Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” The next verse in the context says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.”

That seems odd. Why a persecution warning after telling people to be peace makers? Seems like persecution is the opposite of peace!

The Beatitudes are descriptions of Christ’s character, and should be the character of those who follow Christ. These are not stand-alone statements; they go together and hinge on each other.

Think about it, “blessed are the peacemakers” was said by Jesus Christ who said, “I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” Seemingly everywhere Jesus went He destroyed the peace. Most pages of the Gospels have Jesus arguing with someone. Then they killed Him.

“Blessed are the peacemakers” gets quoted in isolation. Many think that making peace is the major thing we do. Peace at all costs. Unity is The Goal. The heretic is the one who makes people uncomfortable and brings controversy.

If local church leadership emphasizes peace and unity above all else, bad things will happen.

Christians should not intentionally cause problems; they should create and maintain peace, but there are qualifications on peace. “As much as depends on you, live peaceably with all.” It doesn’t all depend on you.

I don’t walk into rooms thinking about causing problems. My nature avoids conflict. I do not enjoy arguing with or confronting people.

But I’ve also learned that argument and confrontation is occasionally necessary.

There was a time in my pastoral career when I rested on peace, which meant–avoid trouble makers. They took more and more, and hurt more people. I cowered and hoped they’d go away.

Keeping peace with bad, destructive people will ruin the church.

I remember the first time as a young pastor confronting one of the jerks in the church who thought he ran the place and was actively causing division. I was scared the whole time. I shook for two hours afterwards.

It was one of the best things to happen for the church though.

If I had maintained peace with this guy, the doctrine of the church would have been destroyed, or the people in the church would have been divided and a huge fight would have ensued.

Church splits are often the result of church leadership not rooting out problems before they blossom. This often occurs for the spiritual sounding reason of “keeping the peace.”

Avoiding problems, confrontations, and bad people doing bad things in a church, is not keeping peace; it’s dereliction of duty.

The unity the church is called to is the “unity of the Spirit” and the “unity of the faith.” If people aren’t in the faith and don’t have the Spirit, you should not be united with them. Come out from among them and be separate.

Peacemakers will often get persecution. Standing for righteousness, confronting false teachers and deceivers, will get you pushback. Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets know this. Any pastor doing his actual job knows this.

Consider it joy when you receive persecution for pursuing righteousness (which is the only thing that will bring true, lasting peace), for they did the same thing to the prophets.

Being a peacemaker ultimately means doing all you can to help people be at peace with God. This happens through the Gospel (which is an offense, by the way). But once that is dealt with, peace with other people becomes possible.

Peace through any other means is merely human effort and schemes to keep an organization together. Usually it’s just fear of people.

The church needs better.

Shepherds don’t make peace with wolves.

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