He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples;

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

Isaiah 2: 4

 

The Prophet was certainly seeing some future time and events that were not a part of the world that he knew. Judah, the nation where Isaiah lived, was continually in a state of readiness to defend itself against attack that came from all sides and was carried out by every other nation that surrounded them. They even had been at war with the other half of the Hebrew nation, Israel. When and how this peace was to come is something that Isaiah does not clearly reveal. It just might be true that God did not tell him as He wanted Isaiah’s readers to consider our personal response to this promise of peace. Otherwise it is our tendency to focus on the future, defer responsibility for the sad condition of our world to God and His timing, and become promoters of conflict as necessary for the defense of our faith.

 

It is true that strife, conflict, and war are direct results of sin. Creation, especially its people, was not intended by God to oppress, torture, rape, and kill. Yet, set free from the restraint of God’s hand, this is exactly what we have done. Over our history we have become very good at it all, too. The soil of every nation on this earth is saturated with the blood of those who we have sacrificed to our greed and ambition. Although there have been many people who have worked and numerous efforts put forth to bring about peace in our world, they have all failed. They were and will continue to be doomed from inception. There is no peace to be found in the hearts of humans. We are a war-like band for whom killing is a sacrament. Yet, it doesn’t need to be this way.

 

Christ is the answer to the question of who is it that Isaiah is saying will cause the great restorative changes in our world that are mentioned in this verse and elsewhere in his narrative. I would submit that this is not solely a future promise. Rather, it would seem that Christ’s life depicts that He sought to live as a man for whom peace was the sacrament. He engaged peacemaking as a form of worship to the Father, and Christ brought the holy touch of the Kingdom of God as a blessing upon the lives of the people that He engaged with. As the Spirit of Christ lives within us, so we should be people who bring His spirit of peace to all of our interactions. Foe each and every child of the Living God, today should be the gay when we submit to Christ and lay down our weapons of war in every form that they may exist. Now is the time to seek peace with our neighbor, to reconcile with our enemy, and to demand that our nations do likewise.