Isaiah 9:6 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called…Prince of Peace.”

We have every reason to respect and love Jesus as our Counselor, Mighty Hero, and Everlasting Father.  In the end, we also bow to him as King. Jesus is royalty. He was the King of Israel as rightful heir and descendant of King David. But more importantly, he is the King of kings. He reigns as King of the universe, the Son and rightful heir of God the Father in heaven.

But this King does not come to bow our heads in terror, or enslave us in servile fear. His name is the Prince of Peace. His peace is not the kind the world so desperately seeks: peace from wars, relief from crime and violence. He didn’t come to make it possible to build a kind of counterfeit heaven on earth. Many times Jesus himself has been the cause of conflict, not just between nations, but even between individual members or our earthly families. He predicted it would be this way.

None of this contradicts the fact that he is the Prince of Peace, however. He came to bring peace in the BIG war, the one between you and me and our God. When we turned against God with our sin, he had no choice but to turn against us with his judgment. When people are at war with God, there is no peace.

But Jesus has turned God’s judgment away. He has made our sin invisible to God by his death in our place. He has given us real peace with him by leading us back to faith. Our consciences can rest. We don’t need to live our lives constantly looking over our shoulders to see if today God is coming to get us. We may not always be safe in an earthly sense, but we have peace.

Our lives may not be free from struggles with other people, free from struggles with temptation, free from struggles to make it through another day, but God’s peace stretches over us in the middle of these struggles. When we have peace with him, our life is whole. God grants us a sense of security, a sense of contentment even when outwardly our lives are a total disaster. This is the peace that comes with faith.

We possess true peace flowing beneath the rushing adrenalin, the sweating anxiety, the streaming tears, and the overwhelming grief of our messed up existence here. It’s the gift Jesus brings us because he is our Prince of Peace.