In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes concerning Jesus:
“He himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.”
Ephesians 2:14
Paul is speaking here of the division between Jew and Gentile, a division now healed in Christ. There was an actual wall that divided them. That wall was in Jerusalem, in the temple, and it divided the Israelite people from the other nations – the Gentiles.
Christ has healed this division by breaking down that wall. Christ broke down that wall, because he, in his flesh, is now the new temple, the place where God dwells.
Yes, Jesus Christ brings peace, but even more he is our peace. He didn’t just referee a truce between two peoples. He made them one by joining both to himself. We are now the one body of Christ. And Christ is our peace.
What does this mean for us today? If Christ healed the division between Jew and Gentile, he can also reconcile all people – and every person – in the same way. There is no division that he cannot heal. But there is only one way to receive that peace: by being joined to Christ in faith and love, by making him Lord of our lives. This is what brings peace.
We too are called to be peacemakers in Christ. How can we today help others enter the peace that Christ gives?
Top image credit: Photo of Christians worshipping together, © by Edwin Andrage at Uplash.com. Free to use under the Unsplash License.
Dan Keating, (DPhil, Oxford University, UK) is an elder in The Servants of the Word, an ecumenical international brotherhood of men living single for the Lord. He is a professor of theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan, USA where he teaches on Scripture, the Church Fathers, evangelization, and ecumenism.