The Price Of Peace

The disciples were confused. When the Messiah came, peace and righteousness would reign from one end of the earth to the other. All the prophets agreed. And if Jesus was the Messiah as they were all now pretty sure he was, he would be the one who brought it about. He would be the Prince of Peace Isaiah described: “His authority shall grow continually and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.” [Is 9:7] But now Jesus is saying something else. Jesus is telling them that there isn’t going to be peace after all. Hadn’t he said he hadn’t come to judge the world, but to save the world? But here he is saying that he’s going to bring fire, and he wants it to hurry up and get here! This isn’t at all what they expected.

And it’s not what Jesus’ followers nowadays expect, either, is it.

One of the problems the Old Testament prophets had to combat was the complacency of the Israelites - the ones convinced that on the Day of the Lord - you know, the final day of judgment when God would separate the good from the evil - that on that day they’d have nothing to worry about because, after all, weren’t they the chosen ones? And in Jesus' day the self-righteous Pharisees had the same sense of invulnerability. The disciples may very well have figured out by this time that the Pharisees would be in trouble on the day; after all, didn’t Jesus himself call them a brood of vipers, and whited sepulchres, and other choice epithets?

What they didn’t expect was that the Messiah himself, and his followers, would also be caught up in the conflict. They thought they would be non-combatants, safe above the fray, watching the ungodly swept past them in the great spring cleaning.

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” [v.49] says Jesus. In this passage we get a rare glimpse of Jesus thinking aloud, instead of teaching. It provides the same kind of window into his state of mind that we get in much more poignant detail later on in the garden of Gethsemane, when he prays for the cup of crucifixion to pass. At this point in his mission the looming crisis of his trial and death are weighing heavily upon him, and he’s impatient to hurry up and get it over and done with! At the same time, he’s not looking forward to it, and his disciples still aren’t ready, and there is no way he can make them ready. Jesus has warned them of his coming death more than once, and they still don’t understand. No matter how clearly he tries to put it, they still don’t get it, and they won’t until it actually happens. They can't imagine that he'll ask them to go through the same sort of testing that the rest of the world will get.

Fire, of course, means judgment. But the point isn’t to burn people up. He did say in John 3:17 that he hadn’t come to condemn, but to save. And he meant it. The fire Jesus brings refines; it separates the pure from the impure. The good metal is better off: the fire cleans it, purifies it, strengthens it. So, of course, the disciples have to go through it for their own sake as well as to verify their credentials.

Jesus then goes on to say “I have a baptism with which to be baptized.” [v. 50] Now you may recall that in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptizer said that the Messiah would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” [Lk 3:16] The water baptism in which all Christians participate is a beginning of a new life. It represents both cleansing from sin and our participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Being sinless, of course, Jesus did not need to be cleansed. The baptism Jesus awaits now is the real thing: it bought the peace with God which our baptism enables us to share. But the wait isn’t easy.

“And what stress I am under until it is completed!” Verse 49 shows his impatience, this one hints at his reluctance. The word used, ‘synecho,’ “to be dominated by a thought,” indicates preoccupation, even obsession, with the thought of what lies ahead. What a contrast! While Jesus is laboring under the burden of the ordeal to come, the disciples are filled with carefree and confident expectation of the coming messianic kingdom and their anticipated role in it.

People naturally tend to think that peace means being trouble free. People then, just like people now, wanted their lives to be smooth and easy. They wanted their neighbors to be nice and their employers to be generous and their rulers to be just. People always assume that the most important things in their lives are the externals, and so when Jesus comes along talking about peace, they don’t realize that their primary problem is that they’re at war with God.