Blessed [fortunate] are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. ^[1]

~Jesus (Matthew 5:9)

The seventh principle of the start of the Jesus Manifesto (Matthew 5-7) focuses on “the peacemakers.” The theme of “peace” permeates the biblical record. It indicates completeness and wholeness in every area of life, including one’s relationship with colleagues and employees at work.

Jesus turns aside the various political, religious, and corporate attempts of those within our workplaces to establish their supremacy. They have created even more division; thus, he turns to those who want God’s peace. With the inauguration of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus himself is the supreme peacemaker, making peace between God and humans, and among humans, particularly at work. Those who have waited for God’s messianic peace can now respond to Jesus’ invitation, and they will receive the ultimate reward: to be called “sons of God,” fulfilling the role that Israel has assumed but taken for granted. Those who respond to Jesus’ ministry are heirs of the kingdom and reflect the character of their heavenly Father as they carry Jesus’ mission of peacemaking to the corporate world.

Every follower of Jesus, according to this happiness prescription, is meant to be a peacemaker at work and in the church. True, Jesus was to say later that he had ‘not come to bring peace, but a sword’, for he had come ‘to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’, so that a man’s enemies would be ‘those of his own household’ and at your place of work.

God’s goal: What he meant by this was that conflict would be the inevitable result of his coming, even in one’s own colleagues, and that, if we are to be worthy of him, we must love him best and put him first, above even our nearest and dearest co-workers. It is clear beyond question throughout the teaching of Jesus and his apostles that we should never ourselves seek conflict or be responsible for it.

On the contrary, we are called to peace, we are actively to ‘pursue’ peace, we are to ‘strive for peace with all men’, and so far as it depends on us, we are to ‘live peaceably with all’.

Now peacemaking is a big goal given to us from Jesus. For peace means reconciliation, and God is the author of peace and of reconciliation. Indeed, the very same verb which is used in this happiness prescription is applied by the apostle Paul to what God has done through the Messiah. Through Jesus God was pleased ‘to reconcile to himself all things, … making peace by the blood of his cross’. This applies to efforts at work. We are to be known for making peace and not starting workplace controversies.

• The Messiah’s purpose was to ‘create in himself one new man in place of the two (i.e. Jew and Gentile), so making peace’.
• It is hardly surprising that the benefit which attaches to peacemakers is that ‘they shall be called sons of God’.
• For they are seeking to do what their Father has done, loving people with his love, as Jesus is soon to make explicit.
• It is the devil who is a troublemaker; it is God who loves reconciliation and who now through his children, as formerly through his only begotten Son, is bent on making peace.

The words ‘peace’ and ‘appeasement’ are not synonyms. For the peace of God is not peace at any price. He made peace with us at immense cost, even at the price of the life-blood of his only Son. We too—though in our lesser ways—will find peacemaking a costly enterprise. Dietrich Bonhoeffer has made us familiar with the concept of ‘cheap grace’; there is such a thing as ‘cheap peace’ also. At work, we must avoid appeasement and actually achieve peace among co-workers.

^[1] New American Standard Bible. (2020). (Mt 5:9). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.