WALKING BY FAITH

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

A pastoral reflection on the heart of Christ, the call of the Beatitudes, and the church’s most difficult temptation.

FAITH  |  DEVOTIONAL  |  MARCH 2026

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

MATTHEW 5:9  ·  NIV

I want to begin this post not with an argument but with a grief. A grief that I suspect many of you quietly carry too — one that is rarely spoken aloud in church lobbies or Sunday school rooms, because to say it feels like betrayal. But I believe the Lord is a God of truth, and that He honors the honest cry of a heart that loves Him.

Here is the grief: somewhere along the way, in far too many corners of the American church, the Gospel of the Prince of Peace has become entangled with a theology of war. And for those of us who read the Sermon on the Mount and take it seriously, that entanglement is deeply, spiritually troubling.

This is not a political post. It is a pastoral one. And it begins, as all things must, with the words of Jesus.

What Jesus Actually Said

In Matthew 5, Jesus sat on a hillside and delivered what many scholars consider the most radical ethical teaching in human history. The Beatitudes are not suggestions. They are not aspirational ideals for a distant future. They are the description of a life being transformed by the Kingdom of God breaking into the present world.

And right there, in the middle of that hillside sermon, Jesus said it plainly:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

MATTHEW 5:9  ·  NIV

Not peacekeepers — people who maintain a tense, uneasy silence. Peacemakers. The Greek word is eirenopoioi — those who actively, purposefully, sacrificially make peace. Those who lean toward reconciliation when the world leans toward retaliation. Those who absorb hostility rather than return it. Those who look at an enemy and see, first, a soul made in the image of God.

Jesus did not say blessed are the strong. Blessed are the victorious. Blessed are those who defend their nation’s interests. He said blessed are the peacemakers — and He called them children of God.

The Temptation the Church Has Always Faced

I want to be tender here, because I believe most people in the pews are sincere. They love their country. They love their families. They want safety and security for the people they care about. Those desires are not wicked — they are deeply human.

But the church has always faced a particular temptation, one that goes back to the very moment Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. The temptation is this: to baptize the agenda of earthly power with the language of Heaven. To take the cross — that instrument of sacrificial, enemy-loving, self-giving peace — and use it to bless the sword.

When the flag and the cross are wrapped together so tightly that we can no longer tell them apart, we have not made Christianity more patriotic. We have made it less Christian. The Kingdom of God is not coextensive with any nation on earth — not even this one.

This is not a new observation. Christians across the centuries — from the early church fathers who refused military service, to the Anabaptists, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing from a Nazi prison — have wrestled with what faithfulness to the Prince of Peace looks like when the empire demands allegiance. It is one of the oldest and most painful tensions in the history of the faith.

And it is not resolved by shouting louder on either side. It is resolved by returning, quietly and humbly, to the words of Jesus.

The Vision God Has Always Carried

What is striking is that the heart of God on this matter is not hidden. It is not obscure theology buried in difficult passages. It is proclaimed boldly by the prophets, centuries before Christ, as the vision of what God’s Kingdom ultimately looks like.

“They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

ISAIAH 2:4  ·  NIV

Swords into plowshares. Spears into pruning hooks. The instruments of death transformed into instruments of cultivation and harvest. This is the vision Isaiah saw — and it is the same vision Micah declared word for word in Micah 4:3. Two prophets, independently proclaiming the same heart of God: a world where war is not glorified, not baptized, not celebrated — but ended.

That has always been God’s heart. It did not change at the New Testament. If anything, the Incarnation intensified it. Jesus — God in flesh — came not as a conquering general but as a suffering servant. He rode into Jerusalem not on a warhorse but on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9). He told Peter to put away the sword (Matthew 26:52). He healed the ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him (Luke 22:51). Even in His most vulnerable moment, surrounded by enemies, His instinct was not retaliation. It was restoration.

“He rode not on a warhorse but on a donkey.
He healed the ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him.
Even at His most vulnerable, His instinct was restoration.”

What This Means for Us Today

I am not writing this post to tell anyone how to vote, or to suggest that national security is a simple matter with easy answers. It is not. I hold deep respect for the men and women who serve in uniform, and I carry genuine compassion for the complexity of leadership in a broken world.

But I am writing this to say: the church must be careful. Deeply, prayerfully careful. When the language of faith is used to stoke enthusiasm for war — when Scripture is deployed to baptize foreign policy rather than to call us toward the character of Christ — something has gone wrong. And those of us who feel that in our spirits are not being unpatriotic. We are being faithful.

Paul wrote to the Romans with clarity about the spiritual reality underlying our conflicts:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

EPHESIANS 6:12  ·  NIV

Our enemy, the Scripture says, is not a nation. It is not a people group. It is not a government. Our enemy is the spiritual darkness that holds all people — including our adversaries — in bondage. And the weapons of our warfare are not carnal (2 Corinthians 10:4). They are prayer. They are truth. They are the Gospel of peace itself — which Paul, in that same Ephesians passage, calls the very shoes on the feet of the believer (Ephesians 6:15).

A Word to Those Who Are Grieving This

If you have sat in a sanctuary and felt your spirit quietly grieve when the conversation turned from the cross to the cause of war — you are not alone. If you have felt the tension of loving your church family while disagreeing deeply with what is being celebrated from the pew — that tension is holy. Do not dismiss it.

The prophets grieved too. Jeremiah wept so persistently that he is called the weeping prophet. Isaiah mourned over the people who called evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). They did not leave their posts. But they also did not pretend that everything was fine when God had laid a burden of truth on their hearts.

If that is you — carry the grief to the Lord. Pray for your church. Pray for the people whose enthusiasm for war may be born more of fear than of faith. And hold fast to the Beatitudes, which have never been revoked, and to the God of Isaiah’s vision, whose ultimate Kingdom is one of unending peace.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given… And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

ISAIAH 9:6  ·  NIV

He is the Prince of Peace. That is His name. That is His nature. And those who belong to Him are called — above all else — to reflect it.

Lord Jesus, Prince of Peace — we come to You with hearts that are sometimes confused and sometimes grieving, living as we do in a world that is quick to reach for the sword. Forgive us, Lord, for every moment the church has baptized what You never blessed. Forgive us for the times we have wrapped the cross in the flag and forgotten that Your Kingdom is not of this world.

Give us the courage to be peacemakers in a culture that rewards aggression. Give us the wisdom to speak truth in love, to grieve what grieves You, and to hold fast to the vision of Isaiah — swords into plowshares, nations learning war no more. Let that vision not just be an eschatological hope but a present posture — the way we speak, the way we pray, the way we love our enemies as You commanded.

For those sitting in pews feeling alone in this grief, Lord — remind them they are not alone. Remind them that You, the Lamb who was slain, are also the Lion who will one day set all things right. Until that day, make us faithful. Make us tender. Make us peacemakers — that we might truly be called children of God.

IN THE MIGHTY AND MATCHLESS NAME OF JESUS  ·  AMEN & AMEN

Taylor

✦   TO GOD BE THE GLORY FOREVER  ·  HALLELUJAH AND AMEN   ✦

SOURCES & REFERENCES

• Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV) — Biblica, Inc., 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011. Verses cited: Matthew 5:9; Isaiah 2:4; Isaiah 5:20; Isaiah 9:6; Micah 4:3; Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 26:52; Luke 22:51; Romans 12:18; Ephesians 6:12, 15; 2 Corinthians 10:4.
• Stott, John R.W. The Message of the Sermon on the Mount.InterVarsity Press, 1978. — Exegesis of the Beatitudes and the meaning of eirenopoioi in Matthew 5:9.
• Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. — Foundational work on the church’s call to peace as witness.
• Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus. Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1972. — Scholarly examination of Jesus’s nonviolent ethic and its implications for the church.
• Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. SCM Press, 1959. — On the Sermon on the Mount and costly obedience to Christ over allegiance to the state.
• Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy. HarperCollins, 1998. — Commentary on the Beatitudes as present-tense Kingdom living.
• Oswalt, John N. The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1–39. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Eerdmans, 1986. — Exegesis of Isaiah 2:4 and the eschatological vision of peace.
• BibleRef.com. “What does Matthew 5:9 mean?” — bibleref.com/Matthew/5/Matthew-5-9.html
• GotQuestions.org. “What does it mean to be a peacemaker?” — gotquestions.org/peacemaker-Bible.html