SPECIAL TOPIC: PEACE (different senses)

SPECIAL TOPIC: PEACE (eirēnē, NT)

This Greek term referred to the absence of conflict, but in the LXX, it came to denote an inner peace with God and with one's fellow man (i.e., Luke 2:14; 10:6). The NT, like the OT, uses it as a greeting, "Peace to you" (i.e., Luke 10:5; John 20:19,21,26; Rom. 1:7; Gal. 1:3) or "farewell, go in peace" (cf. Mark 5:34; Luke 2:29; 7:50; 8:48; James 2:16).

Special Topic: Peace (shalom, OT)

This Greek term is used for "binding together relationships that were broken" (i.e., Rom. 5:10-11). There are three theological ways the NT speaks of peace:

an objective aspect, our peace with God through Christ (cf. Rom. 5:1; Col. 1:20)
a subjective aspect, our sensing that we have become right with God (cf. John 14:27; 16:33; Phil. 4:7)
that God has united into one new body, through Christ, both believing Jew and Gentile (cf. Eph. 2:14-17; Col. 3:15). Once we have peace with God, it must issue in peace with others! The vertical must become the horizontal.

Newman and Nida, A Translator's Handbook on Paul's Letter to the Romans, p. 92, has a good comment about "peace."

"Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament the term peace has a wide range of meaning. Basically it describes the total well-being of a person's life; it was even adopted among the Jews as a formula of greeting (shalom). This term had such a profound meaning that it could also be used by the Jews as a description of the Messianic salvation. Because of this fact, there are times when it is used almost synonymously with the term rendered 'to be in a right relation with God.' Here the term appears to be used as a description of the harmonious relation established between man and God on the basis of God's having put man right with himself" (p. 92).