“If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are some people who thrive in situations of conflict. I am not one of those people. I tend to shut down in conflict. And God made me a pastor. Go figure. Actually it works out really well as I have an incredible church that is peace-loving and remarkably unified. Yet while there is undoubtedly a time for conflict, as followers of Jesus, peace should always be our aim. And, as it would happen, peace is the goal of the next command Paul gives to give us helpful guardrails around our pursuit of Christ. Let’s see what he has to say.

Let’s start from the end and work backwards today. The command Paul gives here is simple: Live at peace with everyone. How hard could that possibly be? Well, have you met everyone? There are some people who are remarkably hard to live at peace with. And the reasons it might be hard to live at peace with a particular person are many.

It could be that they are just too different from you. Where you see up, they see down. Where you see black, they see white. Every time you start to move in a particular direction, they are already moving in the opposite direction and blocking your path forward (backwards to them) as you try to go. There’s no particular animus driving their positions relative to yours or yours relative to theirs. You two are just opposites of each other. That kind of person is hard to live at peace with.

Sometimes, though, an animus of some kind does play a role. Perhaps the person just doesn’t like you. No matter what you do, they always show up ready to fight. And who knows why? Maybe you offended them one time, didn’t realize it, never apologized because of that lack of awareness, and they’ve been nursing the grudge ever since. Or you could remind them of someone who hurt them deeply in their past because of your mannerisms. It could be something else entirely, but when someone just doesn’t like you, living at peace is a tall order.

Maybe, though, the problem lies with you. You just don’t like them. You’ve tried. And you’ve failed. Several times. Perhaps they’ve done something specific to warrant your dislike, but maybe you just find them that irritating. I remember as a kid having to spend some time playing with another kid who was just irritating. He was a know-it-all who always had something to say back to whatever you said. He was constantly one-upping you. I’m pretty sure his parents were guests in our home for some reason. My sister and I both were ready to lock him in a closet until it was time for him to leave. We were pretty gracious to be so young, but boy was that ice wearing thin by the time he left. When you just don’t like someone, peace is often in short supply.

How about an enemy? Are we really supposed to live at peace with our enemies? I mean, an enemy is sort of by definition someone with whom you are in conflict. How are we supposed to live at peace then? Well, as we have already talked about this week, Jesus told us that we are to love our enemies. While it is possible to struggle to live at peace even with someone you love, at least the odds of finding peace after a season of conflict then are higher. But if the person returns the sentiment, things can get even more difficult. Peace may simply not be possible. What then?

Thankfully, Paul accounts for that. In fact, he actually leads with that. Before giving the command here, Paul gives us an important caveat for the situations when peace just isn’t possible. Better yet, he offers us two caveats. The first is, “if possible.” If it is possible, we who are followers of Jesus are to live at peace with everyone. The implication here is that it’s not always possible. No one knew this better than Jesus Himself. He had enemies. He had committed and determined enemies whose hearts He was not going to change. Living at peace with them was simply not going to happen. They were determined to – dead-set even – on killing Him.

Okay, but what are we supposed to do in situations like that? The same thing He did. We love and leave the rest to God. We are liable for following God’s commands. We are not liable for how someone else responds to our following God’s commands. If we are faithful and obedient and they respond badly, that’s on them not us. That will occasionally cause us trouble in this life (which, again, Jesus understands every bit as well as you might), but we aren’t living for this life. We are living for the next. We are living like we are already in the next. Some people won’t like that and will attack us because of it. We endure that with patience and hopeful joyfulness, and keep living in light of our Lord’s command to love one another after the pattern He set for us.

In doing this, we are walking in line with Paul’s second caveat: As far as it depends on you. At some point, living at peace with everyone doesn’t depend on us. Whoever happens to fall in the category of “everyone” at the moment has a say in the process. In a war, if one side wants to stop fighting, and the other side doesn’t, the first side can either defend itself (an effort which can justly include efforts to actively seek to take away the enemy’s ability to attack) or be destroyed. The first side can simultaneously pursue peace, and defend themselves against ongoing acts of aggression from the other side.

We are to do everything we can to live at peace with the people around us. That includes things like being unfailingly kind like Jesus was. It means loving them no matter what. It means being gracious and humble and generous. It means actively forgiving them and seeking to reconcile and restore relationships that are broken. It means serving selflessly even when such efforts are costly for us in some way. And if we do all of these things, if we behave toward them as Jesus would, and peace is still not something we can achieve with them, that’s not a burden we have to carry. We can leave the rest in the faithful hands of our God, trusting that He will take care of us (and then) in whatever the situation happens to be.

So, pursue peace everywhere you can and with everyone you can. Where you can’t achieve it, though, love like Jesus anyway. That’s what He did, and things turned out alright for Him in the end. They will for you too.