Introduction

The Lord Jesus in his famous sermon on the mount came preaching the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven, as that is God’s gracious rule of his elect people in Jesus Christ, is an eternal reality. From eternity God appointed Christ to be the head and mediator of his covenant, and God also appointed to Christ a kingdom from eternity. Christ is our eternal king; without subjects he cannot be. God made Christ to be king in eternity when God appointed to Christ a chosen people, elect and precious, in order that he might deliver them from all their sins and miseries and rule graciously in their hearts by his Word and Spirit. The kingdom of heaven was at hand when God came in human flesh in the man Jesus Christ. That is the great mystery of the kingdom, that God was manifest in the flesh. The basis or ground of this kingdom is the perfect satisfaction of Jesus Christ, whereby Christ purchased his people with his own blood and redeemed them from sin and death.

The kingdom of heaven is an entirely other-worldly kingdom. It is spiritual in character. Christ said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” That kingdom does not arise from this world. It is not a dominion of might, force, or compulsion. Rather, the kingdom of heaven is a dominion of love. The kingdom of heaven, which shall endure forever, reaches down into the world and embraces the entire elect church.

Throughout the first part of the sermon on the mount, in what is commonly referred to as the beatitudes, the Lord Jesus declares the blessedness of the citizens of the kingdom. Last time we considered the blessedness of the pure in heart. The pure in heart are those in whom God has worked regeneration and faith, giving them new hearts, making them new creatures in Jesus Christ, and causing them to rightly love God alone and to desire to keep his commandments. We saw that the heart of man is who man is as to his innermost essence. While man judges the outward appearance, God judges the heart. It does not matter how a man presents himself before the peering eyes of other men. It does not matter that all men speak well of a man. It does not matter even if a man does many seemingly good things. If his heart is bad, then that man is wicked. God judges the heart.

When an elect sinner who by nature hates God and the neighbor loves God, when an elect sinner loves the truth of God and seeks the glory and honor of the name of God, it can only be because God has regenerated that sinner. That in itself is a great wonder of grace. And in grace God crowns his own gifts, promising to the pure in heart that they shall see God. They shall see God in all his glory, in all his fullness, and in all his beauty in the face of Jesus Christ. When Christ appears, they shall not be consumed, but they shall be transformed and made like unto him, for then they shall see him as he is. And now in Matthew 5:9 we read, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

The God of Peace

When in Matthew 5:9 Jesus declares the blessedness of the peacemakers, then the text is dealing with peace. What is peace? Certainly, the peace of the text is not the peace of the world. The peace of the text is the peace of the kingdom of heaven. And although, on the face of it, the text seems to be interested mainly in the peace of the peacemakers, there can be no true consideration of peace apart from first considering the author of peace, namely, God himself.

Peace is first a perfection of God. When we speak of God’s perfections, it is important for us always to understand them in the light of God’s simplicity. God’s simplicity, or oneness, does not only refer to the reality that there is only one divine essence or being whom we call God. But God’s simplicity also refers to the reality that God is all his perfections, and all his perfections are one in him. This is distinctively Reformed. Not only may we say that God is the God of peace, but God himself is peace. God does not need to be at peace with any creature to be the God of peace.

Peace is God himself as he beholds himself in the instant and constant fullness of his divine being and as he loves himself. God loves God in God. And in that love God is at peace in himself, so that there is full agreement and perfect harmony within his own being. That God is the God of peace, therefore, can only be understood in a trinitarian fashion. God the Father loves God the Son in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit himself is the love of God. And it is within the threeness of God that there is complete union and fellowship in mind and will. Peace, therefore, is essentially covenant fellowship.

Within the covenant life of God triune, there is perfect agreement. There can be no true peace apart from agreement. That is the sense of the scripture when it teaches that two cannot even walk together unless they be agreed (Amos 3:3). Is that not true in the human body? We would say that there is no peace but unrest in a body where the members of that body war against each other. And yet that is the peace of the world. The peace of the world is an imitation peace that supposes that two can indeed walk together and enjoy sweet communion with one another without first being agreed.

We live in a war-torn world, and yet the world in its haste to fill its measure of the cup of iniquity makes its boast in peace. That false peace was characteristic of the reign of Jehoshaphat in the Old Testament, who made peace with apostate Israel and wicked King Ahab and brought the church of that day within a hair’s breadth of being utterly consumed by her enemies. The false peace of the world will reach its culmination in the kingdom of antichrist, who will inspire a false sense of unity between the nations as well as the false and apostate church. And yet the peace of the beatitude—and you may add all the other blessings of the beatitudes—is utterly antithetical to the world.

The peace of the text is the fruit of righteousness, so that where there is no righteousness, there can be no peace. There is no righteousness in the world. There is only righteousness in the church. And yet there is no righteousness in an institution that merely calls itself church. To put that very concretely, if there is no gospel of justification, no good news of the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, and if that gospel is not embraced by faith, then there is no righteousness. Christ cannot be present and operating within that church by his Word and Spirit. In that church there can be no peace.

Christ is our peace. Christ is our peace, who has accomplished reconciliation through the blood of his cross, by which he merited all righteousness for us. Christ obtained peace for us, who were at enmity against God, by reconciling us to God. God never needed to be reconciled to us but we to God. This is the first blessing of the text, that, in a world where all men by nature stand at enmity against God, there are those who have been given real peace with God. They have peace with God according as God loved them from eternity and appointed them to that peace. Peace for the peacemakers means that God is their covenant friend and sovereign, and they have and enjoy sweet fellowship together with him. By the powerful operation of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the elect sinner, God justifies the elect sinner through faith, working peace in that sinner’s heart through the word of reconciliation. Therefore, being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Peacemakers Themselves

Most astoundingly, even amid a war-torn world, which lies underneath the curse of God, there are those who make peace. This is profound. When we consider this, we must confess that the very existence of such peacemakers is itself a wonder of grace. The peacemaker is the one in whose heart God has worked by the wonder of regeneration, removing his stony heart and giving to him a heart of flesh, within which heart God has worked faith by the Spirit through the hearing of the gospel. The peacemaker is the child of God as that child of God has been born of God, who knows God, and within whose heart the love of God has been spread abroad. The regenerated child of God enjoys peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. In his heart the child of God loves peace.

Matthew 5:9 combines two root words that are translated in the King James Version as “peacemakers.” The peacemaker does peace; he makes peace; he works peace. Peacemaking is the chief work of the citizen of the kingdom of heaven. That the peacemaker makes peace does not mean that he is the author of peace. I have explained how this is not the case and how all true peace has its source in God. Rather, the peacemaker makes peace by taking the gospel of peace and then out of faith applying that gospel to every situation and every circumstance in his life. The peacemaker in his own life makes peace when he lives out of the gospel and seeks to bring the gospel to bear upon every area of his life. He understands the reality that apart from the gospel there can be no peace. Nothing in his life escapes the purview of the gospel, but the gospel lives in his heart and bears fruit in the rest of his life, so that he daily turns from his sins and by faith seeks the remission of his sins in Jesus Christ alone.

For a man or a woman to be a peacemaker means that that man or woman possesses the mind of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve and who willingly humbled himself and gave his own life in love for his friends. The mind of Christ is the mind that seeks not every man his own things but every man the things of others. Peacemakers love peace. They seek peace and pursue it. They strive as much as lies within them to be at peace with all men.

Within the church the peacemakers endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which unity is in the truth. Peacemakers are not those who entertain an unholy toleration of sin and false doctrine in themselves or in the church in the name of peace, for there can be no peace in the church where sin and false doctrine are not dealt with.

What do peacemakers look like? Peacemakers take several forms. Peacemakers are church members who rebuke the erring brother, calling him to repent. Peacemakers are ruling elders who faithfully oversee the doctrine and conversation of the minister and faithfully exercise Christian discipline in the removal of the impenitent sinner and the readmittance of the repentant brother. Peacemakers have no interest in ecumenical church unions such as the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, or any of the other accursed denominational federations that compromise the truth, expressing their mutual offense of the reproach of the gospel of Christ. And the peacemakers stand antithetically opposed to the same false ecumenicity within their own personal lives, having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness or with the workers of iniquity themselves, even if they are close relatives or former acquaintances in false and apostate churches.

The peacemaker is one who loves the truth of the gospel, who cleaves to that truth, and who confesses it, even over against the hatred and opposition of the world. For all the peacemakers’ confessions of the truth, the world slanders them as being the very enemies of peace and accuses them of standing in the way of peace and making reconciliation impossible. Peacemakers are criticized for being harsh, unloving, and intolerant of other people’s opinions and worldviews. And yet the peacemakers have been made to understand that the devil stands behind those words. They understand that the world, which stakes its claim on peace and which maintains itself over against the church, stands in absolute and utter opposition to peace. Certainly, the children of the world too will have their peace, a peace that is not of the kingdom of heaven but is of this world, where none are agreed, where the truth is non-existent because they will have it so in order to fulfill their own sinful lusts and carnal desires. But they will perish with that same peace. That is because they have not peace with God, but they are themselves the very enemies of God. Them will God destroy.

The Blessedness of the Peacemakers

The word “for” in the text denotes the reason that the peacemakers are blessed. “For they shall be called the children of God.” This calling of the text is not a matter of personal confession. It is not as if God creates his children and does not also cause them to know their sonship for themselves. That cannot be because only those who have been regenerated are peacemakers, and those who are regenerated have been given the Spirit of adoption, who testifies with their spirits that they are, indeed, the children of God. Rather, I believe the text is referring to the peacemakers as children of God in relationship to their position in this world. It is similar to what the apostle Paul mentions in Romans, that the earnest expectation of the creature—that is, the brute creation—waits for the manifestation of the sons of God (8:19).

In a moment that which was formerly veiled shall be brought to light in judgment. Now the glory, riches, treasures, and honor that are ours are from the world. Now it is hidden from the world who we are as to our innermost essence—that is, the children of God. Now the glory that we have been given is veiled behind a cloak of human flesh, so that we appear to be the same as other men before the sight of all. Do you understand that? Due to the weakness of our faith and our own sins and sinfulness, we sometimes doubt for ourselves the very peace that belongs to us in the gospel. Our sinful flesh is the first to rise in judgment against the children of God and to condemn them as the children of the devil. The flesh has its own word about the peacemakers.

Meanwhile, the world also judges the peacemakers as schismatics, radicals, cultists, and antinomians. The church is declared to be many things by the world, but peacemakers is not one of those things. Do we not know this to be true in our own history as a denomination of churches? How often have we not heard such things from the world, even from our own flesh and blood? Perhaps in the beginning, as a cloak for their unbelief, there were those who expressed a faint interest in the reformation. What do they say now? They say that we are troublers. We are schismatics. And we are unloving people. We certainly are not peacemakers. Has the judgment of the world been any different throughout the church’s history? That word has never changed. We may never expect that word to change, for the Lord promised us that there would be those who persecute us and say all manner of evil against us falsely for his sake.

That this is the world’s judgment over against the church should be unsurprising because it is the very same judgment that the world declared concerning the church’s head, Jesus Christ. The whole world was represented in the trial and crucifixion of Christ. Historically, the death of the cross was a form of Roman execution that declared Christ to be an enemy of the state. Christ was judged before the world in Pilate’s court as a common criminal or murderer would have been judged. The church of Jesus’ day criticized him for being a friend to publicans and sinners. The Pharisees demanded of Christ a sign, claiming that he had a devil. Caiaphas, the high priest, condemned Christ as a blasphemer when Christ plainly taught that he was the Son of God. In Psalm 120:6–7 we read Christ’s prayer: “My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.” The world and the false church railed on Christ because they hated his words. And so it is for the peacemakers, who are slandered and who are despitefully used and persecuted for Christ’s sake.

I say that the world has a word to say about the church. But when God comes in Jesus Christ for judgment, then shall the peacemakers be called the children of God. God’s word is the only word that matters. Now it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be made like unto him, for we shall see him as he is. God’s word of judgment on the world is the same word by which the preaching of the gospel is heard and embraced by the children of God in this world. It is the same word that shall be declared at the end our lives upon earth when we shall appear before God in judgment. And it is the final word that God shall declare when he comes in Jesus Christ at the very end, when he shall raise us up in glory and shall judge both the quick and the dead at his appearing.

Be comforted, ye peacemakers, for soon shall your full deliverance be perfected, and you shall receive the fruits of the labor and trouble that you have borne. Lift your heads, for your redemption draws nigh.