Eirene #38

In classical Greek eirene mainly meant the absence of war. In the New Testament it takes on much of the breadth of the Hebrew shalom, which covers wholeness, safety, and right relationship, and this is why it appears in most New Testament letters as part of the greeting or blessing.

Biblical Usage

Three main senses appear. Peace with God is stated in Romans 5:1: being justified by faith, believers “have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” which describes a change in standing rather than a feeling. Peace between people is the emphasis of Ephesians 2:14-17, where Christ is called “our peace” and is said to have broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. Inner peace is the subject of John 14:27 and Philippians 4:7. In the first, Jesus leaves his peace with his disciples, “not as the world giveth,” and in the second Paul promises that God’s peace, which surpasses understanding, will guard hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Paul regularly begins letters with “grace and peace,” and the angels’ announcement at Jesus’s birth includes peace on earth (Luke 2:14), a line that some translations read as peace among people with whom God is pleased. Jesus also says he did not come to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34), meaning that allegiance to him would divide even households.

Theological Significance

Because the New Testament writers were working from Hebrew categories, eirene often carries the sense that things are as they should be between God, people, and creation, and the messianic hope of the Old Testament included that kind of peace. Christian tradition has read the cross and resurrection as the means by which it is made possible, and has treated the church’s peacemaking, along with reconciliation between former enemies, as an outworking of it. Whether the promise of peace also reaches to political and social order in the present age is a question on which traditions differ.