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The Prince of Peace Brings a Sword

The Prince of Peace Brings a Sword

Last updated on: June 22, 2016 at 10:35 am by Henry Karlson

The Prince of Peace Brings a Sword 2016-06-22T10:35:56-05:00 Henry Karlson

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One of the titles for Jesus is “Prince of Peace.” In the prophecies of Isaiah, we are told that the peace he brings will have no end:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and for evermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this (Is. 9:6-7 RSV).

As the Prince of Peace, Jesus gives his peace to his followers, a peace which he says differs from the peace of the world, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn. 14:27 RSV). His peace is peace of the soul, a peace which allows us to detach ourselves from the world and what happens in it. This is why his peace allows us to be unafraid. This is also why those entirely attached to “the world” cannot know it. The more things change, the more the things of the world do not last, the more the things of the world do not satisfy, and so those who hold onto the world looking for peace will constantly find reasons for their hearts to be troubled.

And yet the way many people read Jesus, it would seem that they do not know Jesus was meant to be the Prince of Peace. They point out that he actually said he didn’t come to bring peace, but conflict, such as when he said:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household (Matt. 10:34-6 RSV).

Here, they tell us, Jesus was not a peace-maker, but a bringer of conflict, conflict which could and would go so far as violence as indicated by his use of the sword to represent himself. This interpretation, they tell us, is affirmed by the fact that Jesus told his disciples to buy a sword:

And he said to them, “When I sent you out with no purse or bag or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “Nothing.” He said to them, “But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one. For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, `And he was reckoned with transgressors’; for what is written about me has its fulfilment.” And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough” (Lk. 22:35 – 38 RSV).

It is clear that many of Jesus’ disciples, coming out of the zealots, thought similarly and believed he would eventually emerge as a militaristic messiah. They believed Jesus was telling them to take up arms and to be prepared to put them into use. They understood his words, not according to the spirit, but to the letter, and so when authorities came to arrest Jesus, they thought it was time to fight. They received, as a result, a stern rebuke:

And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? (Matt. 26:51-3 RSV).

Mark 14:47 and John 18:10 indicate that the disciple who struck the slave’s ear was Peter, while Matthew gives us the result of such violence, indicating that Jesus not only told Peter to stop for the sake of the passion, but also as a warning that the use of the sword was not Jesus’ intended plan. As St. John Chrysostom indicated, “Wherefore also Peter is rebuked for using it, and with a severe threat.”[1] Those who use the sword shall die by the sword – those who fall upon the path of violence shall be taken over by the cycle of violence, where they shall die in spirit, if not in body. Jesus made it clear that he denounced the path of violence.

From these few verses we have brought together, we find ourselves in the midst of a paradox. Jesus is the Prince of Peace who rebuked Peter’s use of violence, and yet Jesus said that he came not to bring peace but the sword. What are we to make of this? How can he bring the sword and not peace, and yet offer us peace?

The key is to understand that the sword is not literal but symbolic. It is a symbol of the way Jesus will cut through all that is erroneous, all that is false, in our thoughts and in our deeds. Jesus came to cut us off from ourselves, from the false sense of self, all the sins and erroneous beliefs we have as a result of that self, so that we follow him through the path of the cross and to the death of that very false self. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12 RSV). Everything is to be put in its proper place, so that those whose love is misdirected will find Jesus at work on their soul, cutting away at the imbalance created by their attachments:

He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it (Matt. 10:37-9 RSV).

The sword that Jesus brings cuts us up from ourselves and our inordinate attachments to the world. We find that as he comes to us to cut out the diseased portions of our soul, healing it from the damage we have done to it through our actions and our false beliefs, we will feel distressed (just like when we have a tooth pulled, we will find pain). While he gives us some peace and release, thanks to the hope and grace he gives us, we should not expect a full peace of mind so long as our mind and its thoughts, our will and its actions, are disordered. Jesus comes to give us peace, but the fullness of that peace is found only after he has worked on our soul and cut off every unwholesome root and cast into the fire every unwholesome seed which he shall find in us, as St. John Chrysostom indicated:

How then did He enjoin them to pronounce peace on entering into each house? And again, how did the angels say, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace”? And how came all the prophets too to publish it for good tidings? Because this more than anything is peace, when the diseased is cut off, when the mutinous is removed. For thus it is possible for Heaven to be united to earth. Since the physician too in this way preserves the rest of the body, when he amputates the incurable part; and the general, when he has brought to a separation them that were agreed in mischief.[2]

And so, to further interpret Jesus’s words, we are to be cut off from our father and mother, St. Hilary of Poitiers explained, by the cleansing of original sin:

When we are renewed in the laver of baptism through the power of the Word, we are separated from the sins that come from our origin, and are separated from its authors. Once we have endured a sort of excision by God’s sword, we are cut from the dispositions of our father and mother.[3]

It is, therefore, the cutting off of original sin which we inherit from our parents, from the inclinations which come from original sin, as well as from the rules and regulations, from the unjust traditions which our parents have inherited and likewise give us, that are among the things to be cut off by Jesus’s sword. He was not indicating an absolute rejection of the family but of the sins found in the family. So long as our family would encourage us to act in a way contrary to Jesus, we might find ourselves in conflict with our family, but such conflict, a phenomenon which he warned could happen, was never his purpose. It was a warning to help prepare his followers for what they might have to face, not an indication of what Jesus desired. The end goal is not conflict but peace, the peace which requires, among other things, the removal of all the sinful dross we inherited from our family.

We must realize that it is not only our relationship with our family, but our engagement with the world which Jesus knew must be addressed. All our erroneous thoughts, all our sinful desires, must be purged. We have become accustomed to see the world in and through the disintegrating chaos of sin, leaving a “dualistic” view of the world which sees everything divided and fighting against each other. Jesus, the Word of God, brings the Sword of the Word, the Sword of Wisdom, which not only disconnects us from our error but points, through the commandments of love, the way we are to go: “ The word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom, and her ways are everlasting commandments” (Sirach 1:5 DRA version).

By Deutsch: Auftraggeber: Otto III. oder Heinrich II. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Love unites, while sin divides. That which is divisive must be allowed to play its course, and be divided away from us, so that what remains, the love which remains, can be picked up and taken in by God. And so we find Jesus comes, striking us in his speech, piercing our soul to its inner core from Wisdom’s Sword, cutting off all the false divisions of mind and hate created by sin. Wisdom’s Sword will strike us if we do not repent of our sin, of our unlove. That is, if we do remove our sin and error from ourselves, Jesus will do it for us, as he indicated in the Apocalypse: “Repent then. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth” (Rev. 2:16 RSV). John had indicated that he saw a sword coming out of the Lord’s mouth in Rev. 1:16, but here, in this verse, John indicated that this sword, the Sword of the Word, the Sword of Wisdom, would be put to use against us, until it has cut away every error, every false desire founded upon divisive unlove, from us.[4]

And so we find, in and through all of this, what Jesus meant: he comes to bring us conflict which leads to peace. Nothing he said should be misconstrued as giving support to violence. The conflict he warns us about is the immediate result, but the peace is long lasting and eternal. He brings us himself with the Sword of Wisdom, which is going to cut off all that seeks division, all that is unlove. He brings us his Wisdom and allows us to work with and cooperate with him, but if we do not, he will come and do with us what we are unwilling to do for ourselves. The conflict he warns us about is real, but the intention is peace, the eternal peace which is found in the kingdom of heaven. He is the Prince of Peace, and he seeks us to follow him in peace, not to take up the way of the world with its violence and unlove. But because we are born tainted by the world, he must bring out the conflict between love and unlove and manifest it in our lives, until at last, the divisive nature of unlove is cut out and all we know is the eternal peace of love, the peace of God. The Sword of Wisdom comes to us, to help us cut off the dualism of unlove which separates us form God so that we can dwell in and with God in and through that peace of love. For the end goal is for us to dwell in God and have God dwell in us in and through that love (cf. 1 John 4:16). Until that goal is reached, we will have the peace of the kingdom in part, conflict of sin in part, and we will understand the paradox of the Prince of Peace bringing conflict because it will be what we experience in our lives.

[1] St. John Chrysostom, “Homilies on Matthew” in NPNF1(10): 502.

[2] St. John Chrysostom, “Homilies on Matthew” in NPNF1(10): 232.

[3] St. Hilary of Poitiers, Commentary on Matthew. trans. D.H. Williams (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2012), 125.

[4] St. Maximus the Confessor in his writings shows the work of Jesus was to remove all dualistic divisions in nature, all the cracks in the natural order which sought to break it up into many parts instead of remaining as one interdependent unity loved by God. See Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 331 – 432 ( the sixth chapter of the book) for a detailed examination on how St. Maximus viewed Christ’s work as overturning the disintegration and chaos established by sin by bringing all things together as one.

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