“The God of peace be with you all.” (Romans 15:33)
Was Paul’s letter to the Romans meant to finish at 15:33? Scot McKnight in his book, Reading Romans Backwards, takes the novel approach of starting in Romans 16 with all the names and working backwards through the epistle. The argument is simple: that figuring out who the epistle was addressed to helps us to make more sense of the themes Paul chose to explore in the body of his message. It’s an interesting approach that might cast some light on other biblical epistles too. Regarding Romans though I found myself distracted from using this approach by the pause point that precedes the list of names: “The God of peace be with you all.” As I am writing this reflection in the week of VE day, a day celebrating a significant step towards peace across Europe 80 years ago in WWII, ‘The God of peace’ feels such an apt title to sign-off with. It struck a chord as a gentle benediction, as a closing blessing, as a fervent pastoral longing.
But then I noticed that the title ‘God of peace’ recurs (Romans 16:20) with a quite different feel to it: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” Crushing Satan feels anything but ‘peaceful’ and speaks more to victory in a titanic conflict…a world war of even greater deadliness than WWII. Then I recalled the prayer-benediction of 1 Thessalonians 5:23 – “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.” It occurred to me that sanctifying and purifying is neither a gentle nor a painless experience. And then Hebrews 13:20-21 also came to mind: “May the God of peace…equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is please to him…” We might pray this prayer, but it is unlikely that it would be a serene or comfortable process in its outworking. I cringe to think what a lot there is to challenge and change in me. Clearly having this ‘God of peace’ with us and at work in us could actually be a profoundly disturbing and unsettling experience.
Yet in a world where war has again come to Europe, where conflict and confrontation seem to be spreading worldwide, where Satan seems in the ascendent, where old certainties and securities have been shaken, where our individual lives are mired in fears and fragilities, surely this strong ‘God of peace’ is exactly Who we need? Truly, powerfully, urgently, may the God of peace be with us all.