“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14) Comment: The first word of the passage is “strive.” To strive is to put forth great effort to achieve something.
Question: What does the author want these believers to strive to do? Answer: To put forth earnest effort to achieve peace with everyone. This is not the generic pray for “world peace” that is wished for at a beauty pageant. Such peace is easily wished and hoped for. No, this is a real-life, daily, effort on your part to have peace with all of the people that you are in your life.
Comment: Striving for peace with everyone is not a suggestion but a command. Christians are to be makers of peace. Jesus even said that those who make peace are the sons of God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).
Comment: Striving for peace and making peace are extremely similar commands. Both put the effort on You to be the one who is doing the work to bring about peace in your relationships.
Question: What are you doing to strive and make peace with the people in your life?
Question: Are you returning anger with anger, sharp words with sharp words, gossip with gossip? That is not striving or making peace. Confess, repent, and seek peace.
Question: Who should we strive to have peace with? Answer: Most likely, the author has in mind fellow believers.
Question: Can Christians have discord, disunity, and disharmony? Answer: Most certainly, but this does not make it right. Christians should be exemplary in the peace we experience with one another since God commands us to do so. Paul writes the Corinthians several times about the church of Corinth not living in peace with one another:
10I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. (1 Corinthians 1:10-11)
Comment: Quarreling and division is the opposite of peace and unity. Paul had to appeal to this church, to brothers (assumed believers) to stop such sinful behavior. Much later, Paul writes the Corinthian church again. Let’s see if they have fully obeyed and are keeping the peace.
20For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish—that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. (2 Corinthians 12:20)
Question: Were they striving for peace? Answer: No. Quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder are not ingredients to making peace. Paul warned them that he was coming to visit them, and it was not going to be a sweet visit. He was going to call them out on their sin.
Application: Keeping the peace is not easy. It requires effort on your part, even if others are not putting in the work. As Paul wrote, “So far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:18). The body of Christ is to be united, working together as one unit. As Christians, we should be putting great effort forth to live in peace with one another. Of all places on earth, the local church should be the example of harmony, unity, patience, selflessness, servitude, love, and peace. The local church flourishes when its members strive to be at peace with one another. Soli Deo Gloria, Dr. Trey Talley, Lead Pastor and Elder