You Have Peace
Day 12 Who Are You — REALLY?: Ephesians 2:14–15
Introduction
Division is the water we swim in — nations, economies, cultures, the church split against itself, the neighborhood, and if we’re honest, our own families. And the peace anyone talks about isn’t really peace. It’s just an agreement. The fighting stops for now, as long as everyone keeps their end, and it holds until it doesn’t.
So when Scripture says you have peace, that’s usually how we hear it: a ceasefire God brokered, a truce he’s holding in place, something that could come apart if the terms slip.
Paul says something stranger. He doesn’t say Jesus made peace, or arranged it, or keeps it. He says Jesus is it. And a peace that’s a person doesn’t come apart the way a ceasefire does.
Scripture
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace. — Ephesians 2:14–15
Reflection
What’s Happening in the Text
There was a literal wall behind this image. In the Jerusalem temple, a stone barrier separated the court where Gentiles could go from the areas they couldn’t, with signs warning that a foreigner who crossed it would have himself to blame for his own death. Every reader knew that wall. Paul says Christ demolished it.
But look at how he says peace happened, because it isn’t what you’d expect. Peace usually means finding the middle — both sides give a little, meet in a space between them. Paul says Christ didn’t build a bridge between the two groups. He made one new humanity out of them. Not a compromise. Not Jews and Gentiles agreeing to coexist. A third thing that didn’t exist before, with both of them inside it.
And notice the very first phrase, because everything hangs on it: he himself is our peace. Not he made peace and handed it over. He is the peace. The thing holding the two sides together isn’t an agreement they’re both maintaining. It’s a person they’re both in.
What This Means for You
This changes what you can lose. If your peace with God is just an agreement, then it lives or dies on the terms, and some part of you is always reading the fine print, wondering if you’ve broken something. That’s an exhausting way to be near God — technically at peace, privately braced for the ceasefire to fail.
But if the peace is a person, and you’re in him, then the peace holds as long as he holds. Your bad day doesn’t renegotiate it. Your doubt doesn’t void it. The peace was never a set of terms you were keeping; it was a place you were put, and you didn’t put yourself there.
And then there’s the part we’d rather not read. The same peace runs horizontal. Paul isn’t only talking about you and God — he’s talking about you and the people on the other side of your wall. Because here’s the uncomfortable logic: if Christ made one new humanity, then the person you’ve quietly filed under “them” is in the same new humanity as you. Same person holding you both. You don’t get a version of this peace that keeps your favorite wall standing.
That’s not a second, harder assignment tacked on after the comforting part. It’s the same peace, seen from the side we like less. The wall between you and God and the wall between you and them came down in the same act. You can’t keep one and lose the other.
Your peace with God was never a ceasefire you have to keep from breaking. It’s a person you were placed inside — and the same person is holding the one you’d rather keep a wall between you and.
Grace Note
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. — Romans 5:1
Have. Present tense, already true, not pending your performance. And the peace comes through a person, not through a deal — which is why it’s the one thing about you that a bad week can’t touch.
Prayer Prompt
Jesus, I’ve been treating my peace with you like a ceasefire. Reading the fine print, checking whether I’ve broken something, half-expecting the whole thing to fall apart the next time I fail.
I think I do that because a ceasefire leaves me in control of something. If it depends on my terms, at least it’s mine to manage. A peace that’s just you — that I can’t manage at all. I can only be in it or refuse it.
And I’ll be honest about the other part. I like some of my walls. There are people I’d rather stay separated from, and I’ve been quietly assuming you’d let me keep those while taking down the one between us.
Help me stop negotiating a peace you already are. And give me the courage to let the same wall come down twice.
Amen.
Response
1. Contemplative: Sit for five minutes with four words: he himself is peace. Not a thing he gives. Something he is, that you’re already inside. Don’t work at it. Just be in it.
2. Written Reflection: Name one wall you’ve been quietly hoping to keep — a person or group you’d rather stay separated from. Don’t fix it on paper. Just write it down honestly, next to the fact that the same peace covers them too.
3. Relational: Take one small step across that wall today. Not a grand reconciliation — a text, a greeting, a prayer for them by name. Stop spending your energy holding the wall up. Pull one brick, and let a wall Christ already declared down start coming down.
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© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way