Matthew 5:9

Matthew 5:9

The Church as a Peacemaker.

I. Christ the Peacemaker, Christ the Peacegiver, Christ who is to be yet the King of universal peace, is the Christ we worship and serve; and this threefold peace the peace that Christ has wrought for us in reconciling us to God, the peace that Christ works in our hearts as we believe in Him, the perfect peace He will yet bring to a restored world and a rejoicing Church makes the faith and the hope and the joy of the Church now. We not only believe in and enjoy and look for this peace, but we are or ought to be engaged in making it now on earth. That is the description He Himself gives of His Church. The text is the one beatitude of all the seven which pictures for us the Church of Christ in action; and the one distinctive work, the great thing Christ has given in charge to His Church to do on earth, is to make peace. "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

II. While Christ bids His Church be a peacemaker in the world, He marks her out also to be the Church militant here on earth. Now this double character, this character of warlike-ness and peacefulness, is not only stamped upon the Church by Christ Himself in her history, but we see it in His own life. Never was there such a peacemaker; and never, on the other hand, was there such a warrior; never was there one who spoke so sternly as a prophet, so sharply and resolutely as a judge, so keenly, so searchingly and provocatively as a reformer, as Christ our Lord, Christ the Warrior, whose warfare is as a consuming fire; Christ the Peacemaker, whose words are all tenderness and love.

III. The mission and purpose of Christ in this world was the destruction of all evil. All evil, whether it be evil of error or whether it be the evil of sin in practice, opposes itself to the mission and purpose of Christ and His Church, and must be removed if that mission is to succeed. Christianity is necessarily an intolerant religion, and as such it provokes strife, and as such we must not fear to provoke it. And yet we, in our warfare for truth, have need to remember that we are also peacemakers. If we honestly desire truth and hate error, then we must honestly recognise truth wherever we meet it. We must take heed lest with our statement of the truth we provoke and intensify, by any fault in our statement, by any error in our conception of it, the very error that we are warring against. The Church in her dealing with error is to be ever militant as her Master was, ever to be peace-loving, peace-bringing, peace-seeking, even as He was too, and for His sake.

Bishop Magee, The Family Churchman,March 2nd, 1887.

I. The world is full of peacebreakers.

II. The world's heart is the same in every age.

III. The world listened to a Peacemaker.

IV. The world is at variance with the Divine philosophy.

V. The world has no pedigree so illustrious as that of the Peacemaker.

W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 232.

References: Matthew 5:9. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 422; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 77; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 366; Bishop Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons,p. 153; J. Oswald Dykes, Manifesto of the King,p. 139; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxi., p. 27. Matthew 5:10. E. De Pressensé, The Mystery of Suffering,p. 74; J. Oswald Dykes, Manifesto of the King,p. 161.