we are walking with spiritual vision. And then, finally, God calls us to put on armor.
We reject and rid ourselves of our former prince, our captor, that serpent. He lost the war as promised in Genesis, but his loss, foreseen by Jesus in Luke 10:18, described in Revelation 12 did not end him. We are freed and given peace, but he is bitter, angry, and vengeful, and he has been cast down among us, enraged against us (Rev 12:10-17). Now, he is at war against us. His schemes, his wiles, his fiery darts, his spiritual hosts, though constant, are nothing if we stand firm in God’s armor (Eph 6:13). His hosts will not win, but we must be armed with sword and armor against Satan and his failing vengeance.
Ironically, our firm stand, and our walk, is shod in “the preparation of the gospel of peace” or with “readiness” of the gospel of peace. We no longer stumble misguided through the spiritual war around us but are stabilized by a firm motivating grounding. We understand with glorious joy that the message and mission is peace. We, soldiers of God, are ever ready and vigilant for that mission from our commander: peace with God and men.
Neither eager readiness nor a focus on peace can be lacking in our footwear. The lack of either makes for a loose cannon. We cannot be shod like Jehu in 2 Kings 9:18, ever eager and prepared, vigilant and in readiness as an effective killer. His lack of a God-guided mission was clear- when there was no one to kill, he was weak and unguided by his Lord (2 Kings 10:31). He was ready, but not for his Lord’s mission nor ever for peace.
Neither should we walk shod as the pathetic soldiers of Israel in 1 Samuel 17, who lined up daily in full battle array only to run back to their tents, daily, unnerved at the challenge of Goliath, unwilling to engage. Their misplaced desire for peace without ready vigilance and faith in the Lord’s way of ensuring it brought blasphemy upon God. David, however, was vigilant and ready to stand against this enemy who “defied the armies of the Living God.” He did not seek peace with the enemy; he sought peace only with God.
Grasping what can seem to be the contradiction of a motivated readiness and the mission of peace, is essential yet complicated for the human mind. In daily life, stress and tension from constant vigilance can escalate into anger and violence while habits of peace and deference may easily slide into indolence and negligence. And yet, we are to be both - eager and ready for peace and always vigilant to defend our gift from God. As gloriously redeemed adopted soldiers of the victorious Lord of hosts, our walk is clearly defined by light, love, and law; our stand is to be firm and fast, our feet shod in ready determination to His mission because through God’s marvelous mercy the inconceivable has been conceived; the message we carry is peace with God and also with man.