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Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. This is the seventh in order of the Beatitudes. It is the first, however, which shows blessedness pronounced as alighting upon a person, not in the first instance for some personal quality, grace, or virtue, but for his works' sake in the interest of others, whether of the family, the world, or the Church. The distinction is manifest, but the difference is not very real. For any man to lay himself out to make peace between others, whether on larger or lesser scale; for any one to have the least likely success in doing so; for any one to have but the honest real desire to do so, postulates already his own disposition. For certain work, the gift, and even the honest fervent desire, argues the foundation-grace. And certainly not least so in exactly an instance like the present. As there are some graces and virtues (like patience, for instance) that come little, indeed, naturally or of preference or predilection to any one, so also there are some works, the first to be needed, very likely, but the last to be chosen of any one. And this is one of them. Thus are some men blessed for their works' sake in double sense. It may, then, be safely assumed that the man who volunteers for the peacemaker's work

(1) loves peace himself from the heart;

(2) has diligently sought to follow peace with all men; and

(3) has, by God's grace, subdued the warring elements of his own heart, as far as might be, first.

These are his best and true credentials for his work. The name of special honour and special love put by Jesus himself on the peacemaker pronounces at the same time the high eulogium of his life upon that man's work. The peacemakers' added title is to be understood to be "the children of God." Notice, then -

I. HOW DEAR TO GOD PEACE ITSELF MUST BE. This is because there is a meaning in it, and a beauty and a joy in it, which no doubt we at present fail to comprehend. This is in keeping with some grand expressions in other portions of Scripture applied to peace, and positions of special honour in which it is placed; e.g. "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding;" "the God of love and peace;" "grace, mercy, and peace from God;" "the very God of peace;" "peace in heaven;" "peace be unto you;" "my peace I give unto you."

II. HOW NEAR THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE MAKING OF PEACE AND THE REMAKING OF THE FAMILY OF GOD ON EARTH. Note the names employed by Scripture to describe the people of God on earth, and how to each belongs by special right the claim of concord, harmony, peace; e.g. "the brotherhood," "the family," "the whole family in heaven and earth," "one fold," "my father's house," etc.; and again note, conversely, how all "enmity," "strife," "divisions," "fightings," and both works and words of "wrath," "unkindness," "malice," "falsehood," and those various ways that must wreck the very thought of peace, are particularly characterized as the works of the devil.

III. HOW PEACE IS IN THE STRICT SENSE A CONSEQUENCE, A RESULT; AND NOT MERELY A CONSEQUENCE IN THE LESS REAL SENSE OF A PRIZE, REWARD, OR FREE GIFT. Accordingly, the person who makes peace makes a great deal else. He has done a great deal underneath, preparatory and out of sight. All this is what is now really the work transpiring in the world - the work of Christ the great Peacemaker and of all his disciples, and those especially whose gift and grace are to promote the reign of peace! The underneath work is long; its fortunes appear very various - now ebbing, again on the flow; the elements concerned in the struggle are very numerous, very complex, very dark, very malignant. Of the actual present period, almost the world around, the things plain to sight are wounds, and the merciless laying open of them; difference, dissension, with opposition as the watchword, euphemistically described not seldom as "inquiry," and "examination into first principles," and "putting the things that are to the test." The peacemakers' work is not the slight healing over of a wound. It includes in it, comprehends under its sweet title, a task which, for the amount of the work it comprises, and for the character of it, makes it coincident with the task of a world's redemption - Christ's own task.

IV. HOW THE GRACIOUS, HOMELY, NATURAL FORM OF THE WORDING OF THIS BEATITUDE MARKS THE CONDESCENDING ACCEPTANCE ON THE PART OF THAT SAME MIGHTY SUFFERER, MIGHTY WORKER IN HIS MIGHTY TASK, OF EACH HUMBLEST CONTRIBUTION AND OFFERING TOWARDS ITS ACCOMPLISHMENT, WHICH MAY BE BROUGHT TO HIM BY THE WAY. The little miniature productions and pictures and homes and social scenes of "peace," in the places where yesterday all the reverse were found-the two lifelong enemies at one - the sadder strife of two fellow-disciples, who had fought under one banner, quenched like lovers' quarrels, - these are but trifles by the way, drops in the bucket, bloodless skirmishes in comparison of the conflict raging on the world's wider battle-field. But they are significant of the greater. The" peace" means an earnest of the larger victory; the love, and prayer, and pains, and pleading, perhaps, which have been blessed to bring it, have all been copied from the biography of the great Exemplar; and over these peacemakers, for their hearts desire, for their endeavour of faith, for the loving copy, which with some success, not despised because it is the day of small things only, they have achieved, the word of blessedness is breathed, and to them is given the name of "the children of God." - B.

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KJV: Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

WEB: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.