Christ is our peace. Not peace as a mood, or a brief pause between troubles, but peace as a person who stands between enemies and refuses to let hatred have the last word.
Paul writes, “He himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). Notice the grammar: not he gives peace only, but he is peace. In Jesus, God does not offer a technique; God offers his own reconciling presence. The cross is where Christ absorbs hostility without returning it, where he breaks the cycle of revenge, and where he makes a new humanity out of people who were kept apart.
That matters for us in India, where divisions are not abstract. Caste pride, community suspicion, class contempt, and everyday prejudice shape who eats with whom, who marries whom, who is trusted, and who is treated as fully human. Christ does not baptise these walls. He dismantles them. He “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” (Epistle to the Ephesians 2:14). He speaks peace not only to those who feel secure, but also to those kept at the margins (Ephesians 2:17).
So a reflection on peace cannot end with sentiment. If Christ is our peace, then the church must look like peace. Peace becomes visible when we refuse cruel speech, when we choose truth over rumours, when we protect the vulnerable, when we apologise without excuses, when we repair what we have damaged, when we share tables across status lines, and when we insist on dignity for those society shames.
Jesus also says, “Peace I leave with you… not as the world gives” (Gospel of John 14:27). The world’s peace is often silence purchased by fear. Christ’s peace is justice with mercy, truth with love, and courage without violence. We bring our anxieties to him, and bring our conflicts to him. Let Christ make you whole, and then let him make you a peacemaker. Because where Christ reigns, peace is not postponed; it begins.
